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withthewindinherfootsteps · 9 months ago

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Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One

For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.

But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.

There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.

But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.

(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)

Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice

If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?

…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.

It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case?

Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.

This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.

We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.

Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.

If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too �� but we’ll explore that more later.

The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present).

Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown.

Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level, is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).

So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it.

Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him.

That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:

Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation

(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)

Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.

(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)

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*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!

#there are three parts to this #part two dwelling on how wwx not dwelling on tragedy is a conscious choice #part three about how that choice and wwx’s preferences are ALSO behind what’s shown and what’s not #i originally wanted to post them all at once but life was very busy and they haven’t been finished yet #and i wanted to release SOMETHING on this day (it is after midnight but i haven’t slept yet and in a lot of timezones it’s not yet)#judging by the current length of it it’s probably better to be posting individual parts anyway…#so here we go #a complete version will br put on ao3 when done #also because i’m not sure where to put it in the meta – i’m aware external circumstances did impact this too #eg mxtx not wanting to write power-up/transformation sequences influencing her not to write wwx’s time in the burial mounds #i’m also aware a lot of this could be writing efficiency and not the deeper meanings i’ll (mostly later) assign to it #ultimately there’s not enough evidence either way to say if this was intentional or not #(i don’t doubt mxtx is an amazing writer but *i* feel i’m overanalysing while writing this which i do tend to do)#but even if it wasn’t it’s still a part of the story #and it still remains one of the things i love it the most #so i WILL explore it (taking the approach of death of the author here – i do believe context is important but i just love this throughline-#-so much)#xiantober #xiantober day 1 #mdzs meta #my meta #wei wuxian #wwx #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #魔道祖师 #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #gdc

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witchcraftandburialdirt · 6 months ago

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✧ ━━ 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐃 ♡ 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐘 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 @windchaser 𝚂𝙴𝙽𝚃 ♡ 𝙵𝙾𝚁 𝙼𝙾𝙳𝙴𝚁𝙽 𝚅𝙴𝚁𝚂𝙴

HIGH | ●●●●● | LOW

━ Haruko is pretty pretenseless as a person, a lot less worried about people hurting him than Robin, and due to this he's been able to really grow and expand his horizons and relationships. Haru has never had issues making friends, he never bullshits or lies to people ━ and has a very warm, inviting aura. This extended naturally when he met Yone in their youth, and they both hit it off right away in terms of chemistry and bonding. I think Haru was the exact level of brash to ignite the flame under Yone's ass to get him to not give up, and he's genuine enough for Yone to read and tell that Haruko means every word he says, and that he isn't planning on leaving him in this difficult time ━ or after if Yone will still want him around. I like to think that Haruko might have even housed Yone at some point while Yone was waiting for his own apartment's move in day, since Haru already lived in the city. He would 100% offer that. He adores him, he loves the dynamic of their relationship ━ and given he's Robin's foil it acts in a mirrored way for Yone too. Haru had a different upbringing and different trauma compared to Robin, not only that but a total 180 trauma response; and he's mentally healthy enough to let Yone in, which makes a safe environment for Yone to unmask and relax a little too. I need to think about Yone being invited to holidays and him having to adjust to how loud and informal the Nakasone family is comparatively. At least Yvonne and Hinata ━ Ren, Haru's father, is a lot closer in his actions to what Yone might be used to. But I do wonder if upon meeting Haru's father, though, and if seeing his stuck, stiff, cold personality and how Haru dislikes him might worry Yone about how Haru actually feels about himself. Thankfully though, I think this worry would, again, unlike Robin and Yone, push them closer as I can't see a world where Yone would not accept the responsibility of his own feelings AND where Haru's intuition wouldnt't tell him that something is wrong. Not to mention the sincerity of both of their personalities ━ Haru wouldn't hesitate to confront Yone and clear up the misunderstanding, thus resolving the issue. While Robin and Yone's relationship fails in the sense that they've skipped fundamental steps in knowing eachother but still are kindred spirits ━ Yone and Haru's relationship flourishes because they are so different that they can't possibly understand eachother without being proactive about it, which they both are. Robin and Yone are kindred, but know nothing. Yone and Haru could not be more different than eachother, but have a deep understanding because they opened up and allowed the other in. It was risky, sure, but I think in the end for both of them it was so worth it. I don't get to discuss them a lot and I'm really excited to grow their interactions, so I'm probably writing a lot; but it's just ... I don't know, nice? I love that Haru is the sun and the sea, he's bright and wide reaching and loves the freedom and wild of being alive ━ and I love that Yone flourishes in that light and explores new experiences he might have not otherwise if he stayed in the dark or on the shore. I love that Yone can ground Haru and act less as an achor for his more flighty ambitions when he needs to be, but moreso is like a buoy ━ carried by Haru's current, but there if he needs to rest and stay put, and maybe if he's gone too far and needs a way home. I'll shut up for now, but they make me happy.

#── 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐍’𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐒𝐄 … 【 ᴀꜱᴋ ᴍᴇᴍᴇ 】#windchaser #ive never been a fan of yone being perceived as an anchor solely #yeah he's full of control and efficiency and is prorductive and effective in his methods but #I dont think he's permanently stuck in the sand #or maybe he was #and haru's current was just a bit too powerful :)#so now he has to be swept out and experience life and the world #me: ill shut up about them #also me: and then I didnt #Now that I'm exploring more with haru in modern?#idk i feel #way more than I expected about them tbh?#so sweet #so healthy!! so easy!!!#WAH #not saying they dont have spats ofc #but #they are mature and accountable enough to fix it #[ 𝟎𝟐 ] — ✧.* 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐔𝐊𝐎 𝐍𝐀𝐊𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐄 ...【 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙲𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝙱𝚕𝚞𝚎 𝚂𝚔𝚢 】#➤ 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯

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