#to xue yang he has only ever sacrificed - therefore he is in his right to 'deserve' what he wants. And he wants everything. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hunxi-guilai · 4 years

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You said that wwx is always 'deliciously informal', and I've been wondering if he's doing it deliberately... Like we know if he felt inclined to, he could talk on the same level of formality as lwj, but maybe part of the reason he doesn't is to differenciate himself from jc and the other young masters so that people like madam yu and others wouldn't feel threatened. Obviously he's also naturally an awful gremlin with no manners but...

(kind of a follow-up to an aside I made in this post)

ooooh okay so I’ve been thinking about this ask for quite a long time, partially in hopes that my brain would deliver on something like this monster of a post again, but nothing’s really leaping out at me because I think this is just part and parcel of Wei Wuxian’s character

Wei Wuxian is not only one of the most well-spoken characters in the show, but he’s also:

one of the most literary

one of the most courteous

one of the most adaptable

characters in the entire show.

I’ve written several posts about the various references Wei Wuxian makes -- whether it’s poetry (or prose) that Wei Wuxian himself quotes, or innovating on a line of his own, he’s routinely one of the most cultured characters in each scene. He’s capable of walking up and down the sliding scale of formality, of register, of poetry, of style, as the moment requires. It just so happens that he often chooses the most informal register, the most casual of manners.

Part of this, I think, has to do with his upbringing in the Jiang Sect -- class is a recurring topic/theme in CQL, and a lot of it gets funneled through Wei Wuxian, who exists in a transgressive/liminal space. He’s the son of a servant, and is also a talented cultivator in his own right; he seems to be a carefree, flippant young gongzi but also has vast depths of insight and compassion; he has both a connection to a more pedestrian, more ordinary, more earthly world as well as access to the spirituality of the exclusive, elite, and elitist cultivational world. Wei Wuxian becomes a chameleon, capable of performing at whatever level of society is required of him, and this manifests in his language as well. He can do perfectly formal, self-referential third-person with Lan Yi; he can go toe-to-toe in cocky swagger with Xue Yang.

And there are advantages to being more informal -- Wei Wuxian teases Lan Wangji for this when they try to gather information, because there’s no way people would feel comfortable opening up to that icy expression, Lan Zhan, come on, the gossip is best in the taverns. Wei Wuxian teases stories, information, entire plot points out of minor characters with that silver tongue of his. Wei Wuxian, to borrow a sociological term, is capable of passing in a way that is both deployable skill and coping method.

Wei Wuxian can be exquisitely well-mannered, but, for the most part, actively decides not to be. He looks at the rules of courtesy in society and goes “no thanks,” which is how he annoys Lan Wangji into becoming friends with him. He looks at the expectations of society and goes “no thanks,” which is how he can initiate revolutions, whether it’s through his alternative cultivation or refusal to bow down to oppressors. Wei Wuxian can conform to society -- he simply chooses not to.

This is is why the moments where Wei Wuxian performs etiquette with exquisite form and appropriate address are often some of the most emotional scenes in the entire show.

There is, of course, worst reunion ever in episode 20, where Wei Wuxian looks Lan Wangji in the eye, bows, and calls him first by his courtesy name, then by his title. Wei Wuxian weaponizes the conventions of etiquette to push Lan Wangji away.

Likewise, in episode 30, Wei Wuxian bows to Jiang Yanli with tears in his eyes -- because he sacrificed the right to call her shijie when he seceded from the Jiang Sect, and must therefore accord her the appropriate courtesy. In this case, Wei Wuxian’s adherence to etiquette is his own recognition of the changed status, as well as the sacrifice he asked Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli to make (that is, to let him go).

And to a certain extent, this linguistic flexibility is something that everyone has -- most of us, I think, are proficient both in the language of memes/internet slang as well as academic discourse -- but I inclined to say that Wei Wuxian takes it up a level to linguistic virtuosity. He has a sharp wit, a keen ear, and poems for days; he has both the guts and the inclination to jettison society and/or societal opinion if he disagrees with them. Wei Wuxian is a force to be reckoned with, and not just on a cultivational level, but also on a linguistic, literary level as well.

