#and eventually someone confronts jc about the engagement

[thatswhatsushesaid]

exploring various different "what if...?" scenarios for jgy in mdzs remains, as always, both my favourite and least favourite activity in this fandom, because a few things invariably end up happening:

I learn new things both about jgy and about other characters, which is always my favourite part of being part of any fandom, this is an unambiguously good thing, no complaints; but,

jgy also ends up skewered again in the unending game of mdzs disc horse because "see, if he'd just done this one thing differently, everything would've been fine!!" even though the textual support for "everything" being "fine" is pretty shaky at best. like the extent of narrative reverse-engineering we'd have to engage in to actually prove that is grounds for another close reading of the whole novel (and my inner huaisang is just like ugh, bestie that is so much work), and/or,

the disc horse eventually circles back to the proposals just not jiving with the reality of what jgy is given to work with in the canon.

ftr I am obviously fine with taking canon and adjusting it just a bit to make engaging with it in fic/RP more fun and enjoyable for me as someone who loves playing in the canon-divergent mdzs trash can of our hearts. but that's a separate matter from taking some of the scenarios I see proposed in these discussions and applying them as potential solutions to the real problems encountered by jgy, or wwx, or jc, or nmj in the novel. because to make some of these 'what if' scenarios in canon work:

either the fundamental building blocks of the mdzs cultivation world have to shift dramatically (e.g., jgy is able to marry lxc, or nhs, or jc, without anyone addressing the issue of marital unions where there is no possibility of producing heirs in a society so fixated on dynasties built on family hierarchies and bloodlines; or, jgy doesn't go along with jgs's demands and faces zero consequences for his filial impiety/secular disloyalty), and/or,

the core priorities/values of individual characters would have to change and result in different actions and outcomes than what we see presented in the text or on screen (e.g., nmj decides to trust jgy enough to intercede in his fucked up engagement to qin su specifically to help jgy, which means jgy has to trust nmj enough to reveal this information to him in the first place; or, jin zixuan and/or jiang yanli decide to take enough of an interest in jgy's situation to step in between him and jin guangshan and madam jin and provide him with material or emotional support during his first year and a half as a legitimized member of the lanling jin sect, which presumes that either of these characters would pursue a deeper emotional attachment to jgy than exists in the source material)

and ultimately I feel most of the fandom-proposed solutions to jgy's legion of canon problems fall into at least one of those two categories. which sucks for jgy, obviously! our special little guy is as doomed by the narrative as you can get! /sad violin music goes here

at the same time I also think it's useful to subject all of these proposed solutions to the test of "does this break the world? does this break the character?" because for every "yes, it breaks the world/character" answer we encounter, we're forced as as readers to confront how limited jgy's options are in canon.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #jin guangyao #my special little guy had a rough time and did some crimes and then died #i'm sad about it