#NMJ Analyzes

[ninjamelissajulien]

a barbie essay that no one asked for or will even care about but I'm gonna write it anyway :)

I hate the Barbie Movie (2023) Ken. It completely missed the point of Ken and his connection to Barbie. I get that it is a societal commentary on men/toxic masculinity/the patriarchy but the fact that the movie makes a huge deal over "women don't need to solve men's problems for them" then has Barbie (Robbie) solve Ken's problem kind of ruined the message. A lot of what the movie was going for went way too heavy-handed in social commentary while also trying to be silly creating a mix of oil and water. There was no reason for the businessmen to go to Barbieland, or even have them leave the building as they offered nothing after Barbie escaped. The poppy radio music, for the most part, distracts from the story. Having a woman as beautiful as Margot Robbie said that she wasn't beautiful anymore while having her look normal, and the narrator poking at that fact was a bit too tongue-in-cheek. Barbie is beautiful, no matter what doll she is because she sees herself as beautiful. It's self-confidence, not narcissism.

Ken, in the movie, is a selfish prick who can only see himself in Barbie's shadow. He only sees himself in terms of Barbie's boyfriend/love. Barbie never reciprocates that idea. Barbie doesn't owe him anything. She never leads him on or teases him, she doesn't even truly flirt with him. She's just friends with all of the Ken's and Allen. Ken is the one who tries to kiss her, then gets miffed when she doesn't respond. He's the one constantly pushing the idea of being with her. He becomes a misogynistic jerk who spreads the patriarchal idea to the other Kens, forcing toxic masculinity into an area that was a safe haven for women and Allen. Again, I understand that it's a social commentary, but I think it went way too far into it to the point that it lost its own messages.

I absolutely despise the fact that the teen daughter called Barbie a "fascist". Are you serious? I get that the term "Bimbo" has been connotated to Barbie (the dumb blonde stereotype, the 'perfect body' with no brain, only focusing on fashion/beauty rather than empowering women stereotypes) but that in no way deserves a term meant for white supremacy/Nazis. Society changed its view on Barbie, connotating it with negative terms rather than the empowerment of girls/women/even young boys. Yes, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and it is still under the brand of Mattel. Still, the ideals of what Barbie is should be finding yourself, seeing yourself in new ways, and believing in what you can become without restraints. Barbie dolls, in recent years, have become exceptionally diverse in appearance and ethnicities, even having a Down syndrome girl, amputee Barbies, Vitiligo, and so many more.

In terms of spreading a positive message to young girls, the original Barbie Movies (2001-Present) have better visuals on showing strength while having male Kens that support the Barbie protagonist without forcing relationships. In later years, the movies even drop the idea of Barbie ending up in a relationship by the end of the movie (i.e. Starlight Adventures, Three Musketeers, Diamond Castle [this one, arguably is Queer implied], Mermaid Tales 1/2, and Princess Charm School just to name a few).

In my personal opinion, the early Barbie Movies (Barbie in the Nutcracker [2001], Barbie as Rapunzel [2002], Barbie Swan Lake [2003], and Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper [2004]) have the best feminist messages as well as Nutcracker/Princess and the Pauper having the best versions of Ken.

Barbie in the Nutcracker: Clara is a responsible teenager (approx. 16-18) who still shows outbursts of being angry, upset, cautious, and caring. She is caring and protective of the Nutcracker from the moment she is gifted him by Aunt Elizabeth, even to the point of talking gently to him and fixing his arm after Tommy accidentally breaks it. Eric sees this and, in turn, becomes protective over her but not obsessively. He cares for her, is gentle around her, even the way he talks softens.

Clara is willing to do what it takes to save him, even facing her fear and allowing the fairies to take her to the Palace of Sweets to save Eric. She has a moment of doubt, she could always just leave Parthenia using the locket, but "I'm their only hope." She chooses bravery. She chooses to stand between Eric and the Mouse King, protecting him and standing up against the tyrant. She even holds her ground as the Mouse King is about to hit her with a spell. Clara is brave, but also kind.

