#to lxc not seeing jgy for 'who he really was' fundamentally as a person | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pumpkinpaix · 4 years ago

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*waves* Hi! New(ish) follower, I followed for your posts about translation which are beautiful (especially the one about the imagery of "Zewu-jun") and thought-provoking; I don't have a good segue so here are some Salty Asks I'd like to know your answers to concerning MDZS: 5, 9, 10, 12, 23

oh, that’s so sweet of you!! thank you I’m really happy you enjoyed them 💛

okay salt incoming let’s see--all opinions are my own, no one has to agree with me, etc! and in true cyan fashion, this ask meme response actually needs a readmore l m a o

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

fandom has not ruined any ships in mdzs for me, but it has made me way more critical of both wangxian and xicheng interpretations. not in the sense that like, I think they are bad! i love wangxian and xicheng, but I have very very specific feelings about them that I rarely see reflected in popular fandom interpretations. (because i am a picky bitch lol)

wangxian tends to get the “they did no wrong and their love is righteous” treatment which I find disingenuous and believe directly contradicts the point of mdzs. i think that wangxian is fundamentally a very selfish relationship, and that that is, in fact, a good thing. i love that about them. i care so much about the assertion that your desires do not have to be perfect and righteous to still matter and be worthwhile. i don’t understand the impulse to make wangxian into a pure ship that triumphs and “deserves” a happy ending because they were right all along. I always felt like the entire point of mdzs was that--you can be the most terrible person, you can do unspeakable harm, and still be loved and deserving of that love. i think wangxian is compelling and moving specifically for that reason, and I often have to back out of interpretations that don’t acknowledge it in the way that i want them to. a lot of interpretations tend to idealize wwx and lwj in ways that I disagree with, and I’ve seen a lot of vitriolic pushback over anything that’s seen as even vaguely critical of either of them, when the point isn’t that “wwx/lwj is a bad person because he is selfish” the point is that “wwx/lwj’s choices are selfishly motivated” -- that’s not meant to be a value judgment, at least for me.

(i understand that a lot of this has to do with CQL’s influence, in which wangxian IS narratively rewarded for their righteousness, but as I’ve discussed at length, I think that positioning undermines what makes mdzs so powerful to me in the first place. not that i don’t love CQL!! i do love CQL--they have made a beautiful thing within the constraints that they had. but I think the novel is much stronger thematically.)

as for xicheng: i think that their relationship could be extraordinarily interesting if done in specific ways--I do not think they are well-suited to each other at any point in the canon timeline, but that they could be something really good maybe 10 years post-canon. I used to really like the idea of xicheng romantically, but as time goes on, I’m leaning harder into friendship. I think they have a lot of uniquely shared life experiences, and that it would be really good for both of them to have a person that they knew understood those experiences intimately: the pressures of leading a sect before adulthood, the grief of losing your family in a massacre and being unable to save them, the betrayal of someone who was once so close to you--that’s a lot. and i think there are very few people in their generation who could truly understand that. (for this reason, I also think lxc and xxc would be a very interesting relationship to see many many years post-canon, if xxc were ever revived) but during canon? no, absolutely not. i don’t think lxc has the slightest interest in jc, and i don’t think jc is particularly moved by lxc either, beyond a distant “yeah i mean, he’s the first jade everyone loves him sure moving on” kind of way. they both have their own shit to deal with, and before lxc’s seclusion and also before the core reveal, i think jc is too angry and vicious for lxc and lxc is too soft and toothless for jc. for someone to really convince me on xicheng, jc has to move towards some kind of self-forgiveness and peace and lxc has to move towards self-assertion. then I think they can meet somewhere in the middle of all that.

and like, it’s not that i won’t read silly fluffy aus or like canonverse stuff with them in a ship, but i admit that because it’s grown so popular but not at all in the ways that i personally want, I’m frustrated with and have retreated from reading it. unless it’s done in the specific way i like, it has too much of a pair the spares vibe for me to get behind it anymore.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

jin guangshan, obvious reasons, next

ok well, i guess to elaborate even slightly: jin guangshan, to me, is the embodiment of the systems within mdzs that cause tragedy. he and chang ci’an are similar in that respect? like, the callousness with which they treat people they consider beneath them. what is nothing to them is ruinous for another, but why should they care? but jgs really had every advantage handed to him and chose to use that advantage to hurt others in really insidious ways and i can’t forgive that. jin zixun is also on this list, but like, still ahead of jgs bc he’s younger. -_- i suppose in that respect, i also very much dislike chang ci’an, but that’s a bit harder to quantify, given that we know almost nothing about him.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

huh. uhhhh. i think i actually really like all of them? in the novel anyways. if we’re talking CQL, yin iron plot ugh.

12. Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I think for similar reasons to 10, not really! I don’t see a lot of hate for any specific plot arc. Oh, maybe the incense burners? I completely unironically love those. people rag a lot on mxtx’s smut, but it’s very important to me for a number of like, personal mental health reasons lol.

23. Unpopular character you love?

xue yang! i think xue yang’s character raises a very interesting point about equivalent justice that kinda gets swept away in all the uhhhh murder. and it’s a point that has really big thematic repercussions, I think? but the way it’s worded makes it very easy to dismiss.

very briefly: xue yang is right when he says that 50 lives cannot pay back his finger, because there is nothing that can pay back that finger. no vengeance or sentence visited upon chang ci’an will ever be equal to the injustice that he visited upon xue yang. i think there’s a bit of naivety in the way xxc says “why didn’t you cut off his finger then? or his whole arm, if that wasn’t enough?” and the answer I think is very obvious--xy cutting off cca’s finger would not in any way be the same kind of trauma that xy losing his finger was, esp if chang ci’an knew who xue yang was. there would be an understanding in that: i am losing my finger because this man blames me for the loss of his finger. but to xue yang, a 7 year old? the pain he experienced was completely senseless and cruel and terrifying.

does that mean xue yang was justified? no jesus christ, but i do think it ties very neatly into the general themes of what it means to get vengeance, what it means to get justice, and how cycles of trauma eventually end. so i love him for that.

on a lesser note, but a similar one: i rather like su she, I think. there is something about like, jgy’s “all i had to do was remember his name and he was willing to die for me” that gets to me. there’s a huge tragedy in that somewhere.

wow i have no idea if any of that was coherent im very sleepy

salt asks

#cyan gets too deep in the weeds #ask meme #mdzs #rip i hate that the 5 tags thing doesn't work anymore rip to me i guess #the untamed #nice people saying nice things #ajax-daughter-of-telamon #asks and replies

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xiyao-feels · 4 years ago

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@hqfeels

Oh man, as someone who loves 3zun, and thinks the mess of intertwining relationships is what makes it interesting, I really should not have read this post - while I think you make some interesting points for a different interpretation of the Nielan relationship, I would also caution against basing your interpretation so closely to the words of what is a translation

e.g. when you discuss LXC not framing things in terms of the sworn brother relationship, you point to the use of “one of his sworn brothers” vs “my” or “our” - chinese doesn’t always use pronouns, so it could very well be the translator having to fill in

I make note of this, not as a nitpick, but bc I think it goes to the heart of the framing of the relationship. Because I think Xiyao is fundamentally framed within the 3zun context - after all, what does JGY call LXC to show they’re close? Er-ge. “2”, not just Ge. NMJ, as Da-ge eternally haunts their relationship. The point of rejection from LXC? You don’t have to call me Er-ge anymore.

So, hey! I appreciate that you said you shouldn't have read my post, but I thought your points were worth addressing, and since you left comments in the notes I figured it was reasonable to respond. If you don't want to read this post, I completely understand, and I've left a bunch of empty lines after this paragraph so you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

The point about relying too heavily on exact shades of meaning is definitely a good one. Reading over my post, however, I think there are only three places where I do that; the point identified, later for one point in my discussion of QHJ's teacher, and actually later in the temple when I talk about the "sob" of Liebing as some evidence for LXC's grief for NMJ.

I think it's worth asking: how much does any one of these points contribute to the argument? They're definitely not irrelevant, or I wouldn't have pointed them out, but even so there's only so much wiggle room. No matter what pronouns he uses, for example, LXC only spends one clause of that speech directly on JGY killing NMJ, and it's in the context of, well, a general lack of reaction of personal grief. If—not even if he actually said 'our sworn brother' or 'my sworn brother,' I do think that would be some evidence of personal betrayal, even if it has to be considered in light of the rest of his reactions and non-reactions. But if, in the original text, the Chinese simply didn't specify the pronouns such that "his" is the translator's best guess—I just don't see that as a serious blow to the argument, given the consistency of the pattern as a whole, and I think it's kind of cherry-picking to suggest that it is.

Second, I don't think the pronoun there is ambiguous as is suggested. Consider the phrasing; it's not just "his sworn brother," it's "one of his sworn brothers." Supposing that "his" wasn't present in the original text. "One of my sworn brothers"? "One of our sworn brothers"? Neither really makes sense. Of course, perhaps they might make more sense in Chinese; but that's a little further than "what if the translator had to pick a pronoun."

Now, I think the above points are worth considering on their own merits, which is why I brought them up first. However, I have to say: I did, actually, check the Chinese, for the "one of his sworn brothers" and indeed in multiple places. I didn't mention it in the post for the same reason I usually try not to rely on it in my posts: because I feel like I'd end up setting myself up as some kind of authority when I'm very much not, and because I'm frequently fairly confused XP I have, what, one term of Mandarin, some amount of self-study, and Pleco installed on my phone. But I do often look at the original text and try to work things out, and sometimes I learn stuff that's been lost in translation, and often I can go well, my best guess aligns with the translation. If you want to confirm for yourself, and I encourage you to do so!!, then you can look at the text here: https://www.kunnu.com/modaozushi/. It's in chapter 64.

This is the clause about JGY killing one of his sworn brothers: 他设计杀害了自己的一位义兄 ("that he planned to kill one of his sworn brothers"). The pronoun before "one of his sworn brothers" is 自己, which is a pronoun referring to the subject of the sentence—in this case 他, he, JGY. Now, could I be wrong? Of course! Should anyone rely on uncited statements from a total stranger? No! I strongly encourage people to check this out for themselves, and if someone who actually does speak Chinese wants to offer some guidance I'd be very grateful. But given that it matched the translation from people who do actually speak both Chinese and English, it seemed enough to allow me to rely on the translation.

On that note, actually, I'll admit I missed a trick. "我父亲的一位恩师", one of my father's teachers—"teacher" there is 恩师, which Pleco gives me as "mentor; one's kind and respected master (or teacher)." So it does have more of an emotional edge, and I'll edit the post to acknowledge this. Even so, I think it's worth remembering both that it's one word, he's not adding lots of adjectives about the teacher, and most importantly that the teacher simply isn't lingered on. The effects of his mother killing the teacher, yes, and the contrast between his memories of his mother and the fact that she did kill his father's teacher...but the teacher himself is just not dwelled on.

(For completion's sake, the "sob" of Liebing in ch 107 is "呜咽", which Pleco gives as 1) sob, whimper 2) (of water, wind, stringed instrument, etc) weep; wail; lament; mourn.)

But again, quibbling over phrasing is to some extent a distraction. The important thing is not so much any one incident as the pattern they form, considered together; this is why my original post was so long, because I was trying to consider the overall pattern, and I think the comment about framing is pointing at the same thing. So it's worth asking: are xi//yao framed in terms of the 3//zun relationship?