#ask and ye shall receive #Wei Wuxian #if I'm not mistaken he's... the only character who quotes poetry in the show?#which isn't to say that other characters don't know poems #on the contrary elite education in ancient China pretty much dictates that they'd all have the classics memorized #but (waves vaguely at ahistoricity as it goes by)#and it's not like other characters don't have this linguistic changeability as well #Jiang Cheng CAN speak on the formal sect leader register that Jin Guangshan and Lan Xichen do #he just looks horribly uncomfortable doing it bless his heart #anyway I guess this is like a spiritual sequel to the Lan Wangji - linguistic register post #what a throwback

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songofclarity · 3 years

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I must have missed that part where it was someone other than Nie MingJue who let Meng Yao join his Sect? Who stood up to all the people who would insult Meng Yao for his low birth? Who looked Meng Yao in the face and acknowledged him as a capable and intelligent person who deserved opportunities in life? Who wrote a recommendation letter to Meng Yao's dad and Sect Leader to give Meng Yao a fighting chance to get to where he wanted to go? Who became sworn brothers with Meng Yao in an attempt to guide him on the right path and toward his full potential?

These are not the actions of someone who is oblivious to class and social expectations. When Meng Yao served tea at Hejian, when all the other guests in the room snubbed him, when Lan XiChen thanked him and drank from the cup, Lan XiChen was not starting something new. Lan XiChen was adding support to what Nie MingJue was already, publicly doing on Meng Yao’s behalf.

Nie MingJue, as shown at the cave, is not blind to how Meng Yao is treated by others. He absolutely doesn’t tolerate it, but he also doesn’t believe what those people think should matter in the scope of things.

Nie MingJue, "A proper man should carry himself with proud righteousness. There's no need to care for the talk of those idlers." (ERS, ch 48)

No, Nie MingJue is not dismissing what those people were saying. He’s simply pointing out that Meng Yao shouldn’t feel bad about what they are saying because their words do not define him. In a story that warns about the dangers of rumors and mob mentality, Nie MingJue is one of our shining protagonists. He makes decisions for himself and gives opportunities where they are due. No one save Lan XiChen, whom he trusts as a good and honorable person, has any sway over him. Rumors and the power of the mob simply do not work on Nie MingJue, who lives by doing the right thing rather than what is convenient, which is why Jin GuangYao and the Jin Sect find it more convenient to kill him later.

And no, Nie MingJue does not treat Meng Yao like a servant! Nie MingJue has never treated Meng Yao like a servant. Please stop saying that because it’s wrong. It ignores everything we know about Nie MingJue’s character and Meng Yao’s aggressive self-agency policy.

[On] the front lines, one person was used as though there were six; there wasn't any space for maids and servants at all. And so, these everyday trivialities had also been willingly accepted by [Meng Yao], his deputy. (ERS, ch. 48)

Meng Yao was Nie MingJue’s deputy (he became an important person because Nie MingJue saw him as a person first!) and Meng Yao volunteered for his roles. Why? Because he is ambitious and the best place to find opportunities and learn things is to be in the middle of things.

(Nie disciple,) "Resigned your ass. He's put so much energy into this. Don't you see how hard he's working? Everyday he runs around trying to get on everyone's good sides. He's sick for hoping to accomplish something so that his dad accepts him." (ERS, ch. 48)

Meng Yao is smart and opportunistic and he is thriving in the Nie Sect as Nie MingJue’s deputy. With Nie MingJue having acknowledged him, no one dares say a word against him. All they can do is just suffer dehydration and not drink the tea Meng Yao offers them in their silent protest. Lan XiChen is the second pillar holding up this arch and giving Meng Yao room to breath, but the one who gave Meng Yao a place out of the rain was Nie MingJue.

Nie MingJue never sees the detestable and non-empathetic side of Meng Yao until Meng Yao leaves the Nie Sect. Meng Yao murders the Jin disciple, Meng Yao murders the Nie disciples, Meng Yao abuses Nie MingJue in Nightless City, Meng Yao is protecting Xue Yang at the cost of dozens or hundreds of innocent people who don’t want to be murdered by Xue Yang, and Meng Yao insinuates that he’s willing to sacrifice everyone else for his own ambitions before he’ll ever put his own neck on the line.

Nie MingJue’s main dispute with Meng Yao is a moral one first and foremost. He never accuses Meng Yao or Jin GuangYao of being a bad person or one who is nonredeemable. Nie MingJue gives Jin GuangYao opportunities to redeem himself until the utter, bitter end. His dispute is that Meng Yao/Jin GuangYao is killing a lot of people who should not be killed. His dispute is that Meng Yao/Jin GuangYao is sacrificing innocent people for his own political gain.