Eric is loyal but also fearful. He knows of the sorrows of his people, but because of his curse, he doesn't want to reveal himself as the missing Prince. The people of Parthenia blamed Eric for the pain and suffering, thinking that he abandoned them in their time of need when Eric was always searching for the one thing that could not only break the curse upon him but save the people of Parthenia- the Sugar Plum Princess. So much of Eric's dialogue, especially with Clara, is gentle but also somber. He cares for his people, he spends his whole time trying to repair the damage that the Mouse King caused.

"I... I didn’t want to be the prince when I had the chance… now I don’t deserve to be…" [...] "But my subjects think less of me than they do the Mouse King!... My only hope is to find the Sugar Plum Princess so she can help me restore my people’s happiness… I owe them that."

"Heh, least I could do for an old friend." [Here, he still shows respect for someone he grew up beside, not only in saving his life but seeing him as an equal].

"I’m only half the reason." [Eric is being humble, sharing respect and honor with Clara in terms of the group finding the island across the Sea of Storms.]

"There’s more to being a king than having a crown! ... You’ll never gain their loyalty until you’ve earned their respect!" [...] "Well... that’s for the people to decide." [Throughout his journey, Eric learned how to earn respect rather than take it by being royal. He proved himself in front of his people, who, in turn, accepted him as their King].

~you might notice I'm a bit biased toward BitN~

Alternatively, Julian/Dominick in PatP are just as respectful toward Anneliese and Erika. Julian knows that in his place as a tutor, he would never be able to marry Anneliese since she is a princess. Anneliese knows, just as well, that it is her birthright and duty to tend to the kingdom in any way she can- even if that means sacrificing her own happiness for her people. Anneliese would rather be studying science with Julian, but instead, she was to be wed off to the mysterious king Dominick. Julian knew Anneliese better than anyone [minus Seraphina], to the point that he knew something was wrong just by the scent of the stationary. Lilac, not rose. He risks his life to save her.

Dominick doesn't force himself onto "Anneliese" [Erika] but rather takes the time to get to know her and earn her trust. The song "If You Love Me For Me" is meant to show that their hearts yearn for the true sense of the self, rather than the facade and royal titles. Dominick knows that Erika wouldn't mean harm, and in turn, trusts her and helps her break out of prison. Dominick even promises to wait for Erika as she travels the world as a singer, allowing Erika the chance to find herself and enjoy her dream before she chooses to return to him. Even if she hadn't come back, he knew that his love would be for her and her alone.

Eric, Dominick, and Julian are fantastic representations of a loving Ken. All three are smart, memorable, independent male characters who can stand on their own, but also are caring towards Clara, Anneliese, and Erika. Even Barbie in the Three Musketeers goes after the idea of the patriarchy, and even hypocritical ideology. That the Prince would rather believe that a man could fly before a woman could be a musketeer.

TLDR; if you want positive Barbie role models, watch the OG Films.

*Quotes copied from Barbie Movies Wiki- Barbie in the Nutcracker transcript*

@lovely-english-rose , my Barbie bestie, feel free to add your thoughts as well

[xiyao-feels]

Thinking about brotherly relationships in MDZS again... honestly, this is probably in part a CQL vs MDZS thing, but I feel like LWJ's rebelliousness can be kind of overstated by fandom? He's honestly usually very dutiful, and listens to his brother and uncle; it's really only on the one subject that he is rebellious. Similarly I think LXC's chill is kind of overstated—or, no, rather him being chill is conflated with him not exercising authority over LWJ, when in fact a) he's absolutely chill and also b) we very frequently see him exercising authority over LWJ.

(Which isn't to say that LWJ isn't massively indulged; he is! You can see both authority and indulgence in the rabbit scene, e.g.)

And honestly I think within the structure of their society that aspect of their relationship is essential to their functioning as well as they do. It's not the only thing that's needed, of course, but...man, okay, look at JC and WWX. They absolutely loved each other very very much; but I'm honestly not sure it would have worked out happily even without the Wen, because WWX pretty much doesn't acknowledge JC's authority over him, and that was one thing when they were kids but it really is different when JC is sect leader. I don't know! It's a mess.