In fact, I think this divides into two questions. First: does the text frame xi//yao in terms of the 3//zun relationship? And second: do xi//yao understand their relationship fundamentally in terms of the 3//zun relationship? I think you could make more of an argument on the first one, or at least, xi//yao and NMJ are part of their own narrative in the text and often show up together. But in terms of the actual relationship, it's the second question I'm interested in here, and I think the answer is very much no.

First of all, a note on timelines. In MDZS, LXC and JGY knew each other for about seventeen years; they were sworn brothers with NMJ for about four. To put this another way, they were sworn brothers with NMJ for less than a quarter of their overall time together. Moreover, they had significant time without NMJ before they all became sworn brothers, as well as after his death. Now, much of their relationship is revealed to us through Empathy, which necessarily limits us to when NMJ was alive, and moreover shows us only those of their moments together that he happens to see, so it's understandable that these years dominate our view, but I do think it's important to remember.

Okay, now let's consider what we see of their relationship. Given how much of it we see through NMJ's eyes, it's in fact remarkable how much it isn't about him. In the first conversation we see them have together, LXC is proposing that MY stop being NMJ's deputy and go serve his father in Langya (though only after confirming that's still what MY wants, note—and which he knows MY had wanted because MY literally told him!). When MY says he does want it but he owes NMJ, LXC says he thinks NMJ will understand but volunteers to talk with NMJ himself if he doesn't. Neither of them have told NMJ they know each other; after NMJ comes in, when he seeks to find out how they do, asking LXC and then ordering MY to speak after LXC refuses, they don't tell him. I'm not saying either of them are unhappy with NMJ here—quite the contrary!—but there's no sign they see the other, or their relationship with each other, fundamentally in terms of him. (For a close reading of the scene, as ever, I recommend confusion-and-more's post here.)

Furthermore, in MDZS, after MY flees from NMJ in Langya and becomes a spy, he starts sending LXC letters with information, and LXC works out who it is. As with pretty much everything we see about them, this suggests a quite astonishing intimacy—that MY was able to trust that LXC would work it out, and that LXC did. Not only did NMJ not know who the spy was, in MDZS he didn't know there was a spy at all—LXC concealed it from him entirely. Now, this is obviously very solid practice for spies, but again—you have xiyao together, and NMJ apart. (I'll also note that in MDZS LXC is exchanging blows with NMJ sword to saber until the very end of the post-Sun Palace confrontation, even after MY steps forward; he definitely does not seem to think that NMJ has any sort of right, here.)

At the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, we see them together but, again, not with NMJ, and there's no suggestion that LXC had socialized with him particularly—JGY is aware of how much prey he's taken, but of course JGY is running the hunt. Then when they both go off at the end of the scene to expand the hunting grounds, LXC asks LWJ if he'd like to help, but there's zero suggestion that they're going to seek out NMJ, even though he's part of the reason JGY needs to expand the hunting grounds.

In chapter 73, LXC and JGY are talking after the conference. Then NMJ comes over and comments disapprovingly about JGY. Again, LXC doesn't actually speak a single word after NMJ joins them. This... really does not suggest perceiving him and JGY as fundamentally part of that triad, imho.

The guqin scene: LXC and JGY are very much focused on each other. Only LXC talks with NMJ at all, and only once, briefly, answering his objection. NMJ is described as looking up before his objection, which suggests to me that he/wasn't/ looking up before. Meanwhile LXC and JGY are complimenting each other's playing, LXC is offering to teach him exclusive teachings, and JGY is telling LXC about his mother. You could reasonably say LXC teaching JGY the Song of Clarity is or is partly about NMJ—his desire again for them to reconcile—but in their interactions they are focused on each other to an almost absurd extent, and not NMJ.

The discussion conference mentioned in chapter 30? We're told NMJ wasn't originally planning to go; it seems likely that we would have been told if the same was true of LXC, given that LWJ is the one telling us about it. So, again, we have JGY and LXC together, and NMJ only coming in for outside reasons.

At the beginning of the stairs conflict, when NMJ comes in and calls JGY out, we see that JGY and LXC are discussing something, with "notes of all colours" on the desk before them. WWX is later going to realize they're discussing the watchtowers, which even now, well before he's Jin-zongzhu, JGY is trying to convince his father to build; there's no sign, on the other hand, that NMJ even knows what they're working on.

Their last interaction before NMJ's death /is/ about NMJ, with JGY very upset and LXC defending the idea that NMJ hasn't rejected JGY completely. But again this doesn't suggest that they view their relationship fundamentally in terms of their relationship with NMJ, and as we've seen it's not what they're usually talking about.

I talk here about two patterns of 3//zun interaction in the Empathy chapters: broadly, MY/JGY and LXC talking privately and NMJ coming and interrupting them, and NMJ attacking MY/JGY, and LXC intervening.

Looking over their interactions, the text does not, to me, suggest that LXC and JGYview their relationship fundamentally in terms of NMJ or of 3//zun.

And again—LXC doesn't bring up NMJ in the temple, and he only reacts to NMJ-as-NMJ three brief times.

Now, it is of course true that JGY calls LXC er-ge as a sign of closeness, and that he's 'er-ge' because NMJ is the first brother. However, a few points.

First, I would argue that it's a recurring theme in MDZS (and /especially/ for JGY) that the form of a relationship doesn't necessarily match what the relationship actually is; the form, therefore, might be an interesting point to consider, but it must be considered in light of the evidence we have about their actual relationship.

Second, JGY calls LXC er-ge a full thirteen times in the temple chapters. Once in chapter 99, when he's responding to LXC about JL; twice in chapter 100, discussing NHS; in chapter 105, three times leading up to his explanation of the letter; six full times when answering LXC's questions in chapter 106; and then once in chapter 108 when he is literally asking LXC for protection from NMJ's fierce corpse.

Once and only once, on the last er-ge in chapter 105, does LXC respond to being called er-ge, though we're told he did so earlier off-page. And—well, look at the paragraph:

His tone was more than earnest. Ever since he captured Lan XiChen, he’d indeed been treating him with respect. At this point, Lan XiChen wasn’t able to turn against him yet. He could only sigh, “Sect Leader Jin, I have already said, when you went your own way to scheme such havoc at Burial Mound, that there was no longer the need to call me ‘Brother.’”

This is not only not framed as an essential rejection, it's framed as explicitly /not/ that: "Lan XiChen wasn't able to turn against him yet." And again, as I pointed out in my post, we're explicitly given a reason for it that has absolutely nothing to do with NMJ! 'Don't call me er-ge because you killed da-ge' would be very natural; the fact that it's explicitly not about that suggests strongly to me that they simply don't think of 'er-ge' in terms of its relation to NMJ, despite the form.

#ship negativity cw #that damn bingo post #a gentle warmth filling the deepest of needs #profound philosophical differences #we can't change places #anger burned in his heart #the best of men #more than one tag could contain #long meta

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paradife-loft · 4 years ago

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xiyao! :D

LAST ONE OH BOY 🎉🎉 sorry it took me so long to finish these, and thanks for the patience :’D

But ahh, xiyao <333

1. What made you ship it?

Would you believe I honestly don't remember?? Like, I don't know that I was paying a comparatively huge amount of attention to specifically the pair of them together (as opposed to just JGY in general as a secondary character) during my first watch; and then the first JGY fic I wrote actually had very little xiyao in it at all? But their interactions in the show itself were definitely a big part of it, even if I don't really remember what ended up plunging me fully into the deep end on this.

Like just - the combination of how clearly invested they are in each other, along with the sheer pain of the canonical ending they have? Like, I wouldn’t refer to it as a “betrayal” situation, per se, because I feel like it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the particular sort of tragedy of JGY’s downfall, and the way LXC is there for the entire thing, clearly hurting and confused and just wanting to understand? I think I’ve remarked on here before that even when I like a character or relationship in a story that gets a fairly happy ending, I tend to need that element of tragedy, of this narrative was not meant for you to triumph, to get... really sucked in and have a lot of staying power there. So xiyao it is :’D

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Ah, man, where and how to even begin... I think one of the big things is how much their interactions are bound up in the necessities of their public faces; how much they take expressions of courtesy and turn them into the most personal and meaningful rituals we see between people? How they have these public faces that are important, are deeply significant to who they are and how they’re comfortable moving around in the world, and are necessary for the kinds of positions that allow them to achieve what they find most important socially! - and then also, you peel back a layer or two, and get the absolute warmth and love and passionate care of their private selves, always turned toward one another.

Which then relates to - these are two political players, eventually leaders, and they have such a partnership and understanding on that level as well! They each understand how position and negotiation and compromise and sacrifice for a goal bigger than just yourself are fundamental pieces of the other, and they each live within those bounds - not always happily? But that these are two people whose relationship exists firmly within the world (even as it’s also an escape and respite from it), and they have that room made for outside responsibilities as simply a matter of course. (I think this is... something that appeals to me specifically as a facet of this relationship between two adults, at the place where I currently am in life, too.)

And lest I forget, of course - the extremely hot and also extremely emotionally cathartic D/s potential ;A; Like, I will ship a lot of things on primarily a kink basis, ngl, and especially here I feel like the introduction of a playing-with-power-dynamics-and-abdication-of-responsibility element just ties in so well with the thematic material both characters are dealing with in the text? Which, I mean, is why it’s compelling and makes sense on a characterisation level, for that matter. But also just. y’know. (LHK & ZZJ as) LXC & JGY are really attractive :’D

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Other than that... (I mean I feel like I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of likeminded people re: their dynamic, so what might be ~unpopular in the fandom at large feels certainly less so in my little bubble...) - oh, here’s one: I tend to think of them sleeping together as something that takes as while to happen, because they’re each so wary of each other’s boundaries, and JGY especially is full of neuroses and LXC doesn’t want to push for anything he’s not okay with. Like, different scenarios where they hop into bed pre- or immediately post-Sunshot can be fun to read, but they never quite ring true to me, and I think a certain amount of tension or trepidation around sex for a couple years into their relationship (even though they’re both very into each other) is pretty important to how I would characterise them.

Anyway, I’m sure there’s others I could think of if prompted more specifically, but... that’s what I’ve got! Thank you for the ask! <3

#ask a James #ask meme responses #no good things for the poor sad cultivators #anonymous

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songofclarity · 4 years ago

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Your tags on that one gif set with Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue in Wen Ruohan's throne room are so good, and also they made me want to reread that chapter (I have finished the book by now! well, all but a few of the extra chapters) to refresh my memory as to how that scene went in the book.

A very belated thank you! I’ve read Nie MingJue’s empathy chapters a ridiculous amount of times and it’s always time well spent, so I definitely encourage it if you haven’t gone back to reread it already!

I had to go take a look at what I wrote in the tags, which I’ll link in the sources for reference sake, but:

#the first and only time we see lxc defend jgy to nmj is this scene #set in the place where jgy hosted nmj's torture #we can't even see nmj's face at this angle but #he's just swaying like he can barely hold himself up #and his hair is all out of sorts #i desperately cling to the novel version #where lxc is supporting him the whole time #where lxc won't let nmj kill jgy #bc nmj was going to kill himself as well #just in case jgy really was innocent #nmj calling jgy's bluff #but lxc stops it all #bc lxc wants to save lives if there isn't hard proof against them #oh cql how cruel of you to wreck havoc on nmj and lxc's relationship like this...

Wow, this scene does make me feel things! Although I do side-eye a lot of what CQL did with Lan XIChen’s character and motivations lol I’m just going to pull part of the scene from the novel since we’re here~ Or that I’m here and there is no one to stop me...

(Meng Yao,) "ChiFeng-Zun!!! Don't you understand that if I didn't kill [the Nie cultivators held captive alongside you], you'd be the one who die then?!!"