This is LEAGUES away from the Meng Yao whom Nie MingJue sought after the battle for doing a good job in his duties at protecting the common folk. The problem is that Meng Yao never protected those people because they deserved to be protected. He protected them because he was doing a good job. Within the Nie Sect, protecting people was a job. Within the Jin Sect, killing people is a job. Jin GuangYao is never shown feeling for them in any way -- which is at odds with Nie MingJue, who feels very, very deeply over the murder of his Nie subordinates to the point he’s wiling to commit suicide to give them justice.

Nie MingJue is part of the elite but he also shows, repeatedly, that his role is to protect and defend, not to rule and dominate. (This is a novel-centered rambling but there’s a whole other conversation that needs to be had about CQL, Nie MingJue, and that chair.) The common folk deserve to live and the strong are meant to protect the weak. Meng Yao benefited from Nie MingJue using his status to give Meng Yao a hand-up in the world when no one else would.

Lan XiChen wields his pristine manners to defend Meng Yao to the rudeness in the room, but the only one he’s willing to speak to on Meng Yao’s behalf is Nie MingJue, Lan XiChen’s closest companion. Not even Lan XiChen writes a recommendation on Meng Yao’s behalf for having saved his life. Because it’s always been Nie MingJue, the one willing to forgive and accept and protect, who was Meng Yao and later Jin GuangYao’s greatest ally.

Therefore it comes to reason that if Lan XIChen can reconcile Nie MingJue and Meng Yao, Nie MingJue will continue to do what Lan XiChen, for one reason and another, cannot: tell people to shut the fuck up and think about what they are saying.

It just so happens the one who needs to be told to shut the fuck up and think about what he’s saying, what he’s doing, is actually Jin GuangYao.

Meng Yao joined the Jin sect the first time because Nie MingJue supported him to do so. Meng Yao returned to the Jin sect as a war hero because Nie MingJue supported him to do so -- even though by all rights NIe MingJue should have killed him for what he had done to the Jin disciple and at Nightless City, spy or no spy. Meng Yao was acknowledged by his father in large part because Nie MingJue forgave him for his crimes and offered him another opportunity to succeed at life. There was no way Jin GuangShan could let Nie MingJue and Lan XiChen gain all the glory. It looked bad for Jin GuangShan to continue to pretend that his now war-hero son didn’t exist, thus Jin GuangShan was forced to acknowledge Meng Yao as well despite it being abundantly clear that Jin GuangShan still didn’t want him.

So Meng Yao now Jin GuangYao is where he wants to be. He wants to preserve and use the elitist establishment that Nie MingJue had shoved aside in order to give Jin GuangYao his first chance at opportunity. The entitled system that kicked Meng Yao down the Koi Tower steps was the same system Jin GuangYao was defending when Nie MingJue kicked him down as well.

And the moment Nie MingJue showed he meant to protect and help other pitiful and innocent people from abuses caused by the system that kicked Meng Yao down the stairs that first time, Jin GuangYao murdered him for it.

But just because Jin GuangYao is an ungrateful little shit doesn’t mean what Nie MingJue did or tried to do to help him doesn’t matter or didn’t happen. It just means that Jin GuangYao is an ungrateful little shit. Please stop trying to make Jin GuangYao’s sins a fault in Nie MingJue’s character. Nie MingJue did his best for him, which is why Jin GuangYao lived in fear of him until the very end.

Nie MingJue, "Well you've really discerned where [HuaiSang's] heart lies, haven't you?"

Jin GuangYao smiled, "Of course. Isn't that what I'm the best at? The only person whom I can't discern is you, Brother." (Ch. 49)

Jin GuangYao never did a deed without expecting to gain something from it while Nie MingJue gave and forgave and asked for nothing in return. How terrifying it must have been for Jin GuangYao to be in a debt of kindness that he could never repay with all the acquired riches at his possession.

#i've been doing nothing but hw and studying for 3 weeks and #i get time off at last only to see some unsightly takes for nmj #please stop acting like nmj is oblivious or ignorant #stop pretending that nmj either wasn't kind to jgy #or that his kindness was accidental!#now that this hell post is out of my system #time to go do something fun lol #nie mingjue #jin guangyao #jgy vs nmj #please DNI with shipping on this #mdzs thoughts #mdzs quotes

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vespertineflora · 4 years

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How do you think things would have changed if JGY had stayed with the Nie?

oh anon that IS the question, isn’t it? :)

are we assuming novel!jgy? i’m going novel!jgy route, because cql needed to turn Jgy’s grey morality into something a bit darker (in order to lighten wwx’s grey morality), therefore making him seem more more keen on murder and ambition than his novel self is

so i see a couple possibilities! there’s a chance that jgy just continued working in the Nie Sect, helping plan battles, organize troops, run things in the UR, etc, whatever his other duties as deputy happened to be. the course of the war would certainly change! it might take years longer, there might be more casualties, and if the fight dragged on long enough, there’s even a chance that resources could have run low and really endangered the chance of winning against the Wens. or maybe, with jgy’s help as a strategist, they would win more battles than they lost, and eventually win! i do imagine the war taking much longer in that scenario though.