[larothoughts]

fem!jiggy thoughts (part 2: the war)

part 1: qinghe nie

hmmm so this part of the au I've been thinking of is a lot less coherent. some of these are just events i imagine happen with lots of holes in-between. i'll have to think of the logic between them all later when i'm smarter lol.

lan xichen arrives

meng yao, after being publicly accepted as a daughter to save face with the nie sect, is shuffled away to the edge of the jin estate and 'forgotten.' no maids, servants, etc. she has to do everything herself. no one is willing to acknowledge her and incite the wrath of madam jin. she isn't allowed to train with the jin disciples. she isn't even allowed in koi tower. she had to give jin guangshan a thinly-veiled threat that her starving to death would likely give nmj incentive to kick down the jin's door just to receive a stipend that allowed her to eat.

it's soul-crushing, but meng yao has already built herself up from nothing once. rather than despair at everything she's lost, meng yao takes this transitional time to analyze the lanling situation.

it's a mess.

madam jin is a tyrant whose hold over the servants is near-absolute. her ignoring meng yao is actually the best case scenario, since madam jin definitely has the power to making meng yao's life a living hell if she wants. jin zixuan is... spoiled and naive in a bad way, the kind of way that infuriates meng yao because he is allowed to be naive. he doesn't care that he's excluded from most sect matters other than in swords/bow training and night hunts. as lanling jin's power is almost entirely political/monetary, this means he has no real power at all.

jin guangshan is more of a mixed bag. on one hand, meng yao is an illegitimate child guaranteed to piss off madam jin. on the other hand, at least she's a girl illegitimate child, perfect for use as a political pawn and no real threat to jin zixuan's claim to sect leadership. on a third hand, the fact that nmj essentially forced jgs to acknowledge her hurts his pride, because who does this upstart brat think he is? thinking he could get one over on him???

on the final hand, meng yao is a pretty girl just like her mother, and jgs always loves being surrounded... by pretty girls.

(meng yao is so so grateful sisi convinced her to eschew going to the jin sect after her mother's death. the way jgs looks at her makes her skin crawl, even if she sometimes uses his disgusting interest to her advantage when trying to keep madam jin from arranging an 'accident'.)

a few possible subplots during this arc: interacting with mianmian (she pities meng yao and understands her struggles as a woman in lanling jin, but she isn't in a good position to help even herself, much less meng yao;) sending letters to nie huaisang (who is VERY upset at nmj's actions but is powerless to change his mind;) and maybe even sending letters to lan xichen who one day stops replying.

so when meng yao, still living on the outskirts and having to venture out into lanling herself to run errands, finds an injured lxc in town-- she immediately sneaks him into her living quarters.

three-zun

now meng yao is familiar with lan xichen, and their relationship is complicated by their relationship(s) with nmj. the first layer is nmj and lxc's relationship, being close friends from childhood whose status as clan heirs/sect leaders prevented things from developing into anything more. even when meng yao was nmj's lover, she knew a part of his heart would always belong with xichen; hell, after getting to know him, part of her heart may belong to him too.

because the second layer is lxc and meng yao's relationship. during the cloud recesses lectures, lxc treated her as a fellow cultivator and not as someone barely above a servant. he knew how much nmj cherished her and so he showed her care because she meant so much to nmj. how could meng yao not love his earnest affection for the man she also loved?

it's different than her feelings for nmj, because nmj and lxc are incredibly different men.

nmj is a pragmatic man who loves honesty and honestly. while his love his unconditional, his acceptance relies on what he considers right and wrong. lxc's acceptance relies on whom he loves, whom he also loves unconditionally. this often results in a situation where nmj is viewed as judgmental/callous by refusing to fully accept the ones he loves (see nie huaisang as a good example of this); and lxc is viewed as passive and an enabler by refusing to condemn the actions of those he loves (see him not interfering with lan qiren unreasonably punishing lwj for him loving wwx)

all of this to say: in this awful situation where meng yao's actions resulted in her expulsion from the nie sect (despite knowing nmj still loves her, the fact that he rejected her stings like her parents abandoning her all over again,) lxc's appearance in lanling is like a beacon of hope.