This was actually the same as saying, 'I'm the one who saved your life so you can't kill me or else it'd be immoral.' However, Jin GuangYao was indeed worthy of his reputation. The same meaning but a different wording, and he was able to create a contained sense of frustration and a reserved sense of sorrow. As he had expected, Nie MingJue's movement halted. Veins stood out under his forehead.

Having paused for a while, [Nie MingJue] clenched the hilt of his saber and shouted, "Very well! I'll kill myself after I kill you!"

So Meng Yao is very much being manipulative here in the face of Nie MingJue having just woken up from a traumatic, near-death experience being carried by someone who was an eager contributor of said traumatic, near-death experience. A chase scene ensues but Nie MingJue is too weak to do much more than be menacing. Meng Yao does have a cut on his arm by the time Lan XiChen arrives, but Wei WuXian’s narration consistently states Meng Yao dodged and ran, so who knows how he got it or (conspiracy theory!) he gave it to himself, knowing Lan XiChen would arrive.

Amid all the action, a surprised voice suddenly called out, "MingJue-xiong!"

A figure dressed in clean, white robes darted out of the forest. Meng Yao looked as if he had just seen a god from Heaven. He quickly scrambled over and hid behind the person's back, "ZeWu-Jun!!! ZeWu-Jun!!!"

Nie MingJue was in the middle of his rage. He didn't even have the chance to ask why Lan XiChen was there as he shouted, "XiChen, move!"

Baxia's strikes were so menacing that Shuoyue had to unsheath. Lan XiChen stopped him, half to support his figure and half to block his attacks, "MingJue-xiong, calm down! Why bother?"

Nie MingJue, "Why don't you ask what he did?!"

Lan XiChen turned around to look at Meng Yao... (ERS, ch. 49)

“A god from Heaven,” Lan XiChen is described, who goes right to Nie MingJue’s side. It’s Nie MingJue he’s worried for, it’s Nie MingJue he keeps from falling. Nie MingJue is covered in blood, he’s injured, he’s raging -- Nie MingJue is the one who needs help and support, and Lan XiChen doesn’t even hesitate to get right in there and provide it. People are later shown fearful and respectful of Nie MingJue to such a degree that they won’t throw him flowers to him at a welcoming ceremony for fear of provoking his anger, but Lan XiChen always shows absolute faith that Nie MIngJue would never harm him even when Baxia is unleashed.

So although I love CQL having Nie MingJue wake up on Lan XiChen’s lap in the Sun Palace, it still pales in comparison to Lan XiChen racing forward without care for his own safety in order to grab onto Nie MingJue. Nie MingJue who faced total defeat at Yangquan. Nie MingJue who was captured by Wen RuoHan. Nie MingJue who is bloodied and injured and was very likely thought as good as dead.

And although the argument might also be made that Lan XiChen was throwing himself into danger to save Meng Yao, I don’t see it considering Lan XiChen’s focus is always on Nie MingJue. Here at Nightless City, at the stairs of Koi Tower, and at the Tournament in Qinghe, Lan XiChen stays with Nie MingJue with the intention of talking him down. Nie MingJue’s anger is a double-edged sword. He might kill Meng Yao, yes, but his risk of qi deviating will kill him, too. I think of this in the perspective of a healthcare professional: you stay with the patient when they are having a mental crisis. It gives them stability and grounding and safety, which is what Lan XiChen consistently offers--and which Meng Yao freely takes by hiding behind him. Nie MingJue is the one who needs immediate help, not Meng Yao. And that’s how Meng Yao gets away with all his nonsense. Lan XiChen is so focused on Nie MingJue, on talking him back from the ledge, on making sure he gets the help he needs, that he doesn’t see Meng Yao’s slight of hand. He doesn’t see what Nie MingJue sees with Meng Yao cowering behind him.

But even when Nie MingJue and Lan XiChen argue about Meng Yao in the novel, they are never on opposite sides. They present to each other what they know and what they’ve seen. They both listen and they both get opportunities to speak until understanding occurs. This is a very healthy relationship! At least fundamentally. When Nie MingJue tells Lan XiChen to ask Meng Yao what he’s done, Lan XiChen doesn’t question him or doubt him, but instead turns to do so. Meng Yao does not get a free pass, but he uses silence to get others to speak for him. He is still held accountable, but it just so happens the story he has spun is quite convincing.

And although Lan XiChen provides Meng Yao a defense, the defense is consistently this: Meng Yao’s actions were done to help Nie MingJue. While we know that is a lie, that Nie MingJue was little more than Meng Yao’s means to an end, the understanding Lan XiChen has been led to believe is sound. Lan XiChen as well says that he wouldn’t be there to help Nie MingJue without Meng Yao having told him where to go. Thus, coming from Lan XiChen’s mouth, Nie MingJue is led to believe the tale as well.

It’s just all about the inherent love and trust in Nie MingJue and Lan XiChen’s relationship! That even when they argue, there is still love, and after they fight, there is still love. At no point does their relationship ever falter. At no point do they doubt one another. And that’s beautiful.

On another note, Meng Yao immediately going to hide behind Lan XIChen is so reminiscent of how Nie HuaiSang behaves in the future. The Nie HuaiSang we know prior to Nie MingJue’s death is actually quite bold! He yells at Nie MingJue and kicks his saber and storms out! Who else has yelled at Nie MingJue!? Nobody! So Nie HuaiSang literally used Meng Yao's pitiful act as his cover for his revenge scheme and I love it.

#asked from above #ajax-daughter-of-telamon #mdzs thoughts #ty for the ask i know it's taken me awhile!#catching up on asks~#feeling things about the faves~#making those feels everyone else's problem~#life is good lol #nielan #jgy vs nmj

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isozyme · 4 years ago

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just listened to "something to do w my hands" and WOW YEAH the savior complex & the need to support someone but a lil bit in a selfish way bc then that makes himself a good person... also YES idk why i haven't seen this yet but he's actually extremely smug & judgemental if you watch the corner of his mouth in cql it's VERY funny. would love your thoughts on why you think he doesn't ever put himself together again/come out of seclusion? have seen args either way & i think it comes down to jgy!

yessss you understand lxc!!!! the way his relationship with jgy is about lxc’s hunger to be needed, to be special, to be the only one who can see who jgy really is, to be better and kinder and more fair than everyone else, oof, it’s so good. i am hype to share my opinions on why lxc is irreparably broken at the end of the series.

to start, importantly: i basically take lxc/jgy as canon. i don’t think the plot makes sense without it. they are fucking, they love each other, they’ve both fucked around with nmj and that shit is fraught. you can’t convince me otherwise and all of my meta assumes this is fact.

i think lxc knew that jgy's hands were dirty, and almost certainly suspected that jgs’s death was jgy’s doing. i don’t think he knew about nmj, or how gross jgs’s death was, the incest stuff, etc. i think he saw enough to know that jgy probably killed his dad, went “you know what, that’s fair, i can forgive him for that” and decided that if he didn’t dig any deeper he wouldn’t have to know for certain and he wouldn’t be forced to do anything about it. lxc averting his eyes so he didn’t have to confront jgy doing a couple murders led to some...uh...bad stuff happening.

so that’s guilt #1.

then there’s guilt #2: he killed jgy. he got tricked into being a weapon and he put a sword through jgy’s chest.

guilt #3: he still loved jgy, even though jgy was an objectively vile person. he grieves jgy and he feels guilty for grieving and it fucks him up!

when it comes to lxc and guilt, you gotta take into account that this man has been told his entire life that he’s the most talented person in the five clans. he’s the first jade. he’s peerless. lxc strives for perfection and is pretty sure he’s basically nailed it, which means he believes fundamentally that if a thing is possible, he is capable of doing it. are we seeing where this is going? yeah. lxc thinks he could have stopped all of this. if he’d looked closer. if he’d been less selfish. it’s all on him. it’s his fault.

building on the “lxc has put his own damn self on a pedestal,” issue, now that he’s fucked up so spectacularly, all that certainty that he’s a perfect person is torn to shreds. he can no longer trust himself to make any good decisions. a huge part of his self-concept was a lie all along. he was not good. he was not fair. who the fuck is lan xichen if he’s not the cultivation world’s shining beacon?

in guanyin temple he shuts his eyes, drops his hand, and decides he doesn’t care how he dies, because he’s fucked up so bad. all the fight goes out of him. i don’t think he’s ever going to heal entirely from that moment.

oh also he’s really really angry and is absolutely not going to acknowledge that or deal with it, because lxc doesn’t do angry. (that’s the cost of having perfect control of your temper.) he’s furious that this happened to him and he was massively betrayed and that nhs used him and that his brother chose right when he chose wrong. so that’s fucking him up on top of the guilt and the grief.

basically that’s why i think lxc is permanently damaged by the end of cql. he’s never ever going to go back to being the first jade, zewu-jun, lan-zongzhu. that identity has been thoroughly destroyed. with time he might recover enough to be a functional member of the clan, but he’s always going to be fragile.

as for the seclusion question! i’d totally believe it if lxc walked into seclusion and never came out. that seems in character to me. with the right coaxing, he might come out again. absolutely not before at least 5 years have passed. likely longer. when he goes into seclusion i certainly don’t think he’s planning to ever return.

it really hinges on lz, who’s the only one with a chance of drawing lxc back out into the world. lz is stubborn enough to do it! eventually, even lxc would be worn down by “my beloved little brother, who i basically raised from a child, kneels outside my door for eight hours on the first day of every month, the same way he did outside our mother’s house after she died, and i can’t stop remembering scooping up his cold little body out of the snow where he’d fallen asleep waiting, again, for someone who’s never going to emerge, watching him kneeling bravely during lessons the next day even though his knees were so, so bruised, and i’m repeating every single mistake our parents made only worse because i know exactly how much it’s hurting lz because i’ve watched it before.”

i personally headcanon that a decade or so after guanyin temple, lxc shows up unexpectedly at lz’s shoulder at a cultivation conference. he’s got the exact same smile and makes the same polite conversation, because those things weren’t ever particularly connected to his actual emotions. but he’s thinner, and he holds himself like a porcelain statue, one missed step away from shattering. if he thinks nobody is looking at him, the smile stays on but his face doesn’t move, like there’s just nothing there underneath the polite expression because he’s not putting any effort into animating it. it’s unsettling as fuck!! he’s useful, efficient, great at killing evil things, he eats, he drinks tea, but you can tell his tether to the physical world is tenuous at best.

after guanyin temple, lxc never weighs in on a single important political decision ever again.

ONE THOUSAND WORDS LATER, that’s why i think lxc’s not gonna just bounce back from this one!

#the untamed #hey don't worry #it's not like lz's ever going to fully recover from wwx's death either!#although he definitely does better #hard to do worse tbh #what's that?#huh?#are you saying that i'm over-identifying with lxc?#don't know why you'd say that!#fuckin specious is what that is #i over-identify with lan xichen AND jiang cheng thank you very much #Anonymous

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threephasebird · 4 years ago

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Hello friend, it's Nicole from TAD discord, so sorry for awkwardly & randomly sliding into your dms. I've noticed that you've been reblogging a lot of The Untamed recently and I have just finished The Untamed & literally cannot think about anything else. I'm obsessed. Anyway, I've also noticed from your blog that your favorite seems to be JGY and I find that *fascinating*. He's very much not my fav, but he's such a complex character that I would love to hear your thoughts & feelings & analysis?