in this case, once the war is finally over, jgy has earned respect as a strategist or even a general, and at the next banquet, jgy accompanies nmj, his father is forced to confront him... but maybe that’s it. jgy was important to the war efforts, but he didn’t earn himself a war hero title, so jgs isn’t forced to recognize him as his son. maybe jgy meets jzx and they get along! maybe they stay in written communication, because jzx will be the next sect leader and it might be politically advantageous to strike up a bit of a relationship with the person who’s second in commend in the nie sect! jgy returns to nie sect and continues his work as nmj’s deputy, feeling secure in his position after earning the respect of disciples who have slowly accepted him as a member of the sect. he learns song of clarity, plays is for nmj daily to keep him calm, nmj lives for a few years longer than he otherwise would have... and when nhs is forced into his role as sect leader, he has his very helpful gege at his side to keep everything running as efficiently and smoothly as before.

i have and will CONTINUE to maintain that jgy wasn’t greedy for power! he just wanted stability! he wanted respect, and he wanted to feel secure in his position! i think nie sect, especially once they moved past the sensationalist gossip and started respecting jgy as nmj’s capable right hand man, was a good environment for jgy to find this.

the other possibility is that jgy sees how the tide of the war is changing gradually in the wens’ favor, and he approaches nmj with a plan: stage a fall out between them, allowing jgy to defect and join the wens undercover and act as a spy. nmj is resistant, maybe needs some convincing, but eventually, is talked into it. they stage a vicious fight of some sort, and jgy leaves.

a few years later, when nmj winds up captured in nightless city, he knows the jgy has been feeding them information from the wens, and he knows how much he’s been risking the past few years to do it. he and jgy catch eyes, if only briefly, a knowing look exchanged between them. do the disciples with nmj know? do they keep their mouths shut, saving them from being killed instantly? or maybe they don’t know (secrets needed to be kept) and speak up and jgy has no choice but to kill them, making sure it’s a quick death, a mercy, to keep wrh from devising a far more extravagant death for them. in the end, wrh and nmj exchange blows, and in the last moment, jgy kills wrh and drags nmj to safety, and when nmj recovers, he’s still furious and upset, but at least this time, he understands. he knew what jgy had sacrificed and what would be lost in everything had fallen apart in those final moments.

nmj takes jgy back to nie sect, because he is still his deputy. even if jgs is suddenly more motivated to claim jgy as his son, to claim some glory of the war for his own sect.... qinghe is jgy’s home. it’s the only home he’s ever known outside of the brothel, and nmj wants him there. things are tense for a while, as nmj copes with jgy killing those disciples, and as jgy copes with his massive ptsd from being one misstep from a painful death within the wen sect, but they do cope. they work together, and working together reminds them how well they do it, how smoothly everything runs, how well they know each other, and eventually things settle (cue the above ending, playing clarity until eventually nmj passes)

the jins don’t have as much room to be evil and nefarious, jgy isn’t there to tell jzxuan about his cousin’s plan, so maybe jxzun is killed, but jzxuan and yanli live. what happens to wwx in this au? well, killing an asshole cousin isn’t nearly so bad as killing a sect heir, so maybe the siege happens or maybe it doesn’t. is xue yang even recruited by the jins in this au? he wouldn’t have jgy’s help controlling him in this, so it seems like xue yang would be more of a liability than anything.

(and this last bit is going to be me pushing a nieyao agenda :) after the high emotions of what happened after nightless city, after slowly learning their way around each other again, their feelings for each other are at the forefront of their thoughts, they manage to have a tense conversation and air out their concerns and afterwards feel... more settled. they understand each other more fully... maybe some time later, jgy falls asleep at his desk, wakes up from a nightmare in a panic and nmj comes across him, calms him down.... maybe............... they kiss :)))))) and maybe that kissing leads to more and MAYBE someone suggests that......... what could really help nmj manage his qi.............. is some good old fashioned dual cultivation :))))))))))))) jgy’s golden core gets stronger, nmj’s qi becomes more balanced and between that and song of clarity, nmj manages to live another two decades in relative peace with his nie-furen!!!!)

#jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #nieyao #mdzs #Anonymous #answered a thing

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