a cynical reading would say meng yao cozies up to lxc just to secure her position in the gentry now that she's lost nmj. a kinder reading would say meng yao, appreciating lxc's unconditional love in the wake of her expulsion, finds herself incredibly motivated to live up to xichen's expectations of being a good person. knowing he forgives her transgressions makes her ironically more honest than she was with nmj, whom she actively hid things from because she knew he wouldn't approve.

so meng yao takes lxc in and nurses him back to health. her quarters are perfect because the servants won't ever stop by (scared of madam jin,) the jin cultivators won't care (mixture of being scared of madam jin, scared of 'ruining' jgs's political pawn, and looking down on her for being a woman,) and the townspeople won't tattle. the one group meng yao has managed to endear herself to are the lanling townsfolk. they've been suffering under pompous lanling jin cultivators who only help the wealthy for decades, this nice young lady who goes out of her way to help them is baby and they won't turn her in no matter what.

(i imagine at this point meng yao, being ignored, acts the way she did in qinghe aka like a young man, not caring a bit that she's alone with a man in her personal quarters. this part needs more fleshing out, tbd later when my brain comes back online.)

the wens

eventually, the wens give up scouring the town and storm koi tower. they demand lanling jin reveal any intel on lxc's location, knowing from reports he likely passed by. madam jin, knowing meng yao and lxc were familiar, can't resist the chance to get rid of her husband's embarrassing mistake by dragging her before them.

but of course meng yao has already smuggled lxc back into town at that point, and the wens find nothing in her chambers.

even more embarrassing, the wen see the poor conditions jgs's 'beloved daughter' is living in. little comments about how lanling jin couldn't even afford to provide for their family, how quaint, loses so much face for jgs he finally intervenes and moves meng yao into living quarters closer to the main family. while this definitely raises meng yao's position within lanling jin, it also means she can no longer hide lxc (she can't rely on the townsfolk's good will to keep him hidden forever.)

so she uses her move from one courtyard to another to slip lxc away, taking advantage of the hustle and bustle to disguise any carriages being rented out and horses used. she keys him into the butterfly talisman she managed to reverse engineer from watching jin disciples send each other messages across the estate-- so she can send him messages no matter where he is.

(now the exact state of xiyao at this point is something a smarter me needs to work on... mostly lxc's point of view.

when meng yao was a disciple of qinghe nie, lxc found himself charmed by her intelligence and sharp wit. if he had to give nmj to anyone, a-yao would certainly be his pick. in their male-dominated society where men can have multiple wives but women can't have multiple husbands, it was always going to end in only one of them marrying a-yao.

being a nie disciple, it made sense for that to be nmj. but what nmj cannot forgive, lxc can; and if nmj will not find a wife in a-yao... then perhaps lxc can do so instead.)

the indoctrination camp happens. jin zixuan and the other clan heirs are sent away, lxc is hopefully able to use the busy roads to hide his path back to the cloud recesses, and meng yao becomes very aware of how much jgs wants to suck up to wen ruohan. even before they find out wen chao had left jin zixuan for dead, meng yao could already see jin guanshan planning ahead.

(that's what she would do. the most disconcerting thing about spending time with her father in such close quarters is realizing how many traits she had in common with him.)

when jin zixuan returns, jgs makes a big show of welcoming him home. he 'shudders to think' how the future of lanling jin would be like if they had to rely on meng yao to continue their lineage. the implication infuriates madam jin (did he really suggest his illegitimate daughter may inherit the sect if jzx dies?) but raises alarm bells for meng yao. there is no way jgs would ever allow her to inherit, so making a bit show of it here can only mean one thing: he's talking her up like a product he's going to sell.