And to be completely clear, I will never try to debate with you or say your opinions are wrong or immoral or anything. I'm not an anti, I've stanned plenty of villains in my time. I'm just genuinely curious. I think the fact that you have such different feelings about this character is part of the beauty of stories and a testament to how complex and smart this particular story is.

Hello friend! First of all, thank you for your ask -- I love talking about my fictional faves, so there’s no need to apologize at all! There are definitely people out there who have already posted much more cohesive and succinct character analysis for JGY, but I’ve sat down for a bit to find an answer to the question of why I, personally, like him so much. I ended up finding six possible ways to answer this question, which I’ll list below and then go into (a lot) more detail under the cut. Hope you enjoy!

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

5) I like him because LXC likes him

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

So, onward! (2.7k)

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

One possible way of looking at JGY is that throughout the entire story, his end goal is to eliminate all of the Jin family and come out on top as sect leader, chief cultivator and most powerful person in the cultivation world. However, I personally find it more intriguing to think that his specific plans shifted throughout the story and that he didn’t follow a long con the way NHS did, but that the common ground in everything he does is that he’s motivated by wanting security. Then, everything that he does afterwards is a step-by-step escalation when no matter what he does and how far he comes, his goal is always dangled right in front of him, but ultimately impossible to reach.

When he joins the Nie clan, on a superficial level it seems that this place could offer him the security he wants and needs, especially with NMJ protecting him -- but on the flip side of the coin, no one apart from NMJ and NHS seem to respect him, and his security entirely depends on NMJ’s goodwill. It’s an exteremely fragile position that could probably only ever last for a limited amount of time. Even if JGY never killed the guard captain and wasn’t thrown out of the Unclean Realm, how would the future have looked like for him? NMJ’s life expectancy was low to begin with, and once he had died (of natural causes, in this hypothetical case), NHS wouldn’t have been able to hold the same protective hand over JGY as his brother, and JGY would have become the disrespected advisor to the disrespected clan leader. (On a side note, I personally don’t think JGY released XY to get the yin iron -- I think it makes more sense that he wanted to use XY as bargaining chips against WC, seeing how he goes to free him immediately after WC asks for NMJ to release XY, to save the Unclean Realm and, in extension, his own ass.)

After JGY is thrown out, he’s basically out of options -- it’s go big or go home, because which other clan would take him in now? So he sets his sight on being recognized by JGS once more, and in order to succeed, he derives the plan of becoming a spy under WRH and do something so “heroical” that after the war, JGS has no other choice but to accept him into his clan. And at first, it seems like he succeeds and that he finally gets everything he wished for -- his father recognizes him as a son and gives him a position, he’s part of the Jin clan, he has power, he’s secure! But then it turns out that he was wishing on the monkey’s paw. His father doesn’t truly recognize him, and even in the Jin clan he’s disrespected (by JGS, by Madam Jin, by Jin Zixun), he doesn’t truly hold power (he just has to do whatever JGS tells him to), and he’s not secure (JGS instrumentalizes him because he’s useful to him right now, but does that mean he’ll be useful forever? So there’s a constant threat there).

I think the only reason JGS officially adopts JGY is that it allows him to claim the victory over WRH for the Jin clan and to expand his own power. Instead of JGY being recognized, JGS instrumentalizes him from the very first second and to make it worse, he makes JGY his attack dog the same way WRH did. I think the things JGY does under both WRH and JGS are absolutely horrifying, but I can’t help but also feel horrified for him. Under WRH, I think he tells himself that whatever he does is the lesser evil because it’ll end the war quicker, and that it’ll all be worth it in the end, and as a result, he loses parts of his own humanity there. And then under JGS, it’s the same fucked up shit again, except that this time, he also wants so very badly for JGS to value him, and in addition, he’s also completely out of options now. Without wanting to excuse the things he does under JGS, the only alternative at this point is for him to leave the Jin clan and the cultivation world as a whole, and I do think there’s a definite possibility that JGS would have him killed if he did because he knew too much about JGS’s plans.

Without passing judgment on his involvement in JZX and JZX’s deaths, as well as him killing NMJ and JGS for now (the latter being the one thing that I’m personally most horrified of), I don’t see JGY as a villain who enjoys being the villain the way XY does. I think he’s constantly horrified at himself and compartmentalizes to a degree where he’s actually derailing his own plans. Him throwing out XY immediately after killing JGS reads to me as him wanting to close the chapter of everything they did under JGS -- I think he must have acted out of a visceral emotion there or else he wouldn’t have left XY to die at the side of a road so carelessly (and, in effect, allowed for someone to live on with detailed knowledge of his own deeds). After rising to power (and finally, seemingly, really getting the security he’s always wanted), he doesn’t use that power to become WRH 3.0, but instead to do genuinely good things (such as building the watch towers). That’s not supposed to mean that him not being a cruel despot makes up for everything he’s done, but I find it interesting to think about from the perspective of, what kind of person could he have been if this opportunity had been given to him freely -- if his own class and social standing didn’t prevent him from that? I think he’d have become an incredibly powerful cultivator and clan leader if he’d have the same privilege as JZX.

In a way, I see JZX, WC, and JGY as narrative foils. WC shows us who JZX might have become if JGS treated him the same way as WRH treats WC. But, JGS doesn’t -- he shields his own son from this part of the Jin clan, and basically allows him to live in a completely different reality as JGY! JZX’s whole character arc is one of personality development, and becoming a hero, and falling in love -- he doesn’t have a clue about his father wanting to get his hands on XY and the Stygian tiger amulet and arguably about at least part of the war crimes he commits against the Wen clan. It’s not part of his life. In a way, JGY is the sacrifice being made to allow him to live his life unaware because in him, JGS found someone else to do his dirty work.

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

Sometimes, when you want to be a villain apologist, all you need to do is point at one or a few bits of the story and say, “well if they hadn’t done that...”. (See, for example, Anakin Skywalker -- you wanna write a RotS canon divergence fixit? Just have Obi-Wan come back approximately one hour earlier and you have it, because before Anakin kills the Jedi even the Younglings he’s basically completely redeemable.) With JGY, you don’t get to have that. There’s no single turning point where you could say, “if he had picked the other option, he could have had a happy ending”. And part of the reason for that, which makes him a tragic character in my eyes, is that he crucially lacks options at many turning points.

In order to write a canon divergence AU for JGY where he comes out unscathed and redeemable, you’d have to go pretty far back in the story, and even then, you’d have to work hard to find a solution to his story that doesn’t a) rely on someone saving him (such as: LXC brings him to Cloud Recesses, or: JGS has a change of heart, frees his mother, and sends them a comfortable monthly pension), b) having him be dependent on someone else’s goodwill (such as: staying in the Unclean Realm in a delicate position).

If we don’t want to go back right to the very beginning or change fundamental parts of the story, well... As I’ve mused about above, if we let him stay in the Unclean Realm, he’d have never reached his goal of security either. If he never became a spy during the Sunshot Campaign, he wouldn’t have been accepted into the Jin clan and would have been out of options. If he never committed the atrocities for JGS, JGS would probably have kicked him out or killed him. (I do think there’s a lot of truth in what JGY tells NMJ in the empathy flashback, on that instance.) If he didn’t kill NMJ, there is a distinct possibility that NMJ would have killed him -- we see him try three times on screen, after all. (I’m leaving out the parts about him being directly responsible for JZX’s and JZX’s death in the show, as well as for controlling the corpses at Nighless City and JYL’s death, because it’s not in the book and I think it takes away from WWX’s character. As for QS’s and their son’s deaths...I personally do not see strong motivation for him to kill them, but in the end, we just don’t know which is, on a side note, a thing I really like about The Untamed/MDZS! Sometimes we just don’t know because the only people who know for sure can’t tell us anymore.) One option could be for him to confide to JZX, bring him over to his own side, and non-violently overthrow JGS, which would be a good and satisfying ending both to his and JZX’s character arcs -- but I also think there’s a high possibility JZX would hold JGY responsible for what he and JGS did, and never trust him with power again.

(Again, one thing I really do not wish to excuse away is how he killed JGS, and I just. Desperately wished he didn’t.)

I’ve been going over and over the possibilites for fix-its and canon divergence AUs, but in the end, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the only real choice JGY has throughout the story is whether to remove himself from the narrative or stay in it. He could make the choice to give up his mother’s dream, reject his father, and leave cultivation world (and, on a meta level, the story!) to become a “nobody”. (Small side note, though -- living on which skills?) If he doesn’t -- well, as soon as he enters the game, the cards are stacked against him.

To pick up on the meta level comment, I do find it fascinating that in a sense, JGY not only has to struggle for respect and recognition within the story, but that what he does also serves to keep his character part of the story. He could choose to give up and leave (and thus come out of the story redeemable), but then he wouldn’t be part of the story anymore.

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

Continuing with the last point, JGY interacts with the story in two unique ways that distinguish him basically from all the other characters. He’s not actually supposed to be part of the story, but that he basically claws his way in. But that also means that his class and social status cannot be removed from any of the conflicts he encounters in universe -- they’re at the heart of all of them. In the empathy flashback, he says to NMJ, “You always scold me for indecent scheming. You always say that you are just and straight [...] A decent man shouldn’t resort to devious stratagems. [...] You’re of noble birth and have profound cultivation. What about me? How can I be the same? First, I don’t have the foundation of cultivation. No one has ever taught me that since I was a child! Second, I don’t have any background. Do you think that my position is very solid in the Jin clan of Lanling?” What I find so intriguing about this scene is that he’s right when he says he’s different from the others both in text and on a meta level because most of the other characters are never faced with the same decisions and have a natural place within the story (apart, to some degree, WWX and XY, where also interesting parallels can be drawn). And the other characters are, in a way, self-righteous to judge him when almost none of them come out of the story without blood on their hands -- WWX’s revenge, JC torturing demonic cultivators after WWX’s death, and so on...The entire cultivation world (even NMJ! even LXC!) were complicit in the war crimes against the Wen. But when the cultivation world turns against JGY, they are the most appalled by the things I as a viewer would be the most lenient towards (murdering JGS), and don’t care at all about the thing that horrifies me the most (murdering the sex workers).

There’s an interesting post by @pumpkinpaix analysing how class dynamics work in the story, which I highly recommend! I don’t want to repeat what has been said there already in much better ways than I can, but among other things, it makes some really interesting points about how much JGY’s class is tied with his motivations.

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

Aside from any analysis, part of the reason why I like him so much is that when he’s acting as a villain, he’s just so much fun to watch. When WWX breaks into his vault in paperman form and JGY has approximately 5 minutes to get rid of the head, the torture bench (?) and anything suspicious, contact and inform Su She, run to a different building and come back, and nonetheless he manages to convince everyone but WWX and LWJ that he’s the victim in this situation, it’s just. Peak entertainment? For a short time, he’s on top of the game, and then he’s backed into a corner and becomes sloppy, and finally loses it all due to sentimentality (if he didn’t want to take his mother’s body with him and say goodbye to LXC, I’m sure he could have fled the country). I think Zhu Zanjin did an amazing job as an actor to portray how JGY is constantly assessing everything, how 23638 emotions flicker over his face in half a second, how his whole body language shows the constant anxiety and pressure and stress and fear he’s under, and how we actually get to see in his microexpressions when JGY chooses a path and commits to the acting and emotional manipulation to follow it through.

5) I like him because LXC likes him

Here’s a secret: Actually, LXC is my favourite character. And LXC loves JGY a lot. So I’m kind of contractually obliged to at least love JGY a little bit as well?

