#friedcopcookieoperator

[mxtxfanatic]

AS one of the more thoughtful MXTX essayists out there, I wondered if you had seen the essay on Ao3 "The Smiling Enigma" ?(my attempt to put in a link has failed). Focused on Lan Xichen - it's a VERY different analysis than I've seen elsewhere.

Huh, I didn’t know it existed until this ask, so thank you! (I usually don’t see mdzs things unless it’s tagged with wangxian.) After having just read it, I can say that while the writer definitely has more animosity towards lxc than I do, I agree with their assessment. In fact, many of the points made in the essay are things I’d noted before on here, though not centralized under one post.

Before I get into my thoughts on it, I just want to say that I hope that people will read that analysis seriously and engage respectfully, because I remember very clearly when the “who knew about the wen remnants” essay dropped (i think that was the title) and a lot of people shit on the author for having the audacity to suggest that the cultivation world knew that wwx wasn’t building an army and were only upset cause they thought he would make a sect that would decrease their own popularity amongst new disciples, thus implicating their fav characters and sects. And now a majority of the people I see (who aren’t villain stans) accept this as fact because it’s literally what the novel says and the author didn’t pull anything out of their ass with their meta. This meta is also a textual analysis, and people should treat it as such if they are serious about literary analysis and aren’t just about absolving their fav characters of wrongdoings. Now onto my thoughts:

The thing about the mdzs characters for me is that, outside of wangxian, the juniors, the wen remnants, and Mianmian, every major character in the story is a terrible person, full stop. None of them are good people, none of them really try to be good people unless forced by circumstances, and their terribleness is never excused by the narrative from what I can tell. Some characters start off better than others and fall from grace (jiang yanli feels like this to me though I’m not counting her in major characters) and other characters are terrible from start to finish (jiang cheng, jin guangshan). However, the venerable trio for me are characters that only look good on the surface, but the more you dig the more rotten everything becomes.

Lxc was the biggest disappointment for me as a character I’d seen people rave about as the only good sect leader, the only one who cared about righteousness, the only one who tried to do the right thing, such a loving brother, etc, but when I actually read the book, all I got from him was…condescension. He gives me “mother knows best” vibes, and I always return to the scene where lxc says, with full confidence, that jgy cannot be the murderer, that lwj is blinded by his love for wwx, that he knows everyone too well and it’s everyone else who’s biased, only for jgy to be confirmed as the murdered a literal chapter later. I’ve said it before, but he only “allowed” wangxian to investigate the corpse because he “knew” they wouldn’t find anything incriminating (LOL). That told me all I needed to know about him as a character and how I should treat him. But with all this, I stand by my last post on him that this is a product of his upbringing that he was failed by and the posts before that about how he was an active participant in fanning the flames against wwx and the wen remnants, so I’m in a pitying mood with him at the moment but not a forgiving one.

(Final note: holy shit I loved that breakdown of the guanyin temple tantrum lxc threw, because I caught the obvious deflection from his own wrongdoings and how he was treating the hostage situation like an inconvenient tea party, but I didn’t catch just how many deflections he was adding and just how many lies he was knowingly telling on lwj’s behalf to make lwj appear as some poor innocent lamb corrupted by the big bad wolf. The fact that he is present for so many of the plot’s crimes but erases his presence in his speeches while shoving blame onto others? I’d noted it before but not in a tangible way, so that was a major eye-opening yikes.)

#mdzs asks #lxc is the type of person that treats people like pet projects and not like actual people #take from that what you will #some people have characters they really like and others they really hate #i only jump in when i see certain discourses i want to participate in or when i remember certain details I’d forgotten #other than that it’s eh #i think the only thing the essay is missing is lxc’s insentive for acting as he does #but that’s whatever #friedcopcookieoperator