so meng yao isn't surprised at all when he announces that he is negotiating a marriage between his illegitimate but still blood-related "only" daughter to wen rouhan's heir, wen xu.

off to nightless city

madam jin is quickly on board. no one else in the sect protests or even cares. she's being thrown into the lion's den like a sacrificial lamb and meng yao refuses to let the wen take her life.

war is coming. everyone knows it, including jgs. marrying her to the wens is genius: if the wens win, then lanling jin has a connection to the wens' inner circle. if they lose, jgs can denounce meng yao is illegitimate (he was forced to accept her because of those darn nies) and let her be executed for 'being a wen.'

it's lose-lose for her the moment they take their bows, and so the path forward is simple: until the war is over, meng yao must not marry wen xu. she can't stop jgs from betrothing her to him, so what meng yao needs to do is keep them in the betrothal period for as long as humanly possible.

eventually everyone agrees to meng yao moving to the wen sect and living there for a trial period, because despite being jgs' daughter, she was only recently recognized. this is to make sure meng yao is an 'appropriate' bride for wen xu, at least according to wrh and jgs.

while jgs probably doesn't care at all if she's taken to nightless city and assaulted/killed etc. right away, meng yao obviously does not want that to happen. using xue yang's words after his escape, she rightfully deduces that wrh accepted the betrothal not because she is a jin, but because she was nmj's former right-hand woman. she has intel he wants, and all she has to do is convince him she's amenable to betraying the nies of her own volition. let him think he can convince her to switch sides with sugar instead of the stick, because getting her on his side would help him destroy the biggest threat to the wens in this upcoming war.

the night before she leaves for qishan, meng yao sends a messenger butterfly to lxc. she will use the opportunity within nightless city to give him information to help the war effort. it is the most a political pawn like her can do. she does not send a butterfly to nmj, who she was also able to key in out of sheer familiarity with his spiritual signature. because nmj is so honest, he needs to think she betrayed him. if he even catches a whiff of her possible double-agenting, he won't react properly, and wrh is a terrifying ruler for a reason.

lxc, on the other hand, is very unlikely to come face-to-face with wrh. he is also more passive and harder to read. more importantly, lxc still has a good opinion of meng yao for saving him. he'll believe her without question, and in a tumultuous time when even meng yao isn't sure where her loyalties lie other than towards "i have to survive," she finds his faith in her addicting. he is a steady rock in a sea of uncertainty, and she knows she won't ever have to worry about him doubting her if she sends him reports instead of to nmj.

the sunshot campaign

this portion roughly follows canon, with meng yao endearing herself to wrh once the war begins as the perfect, ruthless daughter-in-law. there's probably some subplot with wen qing as well: both women are considered important to wrh's cause, both are at his side for dubious reasons and with questionable survival odds. ultimately, they loathe each other; they both get in each other's way in their game to withstand wrh's moods.

canon progresses. when wen ruohan loses patience with the long betrothal (it's war time, marriages have been conducted in even shorter time,) meng yao arranges for wen xu's death at nmj's hand.

she would have preferred lxc to do the honors as revenge for the cloud recesses' burning, but for the sake of her plan it has to be nmj. it gives wrh incentive to capture nmj, to set up the scene meng yao's been waiting for. because betraying nmj is the final act that will solidify wrh's trust in her. meng yao is a great actor, but wrh is far too shrewd. the only way to make her lashing out believable... is to lash out for real.

losing her standing with the nies had hurt meng yao to the core; it was the first time she was cast aside after she'd gotten used to being accepted (which hurts worse than being cast out by a stranger.) while she puts on a brave face in lanling and knows intellectually that nmj set her up for success by limiting the rumors and forcing jgs to acknowledge her as a daughter... that doesn't change the fact that he cast her away. the same way her father did by not once coming back for her.

nmj thought handing her over to lanling was righteous, that jgs would take good care of his daughter. he probably even thought meng yao would be grateful, being able to take up the role she'd wanted as a child. he couldn't fathom a world where lanling was a cesspit more dangerous to her than even the worst misogynistic pigs of qinghe nie. he couldn't fathom a world where meng yao no longer yearned for her father's acknowledgement, not as long as she had nmj's.