On a more serious note, I’m very intrigued in their relationship because I do think what they had was genuine. I view it as two people being very open and honest and true with each other, while placing a lot of things outside the brackets and crossing them out. LXC even says that he was aware of some things JGY did (which ones? how? I need to know) but that he justified them to himself. I think they both realised that they could have had something very special, but under the given circumstances, LXC wouldn’t have been able to help JGY (see: point 2) even if he knew everything. Still, they were obviously very close and trusted each other as much as they could. I think in the end, when LXC seemed to have decided to stay and die with him, JGY pushed him away because he was the only genuinely good part of his life, and he felt like he couldn’t rightfully deprive the world of LXC. It’s all very tragic, and I’m very intrigued to explore what they could have been in a slightly softer world.

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

I can only speak for myself, but when I was watching, I was so prone at any point to believe in him no matter what was revealed. Look at him! Could this man do something wrong?

#buttercup-the-bard #ask #jin guangyao #the untamed #cql #meng yao #mdzs #my post #cql meta

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carolyncaves · 5 years ago

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just wanted to say i loved the way you wrote mo xuanyu and especially xiao xingchen in the "fragrance" fic! if you have any more xiao xingchen thoughts i would love to hear them :D

Thank you so much!! Glad you liked it. (It’s here if anyone’s curious.)

When I first read your ask, I wasn’t sure if I had any worthwhile XXC thoughts (beyond sad :’( of course) – but then I thought about it for approximately two minutes and realized I definitely do.

In this post the very smart hunxi-guilai highlighted some parallels between XXC and LXC, opening my mind’s eye, and I don't need to substantially expand on that .. except to talk about how they’re both often described as 'trusting' and even 'naive'. Because I suppose they are, but sometimes it’s framed like an issue of intelligence (or lack thereof), and I don’t think that’s quite specific enough.

What I see in both of them is that generally you use your own worldview to interpret other people and their motivations and predict what they would or wouldn't do – it’s pretty inescapable, your whole experience of the world being filtered through your mind and its context. And XXC and LXC are people for whom it doesn’t really compute how a person could be genuinely malicious or act with flagrant disregard for other people. It’s so far removed from their own perspective. It’s “Sounds fake, but okay ...” They both Want to be good people, they Work Very Hard to be, they believe it to be Fundamentally Important – so it’s hard for them to really believe, on a gut level, that some people actually don't approach life the same way.

Now, obviously plenty of people don’t – there are wolves in the world, and they will hurt people gladly if allowed to run rampant. Anyone with any knowledge of real life would have to recognize that, and I don’t think either XXC or LXC are blind to it. In fact, they’ve both dedicated their lives to stopping that whenever possible. But their very goodness makes them predisposed to having a hard time detecting it. Their default operating system wants to give people the benefit of the doubt, to interpret others as basically acting from a place of good faith – and that’s not the always the case. They have a bias, and if they want to do good things and make helpful choices, they need to consciously correct for it.

Whether or not they’re intellectually aware of this, in practice they are clearly not successful.

I suspect XXC is just bad at it generally, probably some combination of actual unworldliness and an intentional radically kind ideology (he knowingly lets himself get robbed istg; he doesn’t care if he’s being swindled at the farmers market; he’s probably the guy who says ‘if they're hard-hearted enough to lie, they probably need the money more than me’ – no, daozhang, maybe they just suck and have no problem victimizing people). Then he meets actual (pop-culture definition) psychopath XY – someone whose viciousness, whose maliciousness, is functionally limitless. XY has no boundaries, and XXC relies on other people to use restraint when transgressing his own – see the examples above, see him letting XY keep his secrets even when he knows he’s lying, see the scene where they’re drawing straws. This is a logical and ideological fallacy, but it’s why the ensuing bloodshed is so far outside XXC’s capacity to defend against. Why on earth would he ever have to?

LXC as a relatively good sect leader is probably a little more aware and cognizant of it – although a lot of his inaction in certain cases can potentially be traced back to feeling like he needs to give the arguments of bad actors like JGS fair weight against the arguments of their victims. But in the case of JGY he makes a single, spectacularly bad call. He knows A-Yao has such a tragic backstory, has experienced injustice and unfairness and carries so much pain in his heart – reasonably he must be empathetic and as a result kind. Alas, JGY is just a weaselly person who approaches life with as much self-bias as possible with no reflection or remorse. LXC is the one who’s kind, and his interpreting JGY’s actions through that filter ends up giving him a lot of undeserved (and dangerous) leeway.

But of course, the risk inherent in extending your trust to someone is obviously a larger theme in The Untamed, which other people have written about more eloquently than I, so. All of that.

(Interestingly, LWJ – our character who decides to trust someone who turns out to deserve it – is decidedly not predisposed to giving people the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to try to unpack that right now, but at first glance it’s a striking contrast.)

#don't get me wrong i'm here for himbo lxc #hopefully this actually makes sense lol #thank you again for the ask!#and for reading my fic #this ... doesn't actually have anything to do with that so if you were hoping to hear more about xxc in that context #sorry #but the ask box is there!#xxc #lxc #meta #the untamed #Anonymous

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lansplaining · 2 years ago

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I really think WWX and JGY wouldn't get along on a personal level! Based on JGY's closest relationships (LXC, Qin Su, and Su She), he seems to like mild-mannered people who are intentionally polite and deferential to social norms. (I'm excluding NHS and JL because they are not friends he has chosen, but rather people he "inherits" from relationships he didn't enjoy very much, and also strategically and politically important.) JGY suffered so much under social prejudice, and he downright resents NMJ for not being to sympathize with that, so I don't think he'd like WWX who is not very invested in being polite and shares the burden of managing social expectations.

From WWX's side, I think he is actually similar to NMJ in that he believes social appearances are just appearances that can or should be changed to make way for more "important" principles. If they were close, I think WWX would feel betrayed by some of JGY's choices like NMJ was, while JGY would be frustrated by WWX's flaunting of conventions. Like I can see them being polite or friendly acquaintances, but they can't sustain a deep friendship.

I think this is a very legit take, and I definitely agree that they would be likeliest to become friends if they, like JGY and Xue Yang, were forced to collaborate by circumstance in the first instance. But as Xue Yang proves, JGY is evidently capable of forming a kind of fondness for people he finds a bit terrifying/wildly irritating. And more importantly, he will repay kindness with kindness, and the one thing WWX wouldn't do is treat him badly because of his background (obviously the 'your mom' insults in the temple are a specific circumstance). WWX might flout convention, but he's rarely just a dick to someone to their face at first meeting, for no reason.

I think WWX is also very capable of understanding when people feel constrained by their circumstances to act pragmatically rather than morally-- see the way he interacts with Jiang Cheng over the Wen stuff. So I don't think he's fundamentally going to hate JGY for trying to protect himself rather than live up to his ideals-- and JGY does then use his position to live up to his ideals, in a way few others in canon do!

So basically... I agree they'd probably need an initial push of some kind, like a shared project or shared enemy. But I feel like they could definitely become friends, if bickering ones.

#ask answered

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drwcn · 5 years ago

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Asking on anon because I feel like maybe this is a stupid question - I'm sorry to ask! In CQL why does everyone turn against NHS? I assumed originally it is LWJ and WWX being protective of LXC because he's clearly all kinds of f-ed up by NHS tricking him into murdering his sworn brother JGY. But they imply NHS is the devil which seems harsh? JGY did all those things, NHS didn't make him and if I understand timeline wasn't even plotting at the time of most of them. Is NHS a villain? I'm confused!

Hi Anon!

To answer that question I think it fundamentally boils down to 阴谋诡计 vs 正大光明.

I don’t think everyone is turning “against” NHS - that would be misreading their last interaction. Their last interaction in front of the wall of discipline is a “masks off” moment, where all characters are more or less showing their hand and being on the same page with each other. NHS is no longer pretending to be the “i don’t know” sniffling, weak idiot, and Wei Wuxian makes it known that he knows NHS was the one behind the string of events starting from Wei Wuxian’s own resurrection.

Even though NHS had good motivations for doing what he did, and even though he never tried to actively hurt anyone, he achieved his goal (avenging his brother) through 阴谋诡计. What this means is that his methods were all shadowy, underhanded, based on subterfuge and misdirection. It is not as canon would call it the “bright, sunny path” or 正大光明.

To avenge his brother he had lied to the people who would be his friends, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, even Lan Xichen. He used the people around him like chess pieces, leading them down the route he laid for them until Jin Guangyao’s evil has been revealed. I think it is strongly implied that Mo Xuanyu’s self-sacrifice was in part because of Nie Huaisang’s influence/persuasion. He released Nie Mingjue’s saber spirit, causing the death of the Mo family. Yes the Mo family were a group of hateful characters, and none of us are all that sorry for them, but death is still death, murder is still murder.

Yet while he wasplotting, he outwardly portrayed himself as this innocent, I know nothing, I’m harmless individual.

In a way, Nie Huaisang walked his own single plank road. The difference between Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang is that while circumstances both forced them to do things they other wouldn’t do, Wei Wuxian never hid his true self from anyone. Never tried to be “kinder” than he really was. Nie Huaisang however wore a mask until the end.

It is a cultural trope I think for drama characters to be wary of - if not actively dislike - the scheming individuals, even if their scheming is well intended. Because a scheme always has collaterals and the person who schemes often never has to bear consequences of their actions. Culturally, it is seen as not the righteous path.

But as CQL demonstrated, those who take the righteous path are often idiots who end up dead so... I personally see nothing wrong with scheming to avenge one’s murdered brother.

If NHS didn’t play the careful game that he did, he was never going to beat Jin Guangyao. Jin Guangyao is too smart and careful. If you wanna beat him, you’re gonna have to get on his level, and that’s what Nie Huaisang did.

But do I understand why Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are wary of NIe Huaisang? Uhm yeah, because here is a man with great intellect and depth and fortitude that he was able to fool the greatest villains and heroes of their generation. There is a certain cold ruthlessness to Nie Huasiang as well; he did not hesitate to use Lan Xichen to kill Jin Guangyao (his sworn brother and lover, I think they’re lovers, sue me).

But LWJ and WWX understood why NHS did what he did, that’s why they didn’t confront him outright. There’s an unspoken understanding between them that they know each other’s true nature now, and for all the lies that led them to this point, it’s no wonder they can’t go back to the youths that they once were.

#cql meta #nie huaisang #cql #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #Anonymous #corie replies

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jasmine-does-wevertf-she-wants · 2 years ago

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I'm so sorry but can I add that I think LWJ realizes relatively early that his silence and adherence to the rules is off-putting to the general public. teen!LWJ and any version of him that did not yet fall in love with WWX and experienced his loss is not pleasant company to be around for most people and he knows that and probably doesn't even care that much because he doesn't really like most people in turn. But but but he is a high-ranking cultivator and second heir to a great sect so most people will be polite and friendly due to his social standing. And I cannot see someone as principled as LWJ have anything but utter contempt for all people that suck up to him because of his social standing while being put-off by his actualy personalty.

And JGY would be the epitome of this conflict because he is so! nice! while obviously gunning for LXC and not caring about LWJ as a person but more as a connection to LXC and that is an even worse reason to suck up to LWJ as op pointed out above. But xiongzhang likes him and LWJ will not upset his brother but can this overly polite man please leave him alone? He CANNOT enjoy his company, no one does and LWJ actually does not like JGY, so he's even less pleasant to him than is his general tendency. But JGY grew up in a brothel, with the Nie and lives with the Jin, LWJ's retinence cannot scare him and goddammit he got NMJ to like him - how hard can LWJ be? Harder, tough, impossible - JGY's politeness and thoughtfulness is the unstoppable force to the immovable object of LWJ's disregard for social politeness, contempt for sucking up and the entire cocktail of his baby brother complex.

