Alright mxtx fandoms, let’s discuss class distinctions. I see a lot of people who discuss the theme of classism in mxtx works by collapsing all class groups into two categories: the ultra rich upper class who make all the rules and the poverty-stricken lower class who are oppressed by them. However, this is rarely the case in her books. The prime examples I can think of are in tgcf and mdzs.
In mdzs, a lot of people claim that Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao come from “similar backgrounds,” but this is most definitely not the case. Yes, Jin Guangyao went unclaimed by his father until later into his adulthood after his mother’s death, but Meng Yao did not grow up poor. Meng Shi was a famed courtesan with high-profile clients before she had her son, and having Meng Yao was a plan for her to be made into a mistress or second wife (which ultimately failed). Sisi was almost turned into a second wife, which is what caused her to be attacked and ruined her looks. Sex workers operated in a weird social space in ancient history where they existed as an industry, but class distinctions between different kinds of sex work still existed/exists and Meng Shi was definitely not on the low end of the scale. Even if Jin Guangyao had never been acknowledged by his father, he still found an honest job as a bookkeeper before meeting Lan Xichen. Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian was a street orphan with no family, money, status, who barely remembered his name, and definitely no benefit of an education due to how young he was orphaned, who was eventually taken in as the companion servant to a local lord-equivalent’s son. Neither of these characters started off as gentry, but they were not of the same class growing up.
In tgcf, Mu Qing is touted as a “poor”/working-class character by a large portion of the fandom, but… there’s no real evidence that he is? I mean, I have no doubt that, given the circumstances of his father’s death and his mother’s eventual disability, he was in poverty at some point, and this seems to be corroborated within the narrative by the fact that he is well-known and loved by the street orphans in the city. However, you cannot tell me that the personal servant to the crown (and only) prince to an entire kingdom is surviving off poverty wages. You’d be better-served making an argument to me about Anne Boleyn being an accurate historical representation of English serfs. Hong Hong’er, actual child living in poverty, is notably set apart from Mu Qing: from his fraying, patched clothes to his dirty hands to Mu Qing’s unwillingness to touch him… Mu Qing is set apart from the upper crust because 1) he is not of nobility but, more importantly, 2) his father was a criminal publicly executed for treason. And #2 is particularly damning for Mu Qing’s status amongst the nobility because Feng Xin, also not from a noble family, is (conditionally) accepted amongst the same elite snobs in a way Mu Qing is not (which makes sense since why would a noble like the son of a man who may have conspired against their rule?). Interesting to note, though, that the only time Mu Qing is unquestionably included in the array of the elite is when Hong Hong’er is being ostracized by the same group (minus Xie Lian). So while Hua Cheng and Mu Qing both had childhoods outside the nobility, Mu Qing was not anywhere near the level of poverty Hua Cheng had to live through.
I feel like svsss escapes this sort of broad-stroke application of class status to characters because most characters really do either fall into one of the two groups or we are not given background information on them at all. We know that Shen Jiu and Yue Qingyuan were child slaves, with the former being bought by a cruel master and the latter being able to escape and join a sect. We know that Luo Binghe, while not a child slave, was a child servant working with his adoptive mother under cruel masters who were directly the cause of his mother’s death. Slight distinction, but functionally not any different in their effects and outcomes. Shen Yuan is said to come from a wealthy family in his world, and Liu Qingge and Liu Mingyan do, as well. All the major demon characters are nobility. The only character we see who does not fit into this distinct divide is Shang Qinghua, but his background only becomes fleshed-out in the extras. Not to say that classism isn’t also a theme, but it’s function is used differently here than in the other two novels (especially since in svsss, we are working with parallels feeding into cycles of abuse and how to break said cycles rather than recreating them into infinity).
So with all this said, I think it may actually help discussions of the classism theme within these different mxtx fandoms to acknowledge and take into account the nuances within the class positions that these characters occupy. Why is it that the functionally middle-class characters, after gaining a crumb of acceptance from the elites, tend to turn against those lower on the rung? How do characters of the same background and class status interact with others of differing status, and what makes their reactions different from each other despite being raised under similar conditions? What is mxtx trying to say about class as a social or even moral divider by adding all these class nuances or (with svsss) lack thereof into her various narratives?
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Me: What if I wrote a fic where Yue lived at the end of the the first season of avatar?
Also me: A short fic?
Me, again: Don’t be silly we’re rewriting large chunks of the series lore
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genuinely stunned at the fantastic choice for Percy not to pray to his absent and unknown father—like he did in the books—but to his mother.
the show is really taking us to one of riordan’s central theses straight off the bat.
parenthood isn’t about power and legacy and the recognition of shared blood.
It’s about the incredible act of showing up for your child—again and again and a-fucking-gain. That’s how you inspire respect. That’s how you become a child’s patron and beloved god.
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