now she doesn't even have that. so yes, she killed her former sect members without a shred of guilt. she beat nmj with all the viciousness she'd kept bottled up. she enjoyed it,

that's what made the act real enough to trick wrh, because it was real. loving and hating nmj are not exclusive. in fact, she's certain he feels the same way about her. if any other nie cultivator had been caught murdering their brethren, nmj may have very well demanded their execution. but he sent meng yao off to lanling with honors. he still loved her even as he condemned her, and that makes the bitter part of herself hate him even more.

especially when she finally kills wrh and reveals herself to be working alongside lxc the entire time. lxc is ecstatic and so, so relieved meng yao managed to make it out the other side of the war alive. nmj instead sees the dead nie cultivators on the floor and condemns her further. that he doesn't seem to realize the true danger she'd put herself in to get to this point, because naivety is the privilege of the powerful.

regardless of his feelings, it doesn't change the fact that the war is over-- and meng yao was the one to deal the killing blow.

after the war

the landscape after the war is a mess. wwx used demonic cultivation to turn the tide in their favor. meng yao slaughtered her old sect mates in a cold bid to get wrh to lower his guard. jgs barely contributed to the war effort and used the after-party as the opportunity to seize political power, and actually succeeded.

with wen xu dead, meng yao's betrothal is obviously annulled. her return to lanling jin is unbearably awkward; no one had expected her to live after being shipped off to nightless city, much less come back as a war hero.

meng yao doesn't care. the only reason she came back to lanling jin was to receive actual, legitimate recognition of her place in the jin sect: legitimacy worthy of a sect leader's future wife.

when jin guangshan attempts to rename her jin guangyao, lan xichen innocently asks why his future wife, the great lianfang-zun, would be denied her generational character. one would think the jin were insulting the lans instead of forming an alliance with them, if he so clearly viewed meng yao as lesser even than her twit of a cousin jin zixun. so begrudgingly, meng yao becomes jin ziyao, shortly to become the future lan furen.

it's a fairy tale ending, one that meng yao has literally sacrificed blood, sweat and tears for. except it's not. and it's all wei wuxian's fault.

[tavina-writes]

NMJ, JGY, and Vices/Hobbies Meta

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about this particular quote from MDZS chapter 49, which is often cited as “NMJ has no hobbies canonically besides killing Wen and practicing saber” and I have to say that after reading the Chinese version I don’t? Necessarily agree? I don’t think this is what that scene was about at all. 

This is going to be long, so meta under the cut. 

The Fantranslation of the passage in question:

Jin GuangYao nodded lightly and sat as he had been told, “Brother, if you’re concerned for HuaiSang, softer words would do no harm. Why this?”

Nie MingJue, “Even when a blade’s at his neck he’s still like this. Looks like he’ll always be a good-for-nothing.”

Jin GuangYao, “It isn’t that HuaiSang is a good-for-nothing, but that his heart lies somewhere else.”

Nie MingJue, “Well you’ve really discerned where his 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.”

He knew of people’s likes and dislikes so that he could find suitable solutions; he loved running errands and could do twice the work with half the effort. Thus, Jin GuangYao could be said to be quite a talent at analyzing others’ interests. Nie MingJue was the only person whom Jin GuangYao couldn’t probe out any useful information about. Wei WuXian saw this already, back then when Meng Yao was working under Nie MingJue. Women, liquor, riches—he touched none; art, calligraphy, antiques—a pile of ink and mud; the finest green tea leaves and dregs from a roadside booth—there was no difference. Meng Yao tried everything he could think of yet still couldn’t find if he was interested in anything beside training his saberwork and killing Wen-dogs. He really was a wall made of iron, impenetrable by even the sharpest blades.