I could add another essay on how WWX is one of the very few people who treats LWJ like a person and takes genuine delight in his personality and that's why they are such a good match but I don't wanna hijack this too much.

Just LWJ and JGY do not vibe on a fundamental level and that's a kinda funny dynamic.

Please feel free to share the petty reasons you think wangji would not like jgy because they sound hilarious

a) Lan Wangji is The Baby. Brother is paying Quite A Lot Of Attention to someone who is 1) not him 2) suspiciously younger-brother shaped 3) oh it's not like that well still

b) Jin Guangyao's whole thing is being polite and ingratiating in a way that most people find very pleasant but I think Wangji Would Not. do not try to make me like you. i already don't. you're just doing this to suck up to xichen.

c) he is not only a Jin (sus) he actively strove to become a Jin. he could have not had everyone know he was Jin Guangshan's son, and not had to spend time being with and showing respect for Jin Guangshan, but he did it, on purpose. filial piety is one thing but At What Cost.

d) learning lots of different techniques when you could just obsessively perfect and memorize one technique? i mean..... sure......... if that's what works for you.............

e) stop making small gestures for my comfort when i'm forced to exist in a social space in your presence i do not like you

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xiyao-feels · 4 years ago

Text

Part Two: Claims about NMJ and NHS

Intro - Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Pt 3 - Pt 4

NMJ

1) NMJ wished to protect NHS from cultivating with the sabre as a youth.

I don't think he tells us this in quite so many words, but it seems implied by the flashback scenes: his giving NHS the paintbrush, the bit where he takes 修刀 and gives NHS 修心, and course him literally telling NHS that whatever NHS wishes to do, he'd support it.

As far as I can tell there's no evidence of this. Now, to be fair, we don't see them as children in MDZS, but there is not as far as I can tell any sign that NMJ has ever done anything but strongly desire that NHS work on the sabre. Indeed, even at Hejian during Sunshot, the reason he overhears MY and LXC's conversation is because he is bringing NHS' sabre to LXC so that NHS will not be able to escape practicing with it. He certainly does not renew any kind of commitment to allowing NHS to do what he wills before his death. In CQL, we see rather less, but as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be anything that contradicts MDZS on this front.

2) In his heart, NMJ carried significant doubts about the righteousness of Nie cultivation practices, including both the sabre-curse-inducing sabre cultivation and the practice of balancing the sabre spirits via corpses in the wall

This is quite central to the movie. It's arguably implicit in his desire to protect NHS from cultivating with the sabre, but beyond that, he is clearly extremely uncomfortable at NHS' moral challenge of Nie practices and believes at least partially that NHS has a point; moreover, it's implicit in his confessions to NHS in the tomb:

The Nie family's ancestors created this family foundation with great hardships. Unexpectedly, it was cursed by the sword spirit. I practiced swordsmanship hard and thought I could find a way to solve it, but I just followed the same old disastrous road of the ancestors.

And of course, his moral arc in the movie is about embracing those doubts and rejecting Nie tradition.

There is as far as I can tell no evidence of this in MDZS or CQL; in fact we don't learn anything about the Nie burial traditions in scenes where NMJ is still alive, and he never shows any doubt about the wisdom of sabre cultivation.

3) NMJ used to be "intelligent and wise"; it's due to the effects of the sabre curse that he is "moody and brutal".

We're explicitly told this by NHS at around 32:50: "Da-ge, look at you now, you have changed. When you were young, you were always wise and intelligent. Ever since you practiced swordsmanship, you've become moody and brutal." It's also backed up by the childhood flashbacks. The sharp distinction between NMJ and sabre-curse-affected-NMJ, shown by the way sabre-curse-affected NMJ is visually marked out, also helps suggest this.

Now, in MDZS and CQL, this…is complicated. Again, in MDZS, we don't see him as a child—the earliest we see him is still well past the time he began practicing sabre cultivation. And in ch 26 NHS does indeed suggest that sabre cultivation causes increasing irritability; it certainly seems plausible, indeed almost necessary, that he had less of a temper before he started practicing, and for that matter we see his anger grow worse as time goes on.

Nevertheless, we never actually see any trace of a calm-tempered NMJ in the text. Even by the beginning of Sunshot, his reputation as an angry man is firmly established. Consider the Nie men's reaction to his anger at their shit-talking MY, in the cave:

The entire cave was in a muddle. Everyone knew ChiFeng-Zun’s personality—the more one tried to explain, the angrier he was. Seeing that they probably couldn’t escape punishment and would have to tell the truth, nobody dared to speak a word.

Even his friend LXC says to MY, “MingJue-xiong has quite a fiery personality. It must have been truly difficult for you to have earned his approval.”

And NHS, who very much loves his brother even as he is also to some extent frightened of him, is never shown pining for the halcyon days of yore. Narratively speaking, sabre-affected NMJ is the only NMJ we know. I think…this is something a Nie brothers spinoff could theoretically do something interesting with, but the way it's presented in their relationship is all wrong.

In CQL, the evidence is much the same or just not shown. NMJ generally seems less angry (though even so, we see him be angry at the Nie men for mocking MY (in subjective CQL-Empathy, but still), at WWX for saying maybe let's not kill XY immediately, at JGY for having killed the Nie cultivators, etc.), and if anything his relationship with NHS seems better than it is in the novel, although this too is well after he's begun to practice sabre cultivation.

4) NMJ respects NHS' interests

When picking NHS to lead the other team in the tombs, NMJ tells us that NHS knows most about astronomy in the Nie, and NMJ clearly considers this valuable.

If NHS did actually have significant knowledge of cultivation, NMJ would probably respect that. However, this is what NMJ has to say about the interests NHS canonically has (ch 49):

Nie HuaiSang was absolutely delighted. He greeted Jin GuangYao again and again as he grabbed the fans in haste. Seeing how his younger brother reacted, Nie MingJue was so outraged that he almost found it amusing. He turned to Jin GuangYao, “Don’t send him those useless things!”

In a hurry, Nie HuaiSang dropped a few fans on the ground. Jin GuangYao picked them up for him and put them into his arms, “HuaiSang’s hobbies are quite elegant. He’s dedicated to art and calligraphy, and has no propensity for mischief. How can you say that they’re useless?”

Nie HuaiSang nodded as fast as he could, “Yes, Brother is right!”

Nie MingJue, “But sect leaders have no need for such things.”

In CQL, I believe we just don't see enough to say, although given that again, NHS' isn't actually studying cultivation, it seems likely NMJ' attitudes are much the same.

NHS

1) NHS is profoundly morally motivated

NHS is immediately and hugely upset with the practice of using corpses in the walls, explicitly on moral grounds, even though it was the practice of their ancestors, and even once he finds out that they're not (usually) Nie men, but evildoers.

Having been told by NZH that the blades need the corpses to suppress their aggressiveness: "But isn't that just sacrificing people?" "Zonghui, the Nie family have always been righteous. If we give sacrifice to it with life, we will become evil."

And then, to NMJ: "Wait. Let me ask you. Why is here called the Sword Sacrifice Hall? What is to balance sword spirit? I didn't understand before coming what exactly Sword Sacrifice Hall represents. I know it now. This is not balance but sacrificing flesh and blood!"

NZH: Second Young Master, you misunderstood it. Those corpses belong to evil men. The Nie family's ancestors had uses their bodies to balance the sword spirit. We also follow the ancestral instructions."

NHS: (to NZH) Evil men? (to NMJ) Aren't they human beings? Are you qualified for deciding their fate?

NMJ: The sword spirit is extremely dangerous. Generations of the Nie family all balanced the spirit in this way.

NHS: Even if they were wrong, you also follow their way?

In MDZS…I went over the chapters where he shows up, and I'm not actually sure we ever see him express a moral sentiment? I could be missing something, but it doesn't seem to be any kind of fundamental part of his character.

This is his reaction to WWX's first suggestion of demonic cultivation, when they're studying at CR (ch 14):

After thinking for a few moments, an expression of envy and yearning appeared on Nie HuaiSang’s face, “To be honest, Wei-xiong’s words were quite interesting. Spiritual energy can only be obtained through cultivation and taking great pains to form a golden core. It would take I-don’t-know-how-many years to do, especially for someone like me, whose talent seems as if it was gnawed by a dog when I was in my mother’s womb. But, resentful energy are from the fierce ghosts. If they can easily be taken and used, it would be beyond wonderful.”

And—granted this is several years down the line and NHS is keeping up his cover, but when NHS is explaining the sabre tomb to LWJ and WWX in chapter 26, he doesn't seem to have any problem with the practice. In fact, he tells us that he participated in choosing corpses for NMJ's sabre:

Nie HuaiSang was already shocked speechless. Wei WuXian inquired, “Who chooses the corpses that the Nie Sect uses for the Saber Hall?”

Nie HuaiSang replied with a glazed expression, “Usually, the past sect leaders chose and stored them when they were still alive. My brother passed away at an earlier age. He didn’t have enough, so I also helped him choose some… I kept whichever corpses that were complete with all limbs. I don’t know about anything other than this…”

In CQL...mmm. I rewatched all the pre-Sunshot scenes with him in it, and I do think he comes across as, at least, less amoral. We don't have the gee wouldn't demonic cultivation be nice scene, and you could definitely interpret him as being worried about the granny at Dafan, or even the temporary-puppets; he says you have to admire Songxiao's integrity and elegance as they depart; and while we don't see him be part of the initial 'maybe we shouldn't just immediately execute XY squad,' he does go da-ge after NMJ seems irritated at WWX, and after NMJ throws MY out he goes in and is like but why!!!! That said, in both cases where he challenges (and I use the term rather loosely for the da-ge after NMJ is irritated with WWX), he immediately backs down faced with NMJ's opposition. I really don't see any sign of the character who is so morally motivated and so sure of his own correctness he challenges NMJ, /in front of all their men/, and keeps up the challenge despite NMJ's consistent opposition.

2) NHS isn't really interested in JGY's gifts

At no point is he shown delighting over or interested in anything JGY gave him (except of course the flute for treating his brother), and in fact when JGY says that after the journey he will give him gifts he replies "San-ge, I am not afraid of difficult journeys. I'm not craving for toys either." On the contrary, gifts are associated with /NMJ/, who gave him a paintbrush as a child.

In MDZS, we see him explicitly delighted in and interested by JGY's gifts. In ch 49, we see him going over a dozen gold-lined fans, which turn out to be gifts from JGY; when JGY mentions he's going to play a song for NMJ, he expresses interest and mentions "the limited edition" JGY gave him "last time," and then when NMJ shouts at him to go to his room he runs instead "to the living room for the presents that Jin GuangYao had brought him;" when JGY shows up at Qinghe after the stairs incident, NHS "beamed as he got ready to go to Jin GuangYao and see what presents he brought this time." Considering how little time they have together on the page, the gifts show up a great deal.

In CQL, we mostly don't see a lot of NHS and JGY's interactions after JGY's legitimation but before NMJ's death, so it's impossible to directly say. However, he is at least shown to delight in and greatly value beautiful things (see at least the fan flashback in ep 35).

3) NHS is motivated by a desire for his brother's respect and the respect of their men.

This is the argument JGY uses which finally settles NHS on going along on the journey, around 14:30: "Both of you are pillars of the Nie family. You should work together. You can also prove yourself." See also his pleasure with himself at solving the puzzle quickly in the tombs; it's not a purely self-satisfied pleasure, but rather, "It seems I'm not useless" (27:35ish). When NZH replies, "Second Young Master, you are definitely not useless. It's just because everyone has their own will," NHS gives a firm little nod. NMJ's respect for NHS' skills and interests is also made central to their relationship.

