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a-cutebird · 4 years

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i'm fucking tired of people claiming that lxc is a himbo or in any way stupid for siding with jgy for years.

jgy literally never did a single bad thing in front of lxc until the very end?? lxc only ever heard other people claim that jgy did bad shit. and the thing is, he knew (read: saw, with his own two eyes) that the world tended to be unfairly against jgy because of jgy's background - so, being the mediator he was, lxc understandably wanted to give jgy a chance to explain his side every time because he thought that that was only fair.

consider the parts of jgy that lxc personally witnessed:

(untamed only) the young master meng holding his tongue, bowing his head, and, despite everyone around him talking behind his back, laughing about him, not stopping to greet or acknowledge him - despite all this, being impeccably courteous. and, when he's shown the tiniest bit of kindness - truly, what lxc considers the bare fucking minimum amount of decency - young master meng looking so happy, so touched - but immediately lowering his gaze as if he believes that it's not his place to meet the eyes of the great zewu-jun. what humility! what decency! of course lxc would view meng yao as someone kindhearted and good from the moment they meet.

and then, he experiences meng yao's kindness again when young master meng basically singlehandedly saves his ass and helps keep both lxc and the precious gusu lan texts hidden for an entire year.

and then! this young man, who's given lxc an entire year of his life, gives him even more of his time by helping lxc rebuild cloud recesses - and this entire time, lxc has no reason to believe that meng yao has any reason to do this other than out of kindness and the desire to help others.

and then!! there's meng yao the hero, who risked a fate likely worse than death in order to be a spy in the heart of wen territory - and for what?? he owed the cultivation world nothing!! they treated meng yao like shit! and yet he carried out this unfathomably dangerous task without being asked to by anyone and, in lxc's eyes, out of an obligation to nothing more than the greater good.

and THEN!!! lxc watches jgy as chief cultivator, constructing the lookout towers that improved the lives of many people living in remote villages that other sect leaders had never really put significant effort into protecting all that well.

are there rumors about jgy the entire time? yes. does lxc seem like the kind of person who'd pay any attention to rumors?? no!!! especially when they're about a man who he has personally seen do so many great things, and especially when he knows that the world is already biased against jgy from the very beginning.

should he have listened to/believed nmj? yes. but the thing is, he did believe nmj. he believed that nmj was telling the truth about what jgy did; he also believed that jgy was telling the truth - from his perspective. do they sound like bitch ass excuses to the audience? yes. is it because we're the omniscient audience with 20/20 hindsight?? yes!!! it is absolutely consistent with lxc's kind nature to choose the underdog when he's caught between two friends, one who's been kicked and spit on his whole life, and one who he knows is quick to judge and can be a little stubborn. it's not that he didn't trust nmj; it's that he trusted both nmj and jgy, and it made absolute sense for him to do so, given his personality and what he'd seen of jgy up to that point.

lxc is compassionate, empathetic, and thoughtful. he meticulously listens to all sides in an effort to be just and take the middle path. these traits don't make him stupid or dumb. his inaction isn't from a lack of intelligence or from lethargy or airheadedness or whatever other himbo-esque quality folks want to slap on him.

the worst lxc can be accused of is naiveté. and that ain't make him a himbo, y'all!

#mdzs #lan xichen #lxc #meta #ty for coming to my tedtalk #i'm fine w ppl playing him up as a himbo for shits and giggles #but the moment they seriously call him stupid #i wanna shake em by the shoulders #like pls just take a moment to think about this through lxc's perspective #and not through the lens we're given in the novel #which is wwx's #who is an unreliable narrator #who sees shit that lxc never sees w his own two eyes

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xiyao-feels · 3 years

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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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xiyao-feels · 3 years

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Part One: Claims about the Song of Clarity/the Song of Turmoil and the Nie Clan

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

SoC/SoT

1) The SoC is expected to heal NMJ completely

This one is fairly straightforward: one of the Nie cultivators literally says that he didn't expect the Song of Clarity /not/ to heal NMJ completely, around 12:30 in: "Master's illness is getting worse. I didn't expect that cleaning music can't completely cure him." While this could just be one person's incorrect idea, the cultivator he makes this observation to does not correct him, and in general, FJ does not at any point suggest that he is wrong.

As far as I can tell, the claim that the SoC is expected to completely heal NMJ is not made anywhere in MDZS or CQL; nor is there any suggestion the music had been used to treat the sabre curse for past Nie cultivators, so, indeed, how would they know what to expect? Moreover, in neither MDZS or CQL does anyone seem surprised that it failed to heal NMJ entirely, including LXC who would know if anyone would; rather LXC seems to consider his turmoil-induced progression entirely plausible despite (he thinks) JGY's consistent playing of Clarity.

2) A few brief passages from the SoC, even when played by someone with weak cultivation, can very quickly bring a halt to NMJ's violence

On multiple occasions we are shown the gold SoC very quickly visually affect NMJ, returning him to normal from sabre-curse-red. Twice, it halts him partway through significant violence—JGY preventing his attack on NHS in the beginning, and NHS temporarily preventing his attack on NZH. This is so even though NHS and JGY canonically have weak cultivation (ch 14 and 21 for NHS, a whole lot of chapters for JGY but see also this next paragraph).

