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prince-liest · 2 years

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okay, now that enough time has passed that I’m less traumatized by Yi City arc: Xue Yang and Qi Rong are my favorite little gremlin men. I want someone to sit on them until they stop struggling, and the main reason for that is, like...

yes, they're both very horrible people that have committed atrocities, but this is fiction so we can excuse that

but more importantly

they're both horrible in a way that feels very much like they're lashing out because, to put it crudely, they didn't get hugged enough as children

like, they've just faced so much unkindness in their lives that it's the only thing they know how to express, and they're both desperately vying for some kind of attention, but they don't know how to get (and maybe they fear) positive attention, so all they can do is break everything around them in increasingly ostentatious ways to get something

and for Xue Yang he just had absolutely no idea how to let go of how hurt he's been even as he does so much worse to others, while Qi Rong is just? absolutely hated by absolutely everyone? and not even in the way Hua Cheng is where people fear and respect him, but in the way where everyone thinks he's a disgusting joke

so it's just like

it feels like

if someone came around that made them sit down and settle, that’s a fic I’d read at least 37 versions of

#mxtx #mdzs #tgcf #xue yang #qi rong #personal #I would read as if I'm not scrabbling my way through the xue yang tag on AO3 at this very moment #I'll get to Qi Rong once I read through more of tgcf so it's not a spoiler #meta

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spockandawe · 3 years

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Hi...how are you? Since you've read all 3 mxtx works, if you don't mind me asking,what do you think are the strengths of each of her novels' protagonists? Sorry if you've answered this question before....

I’m doing well, thank you! And ooooh, this is an interesting question, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

I will say that I think the love interests are a lot easier to answer for this, because for all of them, they share a sense of determination and perseverance that carries them through a long separation, and they mostly vary in the ways their personalities express that determination, but the protagonists.......... HM. I’m actually having the most trouble with Shen Qingqiu, so let’s go in reverse order and see what I come out with, haha

Xie Lian! I think his greatest strength is that he made the conscious decision to be kind. It’s not that he’s unconsciously gentle, or that it’s something that he always expresses, no matter what, because we’ve seen him be mean with some characters, or to gently poke fun at other people and enjoy. He’s not kind at the expense of himself. But he saw what he was like when he was cruel, and he decided he didn’t like it, and decided to be different. It’s not the same as the idealism of his youth, with the question about the water in the desert, or thinking that he could save a country from a drought, or that he could protect his own kingdom. He has a very measured idea of his own capabilities and limits, and is invested in being kind within the bounds of what he knows he is capable of. He’s not going to mindlessly pour kindness into Qi Rong knowing that Qi Rong is totally down to bite the hand that feeds him, but he’s willing to take on the burden of blame for Lang Qianqiu’s family’s death, because the truth would hurt Lang Qianqiu more than the lie hurts Xie Lian.

Wei Wuxian! His sense of humor, for one, and casual ambition, for another. He goes through a lot of suffering, and his willingness to laugh at everything, including himself, carries him through a lot. It doesn’t deal with everything, but it lets him shrug off a lot of blows before something brings him to his knees. And that, paired with the casual ambition, is a powerful combination. I don’t know how he could have established demonic cultivation as a viable path without both of those characteristics. Maybe he could have clawed his way out of the burial mounds without that sense of humor, but I don’t know how far he could have gone through life after the sunshot campaign without that light, laughing approach to life to bolster him, despite all the trauma also weighing him down. And once he comes back to life, I think he walks a very interesting line of ‘lol TRAUMA’ and ‘oh, interesting weird-ass mystery to solve’ before he finally becomes comfortable with more fully leaning on Lan Wangji, and those two traits really help carry him through that time before he realizes he can trust Lan Wangji with anything.

Shen Qingqiu! Ah, this one was weirdly hard. I don’t want to say that his encyclopedic book knowledge is a STRENGTH, or his investment in that fictional universe. So I think I’m going to say... his ability to shrug trauma off. It’s not perfect, because he spends a section of the book semi-paralyzed with fear that Luo Binghe is going to torture and kill him (and manages to fuck up Luo Binghe extra hard in the course of events, ofc), but he also came into the universe with all that knowledge. And it took him like two minutes to go from ‘this is the guy who’s gonna rip my limbs off’ to ‘omg what a good child this is, I must care for him properly.’ Even when he has the penalty activated and visits the main universe, and experiences Bingge ripping his limb off, he comes back to the main world, and he’s like OnO for a very brief period, but stabilizes himself out fast and slides past the fear response to his Binghe and evens out again. Or that first sex scene, which.... yeah, I’d say that was traumatic. After he has a few minutes to recover, his main reaction is ‘wow, that was a thing that happened.’ It’s kind of a mixed bag, because he sorrrrrta is the one who initiates a lot of that post-abyss trauma he experieces, but he’s very good at slipping past the trauma and returning to a baseline state.

#spock replies #shen qingqiu #xie lian #wei wuxian #svsss #tgcf #mdzs #thanad-zid

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