In MDZS, NHS really doesn't seem to be motivated by people respecting him. Consider, again, what he says about WWX's idea of demonic cultivation (ch 14):

A golden core was a core formed by cultivators after they had cultivated to a certain point. It can store and control spiritual energy. After the core was formed, the cultivator’s level of cultivation would increase at a rapid speed, and become better and better. Else, they would only be a low-end cultivator. If disciple from a prominent clan forms the core at a later age, it would be a disgrace to tell other people of it, yet Nie HuaiSang didn’t feel ashamed at all. Wei WuXian also laughed, “I know, right? No harm comes from using it.”

Even during Sunshot, he's slacking off, using the excuse of having forgotten his sabre. (ch 48)

And then in ch. 49, after NMJ burns his things:

Nie HuaiSang roared at Nie MingJue, “Saber, saber, saber! Who the fuck wants to practice the damn thing?! So what if I want to be a good-for-nothing?! Whoever that wants to can be the sect leader! I can’t learn it means I can’t learn it and I don’t like it means I don’t like it! What’s the use of forcing me?!”

I'm not necessarily saying he wouldn't enjoy it if NMJ respected him, and certainly it seems a fair read that he would like it if NMJ yelled at him less. But by and large, he just doesn't show any objection to being thought of as useless, even before his Headshaker cover—and there's a reason that cover worked, after all.

In CQL...well, again, he doesn't really show any sign of objecting to being thought useless, as far as I can tell.

4) NHS knows about the sabre curse

JGY explicitly says so at about 13:05: "You know his sickness. He didn't do it on purpose." Moreover, if NHS didn't know, the offer of flute-playing wouldn't really make sense.

In MDZS, NMJ explicitly hasn't told NHS at least as of JGY's visit after the stairs, and there's no indication he told him between then and when he qi-deviated. Indeed, it's JGY who thinks NHS should be told, while NMJ rejects this (ch 50):

Jin GuangYao, “Brother, these days you’ve been stricter and stricter towards HuaiSang. Is it the saber spirit…?”

After a pause, he continued, “Does HuaiSang still not know about the saber spirit?”

Nie MingJue, “Why would I tell him so soon?”

In CQL, we're not told either way; this being the case I tend towards defaulting to MDZS unless I have a specific reason to think otherwise.

5) NHS, though bad at fighting, is skilled in cultivation theory

Again, JGY says so, at around 13:19: "You are good at Daoist magic" (and NHS seems to accept it). Moreover this is continually backed up by the film, with NHS making good use of it in the tomb, and then of course in the last scene having put together the true effect of the corrupted passage.

There is no indication of this in MDZS. He's interested in art and beautiful things, but he struggles with the Lan lectures. When JGY defends NHS' interests, he mentions art and calligraphy, and says his hobbies are elegant; he makes no mention of any kind of cultivation theory. As WWX himself notes, thinking back (ch 21):

In the past, Wei WuXian and Nie HuaiSang studied together, so there were a few things he could comment about this person. Nie HuaiSang wasn’t an unkind person. It wasn’t that he was not clever, but that his heart was set somewhere else and used his smarts on other areas, such as painting on fans, searching for birds, skipping classes, and catching fish. Because his talent in terms of cultivation really was poor, he formed his core around eight or nine years later than the other disciples of the same generation as him. When he lived, Nie MingJue was often exasperated by the fact that his brother didn’t meet his expectations, so he disciplined him strictly. Despite this, he still didn’t improve much.

I'm not saying he couldn't have developed in this direction after NMJ's death, but there doesn't seem to be any indication he was skilled in that way beforehand. Again, there's a reason his cover as "totally useless person" works as a cover.

In CQL, again, we don't really see any evidence of his skill with cultivation. NHS is shown flipping through his book for the answer to the executioner question LQR asks WWX; he doesn't show any evidence of significant cultivation knowledge on the road trip section (although he is shown to have a good memory for things he's actually interested in, and you could argue he has good instincts!); his wish at the lantern festival is that he passes his studies at the Lan. I just don't see it.

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#fj negativity #long meta #anger burned in his heart #we can't change places #more than one tag could contain

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xiyao-feels · 4 years ago

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Nie//yao (MDZS)

So NMJ/JGY is actually getting two versions, because my read on them is wildly different for MDZS vs CQL.

In MDZS I...don't ship it? I mean, there just doesn't seem to be to be anything there at all of a romantic or sexual nature. It's not that they don't care about each other, they clearly do, but it's in a way that is...NMJ as substitute father, JGY as substitute brother, and heavily, heavily inflected by their (current and then former) relationship as superior and subordinate.

Putting this behind a cut because a) it's me explaining at breath length with quotes why I don't think they have a romantic or sexual relationship and I don't want people to have to see that unless they want and b) accordingly it is REALLY LONG and I also don't want to clutter people's dashes, so.

Actually backing up a step, I don't see MDZS NMJ as being attracted to anyone, that's not really specific to JGY. I tend to read him as aspec, tbh. So theoretically he could have romantic feelings about JGY without being attracted to him—I think he may have some quasi-romantic feelings for LXC, though I don't think he conceptualizes it that way—but... honestly, it's not really clear to me that he even likes JGY as a person.

I'm not saying he doesn't like JGY! He clearly does, at least before MY tricks him and flees. But it doesn't seem to have anything to do with MY's personality, as opposed to like—MY being really competent and conducting himself well.

Some quotes about what exactly NMJ values about JGY:

'Nie MingJue interrupted him, “I promoted you not because I wanted you to give back anything out of gratitude. I simply thought that you should stay in this position, since you are capable enough and your conduct is to my liking. If you really want to pay me back, just kill a few more of those Wen-dogs on the battlefield!”'

'After [Meng Yao] left [for Langya], Nie MingJue switched to another deputy. Wei WuXian, however, felt that the new one was always a few beats slower. Meng Yao was an unusually clever talent. He could understand what wasn’t said, and perform to the best with the simplest orders. He was efficient and never slacked. Anyone used to him wouldn’t be able to refrain from comparing him with others.'

'Nie MingJue was never close to people. He rarely opened up to anyone. Though he finally managed to obtain a competent, trustworthy subordinate, whose character and capabilities he approved, he found that the subordinate’s true colors were nothing like what he had thought they were. It was only natural that his reaction was so extreme.'

'Wei WuXian had once found it strange as well. Ever since Meng Yao betrayed the QingheNie Sect, the relationship between Nie MingJue and him hadn’t been the same as before. Then why did they later become sworn brothers? From his observations, aside from how Lan XiChen brought it up, having always hoped that the two would reconcile, the most important factor was probably the gratitude of saving his life and writing the letters. To be precise, in his past battles, he had more-or-less depended on the information that Meng Yao sent over through Lan XiChen. He still thought that Jin GuangYao was a talented person whom one would rarely come upon, and intended on leading him back onto the right path. However, Jin GuangYao wasn’t his subordinate anymore. Only after they became sworn brothers would he have the status and the position to urge Jin GuangYao, like how he disciplined his younger brother, Nie HuaiSang.'

Jin GuangYao spoke with dejection, “But, Brother, didn’t you hear what he said in the oath? Every sentence meant something more. ‘Face a thousand accusing fingers, be torn from limb to limb’—this was clearly a warning for me. I… I’ve never heard of such an oath before.”

Lan XiChen replied in a gentle voice, “He said ‘if one were to think otherwise’. Do you think otherwise? If not, then why should you worry over it so much?"

Jin GuangYao, “I don’t, but Brother has already decided that I do, so what can I do?”

Lan XiChen, “He has always cherished your talent, hoping that you would choose the right path.”

You might notice a recurring theme here: there's a lot of focus JGY's competence and conduct. But anything about who JGY is as a person? Not so much.

They clearly had a good superior/subordinate relationship going on, albeit one in which NMJ was missing a lot of context (see just behave well and show people up, plus the you're missing a solid foundation thing). But it does seem to be basically professional. WWX describes them as conversing "peaceably, even impressively" in contrast to "his future self, always being scolded by Nie MingJue" and "those jokes of how 'LianFang-Zun fled whenever he heard that ChiFeng-Zun arrived,'" and.... that's kind of it. The closest we get to them as friends is them talking together with LXC after NMJ tells MY he will give him a letter of recommendation and send him to his father; as WWX describes it, "The three chatted back and forth, at times serious, yet at times light. The conversation was much more relaxed than when they had been in the living room. Listening to their chatter, Wei WuXian often wanted to get a word in as well, yet he was unable to do so."

That's definitely not nothing! But it's also the most we ever get, only shows up the once, and is explicitly contrasted with their conversation from earlier. Moreover, I'm pretty sure LXC's presence is a necessary part of things; NMJ tends to respond differently to LXC than to other people (even just earlier in this chapter, we're told that while "Nie MingJue had never been one for humour," "in front of Lan XiChen his expression eased"), and WWX explicitly notes LXC's conversation skills in the context of this conversation: "At this point in time, their relationship really isn't bad. Zewu-Jun is actually quite good at holding conversations, so why is Lan Zhan so bad at it?"

In addition, I'd say that looking at the early part of that conversation is quite telling; while LXC and MY are sitting together as equals, MY stand up at once the moment NMJ interrupts, and doesn't sit even after NMJ tells him to do so (I think he probably does take a seat at some point, but the narrative doesn't actually tell us when). Moreover, MY seems to be worried that NMJ will be offended by a possible lack of gratitude on MY's part ("Sect Leader Nie, if you heard everything, then you should've also heard me say that..."), and the only objection he expresses to leaving is precisely that he owes NMJ a debt of gratitude, not anything to do with, like, missing him. To me all the evidence suggests that while they had a close relationship, it was not a /personal/ relationship, but fundamentally one of superior and subordinate.

(For a close read of the scene where NMJ, LXC and MY are talking together, I highly recommend @confusion-and-more's post here)

Moving on, let's look at after JGY becomes JGY. They don't seem to particularly spend time together with each other, certainly not for the sake of it. There's a brief moment at the Flower Banquet where NMJ asks JGY why he's wasting his time with XY (who has not at this point in time committed his crime, he just has a reputation), but after JGY makes his excuse and scurries away, NMJ turns away and doesn't seem to seek him out or even pay him any particular attention for the rest of the scene; he only shows up once more, and that's following WWX. (And although JGY-as-replacement-NHS would be a post all on its own, I do think it's interesting to note that the exchange about XY is immediately followed by LXC and LWJ coming over, described in a way that highlights both their impressiveness and their status at brothers—their Twin Jade-ness, one might say.) During the guqin scene, NMJ only speaks once, and it's to address LXC—to protest the inappropriateness of LXC leaking exclusive Lan techniques. When JGY shows up to play the guqin for him the first time, NMJ asks JGY "what did you come here for," which suggests that NMJ is not generally expecting JGY to come by without a specific, concrete reason. The closest they ever seem to get after JGY becomes JGY is during these guqin-playing sessions, and as WWX describes it, "when playing the guqin, the way that the two conversed and got along even had a hint of the peace they had before they fell out"—which is certainly better than there being no peace at all, but which I think suggests there's still at least some tension, given that it's only a "hint."

Now, NMJ certainly cares about JGY, both in the sense of desiring his well-being, at first, and absolutely in the sense of being emotionally invested in him—even after his death, as a fierce corpse his only desire is to kill Jin Guangyao. But while they had a close superior-subordinate relationship—certainly NMJ seems to have felt close to MY—at no point was it a close personal relationship, and I don't think that NMJ even liked JGY (or MY, I'm using the name expansively) as a person, let alone was in love with him.