Consider by contrast this passage from ch. 64:

Wei WuXian, “Jin GuangYao’s spiritual energy isn’t high. He wouldn’t have been able to take someone’s life with just seven notes. And killing him this way would’ve been too obvious. He definitely wouldn’t have chosen a song so powerful. But, if he could use the reason of playing the Song of Clarity for ChiFeng-Zun to calm his temper and continued to play it for three months, would the song be able to act as a slow poison and catalyse ChiFeng-Zun’s outburst?”

It's clear that JGY's ability to affect things via musical cultivation is limited, precisely because he does not have high cultivation.

As a side note: WWX's speculated timeline here is sometimes given as evidence that JGY was playing the corrupted SoC for NMJ /before/ the stairs incident. However, I'll observe that he is, indeed, speculating, and moreover that he is contradicted by his own experience in the Empathy flashback, especially as he also says—see the next point—that JGY would have used very little spiritual power in the unaltered SoC (ch 49):

Since then, Jin GuangYao would travel from Lanling to Qinghe every few days, playing Sound of Lucidity to help quell Nie MingJue rage. He tried his hardest, without speaking even a single word of complaint. Sound of Lucidity was indeed effective. Wei WuXian could clearly feel that the hostile energy within Nie MingJue was being suppressed.

And then, talking to LWJ and LXC following shortly on the three months quote above:

Thus, Jin GuangYao didn’t dare straight up play to him the dark song and instead took trouble to combine two songs of different styles with opposite uses. And he combined them so well. They sound as though there were the same. His musical talent is indeed excellent. I’m guessing that he used little spiritual power in the Cleansing sections and only exerted power in the section of The Collection of Turmoil.

I don't think this is particularly mysterious—WWX has gone through quite a bit since experiencing these moments in the Empathy flashback, including the rest of the Empathy flashback where, since he feels NMJ's anger, he would have been experiencing a great deal of anger at JGY.

In CQL though WWX doesn't specifically give JGY's low cultivation as a reason for him to choose the SoT instead of the instantly deadly song, JGY does still have low cultivation.

In terms of FJ, I'd like also to note that in MDZS, there's a similar scene in ch 49 where NMJ is upset at NHS for not knowing where his sabre is, and tells NHS to burn the fans he's playing with; in FJ NMJ /actually/ breaks NHS' brush, and doesn't indulge in burning or threats thereof, but it's a clear parallel to the MDZS scene). However, there are a few significant differences. First, this happens before JGY starts playing for NMJ without LXC present; that is to say, regardless of when you think JGY started playing turmoil for NMJ, he could not possibly have started yet. Second, JGY defends NHS to NMJ's face, and in front of NHS:

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?”

Third, although NMJ is angry, and expresses his anger through violence to nearby objects ("Nie MingJue slammed his palm onto a table, causing it to crack"), he does not actually directly attack NHS, or indeed actually harm NHS' fans—although NHS nevertheless falls to his knees in his terror at NMJ's initial approach.

And fourth, and most relevantly to this point, although JGY does save NHS from NMJ's anger here, he /explicitly textually does it by being a more appealing target/:

Jin GuangYao walked in from outside the hall. Nie HuaiSang looked as though he saw a knight in shining armor, beaming, “Brother, you’re here!”

In reality, it wasn’t that Jin GuangYao could calm Nie MingJue’s anger, but that since Jin GuangYao came, all of Nie MingJue’s anger would be directed at him alone, having no time to scold others. Thus, there was nothing wrong with saying that he was Nie HuaiSang’s knight in shining armor.

CQL is missing many of these scenes, but there is not as far as I remember any evidence that JGY could quickly stop NMJ's violence via music.

3) The SoT is so powerful that its brief corrupted passage will totally overwhelm all positive effects from the unaltered SoC, even if the player is using equal cultivation power throughout.

This isn't explicitly stated, but it's the only mechanism by which the plan of 'have NHS play the corrupted SoC' makes any sense at all. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, NHS would actually be helping NMJ, just more slowly than if he had the full SoC, since he would have no reason to use less power in the unaltered section. Indeed, we see the gold flow of the regular SoC affecting NMJ when NHS plays it, which suggests he's using regular amounts of power there. Consider by contrast what WWX says to LXC and LWJ in ch 64, as above:

I am, I want to note, not an expert in the theory of musical cultivation, or in the xianxia genre. Nevertheless, the obvious inference from what WWX says there is if JGY had been using full power in the Cleansing sections, Turmoil wouldn't have worked.

And of course as I mentioned above, WWX gives a timeline of three months and calls it a slow poison. CQL pretty much matches here, giving the he didn't use much spiritual power in cleansing, the slow poison part, and indeed the three-month timeline.

The Nie Clan

1) When the curse is coming on them too strongly, they remove themselves to the tombs to die there.

This is explicitly stated by NMJ when he and NHS have fallen into the tombs.

As far as I can tell, there's no evidence for this in either MDZS or CQL. Indeed, in neither does NMJ seem to be doing anything to deal with the fact of his increasing anger—that is, he accepts the treatment of the SoC, but he doesn't do anything about the fact that his increasing anger and hence increasing use of violence are dangerous to the people around him. If anything, he seems rather in denial. This is probably more justifiable in CQL, where he dies at the stairs and thus doesn't have the chance to reevaluate post-stairs or post-burning NHS' things,* but nevertheless there's no sign of it.

*That is, we don't see him burn NHS' things in CQL, and in MDZS it happens after the stairs, so it seems reasonable to assume it didn't happen in CQL; that said CQL does not as far as I know actively tell us he did not burn NHS' things.

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

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