But mostly so far I've been focusing in NMJ's feelings. What about JGY? Is /he/ in love with NMJ?

Once again, I just don't read him that way. This isn't to say he didn't care for NMJ—he absolutely did! He goes to quite significant lengths to save his life from WRH in the Sun Palace, including quite a lot of risk to MY himself—I analyze that in a lot more depth in the first part of my post here, if you're interested, though I will also note now that he specifically sent for LXC to help NMJ. (You'll have to scroll down some; I'm responding to someone else's post.) Afterwards, he kneels to NMJ and apologizes, I think sincerely, for hurting him and for invoking his pain about his father's death. He certainly conceives of himself as owing a debt of gratitude to NMJ for recognizing him, and he's so overcome when NMJ offers to send him to his father with a letter of recommendation, saying that he didn't promote MY so that MY would owe him, that he quite remarkably can't even find words. NMJ meant a lot to him, and so did NMJ's not defining him in terms of his birth—until he did, of course, at the stairs kick incident. But as far as I can tell, there's nothing to suggest he has /romantic feelings/ for NMJ, and frankly—how can I put this—it does not at all surprise me that JGY isn't in love with someone with a violent temper who is noted at least twice to react to people explaining themselves when he is angry with even more anger, and that's even without the thing where he nearly killed JGY on multiple occasions and called him the son of a prostitute.

No, I think JGY's emotional journey with NMJ goes through three stages: first, he's deeply grateful to him and respects him a great deal, although he's also aware of NMJ's lack of awareness of certain social realities (see: the teacup scene, NMJ yelling at the other Nie cultivators about their treatment of MY and telling MY not to worry as long as his conduct is upright); second, after Sun Palace, still gratitude and respect but also a mounting frustration with his lack of awareness of the implications of JGY's social position and his hypocrisy re: acceptable violence; finally, after the stairs kick when NMJ kicks him down the stairs, almost kills him, and tells him what else can be expected from the son of a prostitute, he is completely done with NMJ, but is still very much scared of him. The gratitude, I've discussed; the frustration, I think is fairly obvious in the speech he gives back to NMJ at the stairs. But I think the fear is often undervalued, so I'm going to pull a bunch of quotes again:

Meng Yao shrunk immediately after his previous outburst. Watching Baxia slash toward him, he sprinted off at once, scared lifeless. Of the two, one striked with madness and the other fled with madness. Both staggered, still soaked in blood. In such amusing circumstances, as Wei WuXian chopped at the future Chief Cultivator, in his heart he split his sides laughing. He thought that if not for how Nie MingJue was under heavy injuries and lacked spiritual power, Meng Yao would probably have been dead already.

Baxia’s strikes were so menacing that Shuoyue had to unsheath. Lan XiChen stopped him, half to support his figure and half to block his attacks, “MingJue-xiong, calm down! Why bother?”

Nie MingJue, “Why don’t you ask what he did?!”

Lan XiChen turned around to look at Meng Yao, his face was full of terror. He stammered as if he didn’t dare speak.

Nie MingJue remained silent, while Baxia and Shuoyue continued. Meng Yao took a glimpse at the glares from the clashes of the saber and the sword, his gaze full of fear. After a while, however, he still took a step forward. He kneeled to Nie MingJue.

A moment later, Nie MingJue still raised his saber. Lan XiChen, “MingJue-xiong!”

Meng Yao shut his eyes. Lan XiChen also tightened his grip on Shuoyue, “Please excuse…”

Before he could finish his sentence, the silver light of the blade slashed down violently, onto a boulder on the side.

Meng Yao flinched from the thunder of the boulder splitting apart. Looking over, he saw that it had been sliced into two halves, from the top to the bottom.

Jin GuangYao nodded. Xue Yang had been infamous ever since he was young. Wei WuXian clearly felt Nie MingJue’s brows knit even tighter. He spoke, “Why are you wasting your time with such a person?”

Jin GuangYao, “The LanlingJin Sect recruited him.”

He didn’t dare to protest any further. Excuse being that he needed to care for the guests, he scurried to the other side.

[part of his speech to NMJ at the stairs] You think that I should be afraid of nothing? Well I'm afraid of everything, even other people!

Within the temple, three people called Nie MingJue’s corpse ‘Brother’ but the three tones were drastically different. Jin GuangYao’s face was full of a drowning fear. His entire body began to shiver. No matter dead or alive, the person Jin GuangYao was most scared of was none but this sworn brother of his whose temper tolerated no evil. As his body shivered, his hands shivered as well, and the bloody guqin string he clutched tightly in his hand also began to shiver.

Clenching his teeth, Jin GuangYao struck a few acupoints of his arm. Amidst the dizziness that came from a loss of blood, he suddenly saw Nie MingJue walk a step towards him, his eyes locked on him. He was immediately half-dead with fear.

Collapsed beside Lan XiChen, Jin GuangYao saw this scene as well. Whether because the bleeding and the pain intensified at his arm and stomach or from some other reason, the glisten of tears could be seen in his eyes. But before he had a chance to catch his breath or lick his wounds, Nie MingJue turned around after he pulled his fist back and stared hungrily in his direction.

The harsh, stern expression on his rigid face held a sense of judgement that was no different from before he died. Even his tears had been scared away as Jin GuangYao turned to Lan XiChen for help, his voice trembling, “Brother…”

I think the stuff with, you know, handling NMJ's fierce corpse and hanging onto his head is often viewed as evidence of JGY's continued emotional investment in NMJ, but... I don't really think so? First of all, NMJ's fierce corpse is completely obsessed with killing JGY. I'll spare you another round of quotes on that because this is already ridiculously long and because it's not at all subtle—it's all over the temple chapters, take a look! And second of all—well, there's ways of getting information from a corpse. In this case, NMJ's resentful energy is so strong that without the protection of his body, papernan WWX is actually sucked into NMJ's memories against his will! Sure, maybe no one would risk it, and maybe no one who risked it would survive, but especially given that NMJ's fierce corpse is completely obsessed with killing JGY, that's a heck of a risk to take. And look at the description of the protections around NMJ's head:

Suddenly, Wei WuXian noticed that one of the shelves were blocked by a curtain. The curtain was covered in sinister, blood-red runes. It was a talisman of forbiddance, one of extreme power.

Jin GuangYao walked over and lifted the curtain.

For a split second, Wei WuXian thought that he had been exposed. After the faint firelight made its way through the curtain, he found that he was enveloped in a shadow. A circular object just happened to be in front of him.

Jin GuangYao stood still, as though he was staring into the eyes of whatever was inside this shelf.

After a moment, he spoke, “Were you the one looking at me?"

Of course, there couldn’t be any response. He was silent for a while, then let down the curtain.

Wei WuXian quietly attached himself to the object. Cold and hard, it seemed to be a helmet. He then turned to the front. As he had expected, he saw a pallid face. The one who sealed the head wanted it to see nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, and so incantations had been crowded onto the waxen skin. The eyes, the ears, and the mouth were all sealed tightly shut.

There's containment, it's suppressed to all hell and back, and JGY quite justifiably expects it to be murderously obsessed with him, but to me it doesn't suggest a reciprocal obsession—just more fear.

I'll also note that as a strategy for containing the information about his own involvement it's a very successful operation! It failed in the end /eventually/, but the failure needed:

someone who could successfully break into his private treasure room and escape without being caught

who could also perform Empathy or a similar tecnnique on NMJ's head and survive it

who could successfully recreate from memory the altered Empathy song

whom LXC would be willing to listen to

That's a heck of a tall order!

As to being done with NMJ after the stairs, well, listen to what he says to LXC:

[...]

Jin GuangYao, “It’s not that I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, but that sometimes I really can’t help. Nowadays, I have it bad no matter which side I’m on. I have to ensure that I’m on everyone’s good sides. I wouldn’t care if it were someone else, but have I mistreated our eldest brother in any way? Brother, you heard as well. What did he call me?”

[...]

Jin GuangYao was almost sobbing, “If he could say such a thing when he was angry, then just how does he think of me on a daily basis? Is it that because I couldn’t choose my background, because my mother couldn’t choose her fate, I’ll have to be humiliated by others throughout my whole life? If so, then how is Brother different from the people who look down on me? No matter what I do, in the end, just a sentence and I’m ‘the son of a prostitute’.”

And then of course there's what he says to LXC, in his speech to him at the end: "You, on the other hand, ZeWu-Jun, Sect Leader Lan, are as intolerant of me as Nie MingJue—you refuse to spare me even a single breath of life!"

So—wow, this got very long—I don't ship them, and although I think they have very much mattered emotionally to each other, I don't really see them as ever having been in love with or attracted to each other.

A couple of end notes:

In MDZS, NMJ isn't the first (non-MS) person who recognizes MY's worth, although he is the first person to promote him; by the time NMJ promotes MY MY has already met, rescued, and exchanged intimate confidences with LXC, who respects him greatly and thinks he is highly talented (see again the conversation in Hejian which NMJ overhears/eavedrops on).

I've seen people talk about them not understanding each other, but while NMJ certainly doesn't understand JGY, it's not at all obvious that the reverse is true; he generally seems to understand him pretty well. I think he has two surprises overall: first, that he wasn't expecting NMJ to say he didn't promote MY so MY would owe him, and volunteer to send him to his father with a letter of recommendation—and second, he wasn't expecting NMJ, who for all his flaws did seem to ignore JGY's background in good ways as well as bad, to call him the son of a prostitute.

I definitely don't read the coffin at the end as romantic. Or I mean, uh, there's the romance of an obsessive stalker-murderer finally getting his victim, and that's not nothing (unironically; look, I'm a Hannibal fan), but I don't think it's usually what people mean. This is a shitty end for JGY, part of how thoroughly he loses and is destroyed. I think to some extent it might be that he doesn't want LXC to be the one who killed him, and to some extent it's an act of defiance—now that he has nothing to lose, not even his life, he's going to go out fighting. I would expand on this but this post is ridiculously long and I have way too many quotes, maybe I'll do it in a separate post later on—but if you look at the description of it in the text, plus the subsequent description of it in the coffin...yeah. JGY didn't want to die, he didn't want to be engaged in a mutually destructive thing with NMJ; he wanted to leave NMJ behind in the past, and move on. It's not, for him any kind of fulfillment, is my read.

All quotes are taken from the Exiled Rebels translation: ch 48-50 for everything about NMJ and JGY's past relationship, ch. 47 for the description of JGY's containment measures for NMJ's head, and ch. 106-108 for the quotes about JGY's fear of NMJ's fierce corpse. The description of JGY going into the coffin is at the end of 108 if you want to have a look, and there's more in 109 and 110 about the difficulty of sealing NMJ's fierce corpse/its power and violence.

#ship meme #ship negativity #this is so goddamn long #how many quotes can I fit in one post? dear god #also there's no way the coffin is actually staying shut for 100 years see ch. 113 #also I didn't want to rely on material that isn't in the final text but if you do look at the scene of JGY cutting NMJ's head off #the same theme of NMJ's fierce corpse's murderous obsession + JGY's fear are very much there #also I'm not sure I'd call it a notp exactly? like obviously I don't see it but there are versions of it I can kind of enjoy #but I figured I was being well by all accounts it doesn't make sense enough that I wanted to circle it as like. a warning XP #we can't change places #anger burned in his heart #more than one tag could contain #long meta

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