And here's the official translation of the passage in question:

Knowing a person's likes and dislikes, and then catering to them accordingly, made getting things done easier. You could accomplish your goals with half as much effort. As such, the ability to discern people's desires was truly Jin Guangyao's forte. The only person he could never seem to pry any useful information out of was Nie Mingjue. Wei Wuxian had seen this firsthand, back when Meng Yao had worked under Nie Mingjue's command. The man never laid his hands on women, alcohol, or material wealth; paintings, calligraphy and antiques were all piles of ink and mud in his eyes. Top-grade premium tea tasted the same to him as dregs from a roadside stall. Meng Yao had racked his brain and still failed to identify anything Nie Mingjue might have a taste for, other than training with his saber every day and killing Wen dogs. He was truly an iron bastion, with no weaknesses to exploit. Volume 2, Page 319

I’ll go through with the chinese, my own translation based on what the Chinese says, [explanations of a few word choices along the way] and the analysis of what this actually means.

金光瑶微微颔首，依言落座，道：“大哥既是关心怀桑，稍平和些劝诫也是好的，何必如此？”

聂明玦道：“拿刀架在他脖子上逼都这样，看来是打死也不成器了。”

金光瑶道：“怀桑非是不成器，志不在此而已。”

聂明玦道：“你倒是把他志在何处摸得一清二楚。”

金光瑶笑笑，道：“那是自然，我岂非最擅长于此？唯一摸不出来的，也只有大哥了。”

Jin Guangyao nodded slightly, sank into a seat, and said "Since Da-ge is worried about Huaisang, wouldn't it be better to persuade him calmly?"

Nie Mingjue said, "Even when I've got a knife on his neck [aka even though NHS is being forced to do whatever] he's still like this, it seems like even if one beat him to death it wouldn't make him become good at it." <-- this seems to be a response to JGY's "why don't you try to persuade him to practice saber gently and calmly? to which Da-ge is like "if I can't get him to do it while yelling at him, lmao you think gently critiquing him will help? lol"

Jin Guangyao said, "It's not that Huaisang is useless, it's just that his strengths don't lie here [with the saber]" <-- I'm assuming that since NMJ and NHS were yelling about saber stuff before JGY got there that JGY and NMJ are still talking about NHS and the saber business

Nie Mingjue said, "It seems like you've got him entirely figured out."

Jin Guangyao laughed and said, "isn't that natural? I'm predisposed to this [figuring out people/finding out what they like] the only person who's still murky is Da-ge."

This particular conversation is not particularly antagonistic! JGY is trying to persuade NMJ that he could persuade NHS to practice the saber with honey and NMJ is like “I don’t think that’s probable.��� and then JGY says “oh, saber isn’t really NHS’s skillset!” and NMJ says “looks like you have him all figured out!” and then JGY laughs and goes “I’m a natural at figuring people out, but Da-ge you’re really mysterious to me. (also the only person mysterious to me, people who are called Jin Guangyao)” Like, idk, this doesn’t sound particularly terrifyingly argumentative or upsetting to me.

知人喜恶，对症下药，最好办事，事半功倍。因此金光瑶在揣摩人嗜好上可谓是一把好手。唯有聂明玦，金光瑶试探不出来任何有用的信息。

Knowing people's likes and dislikes and [here the prescribing medicine is an idiomatic saying for "and then appealing to the root of their nature"] is the best way to get things done, to get the most reward for one's effort. Jin Guangyao, therefore, could be said to be a good hand at figuring out people's hobbies. Only in the case of Nie Mingjue, could Jin Guangyao not find any useful information.

The word for “hobbies” herein is 嗜好 which is another word for addiction. Now, there ARE other more common words for “hobbies” in Chinese and they are more commonly used when not referring to addictions, they are: yule and aihao. Yulei being “amusement, entertainment, recreation,” and aihao being “hobby, interest, thing one enjoys and takes pleasure in.”

Pleco screenshots here for emphasis on word meanings:

So the more accurate translation here is "Jin Guangyao, therefore, could be said to be a good hand at figuring out people's addictions."

当年孟瑶在聂明玦手底下做事时魏无羡就见识过了，女·色酒财一样不沾，书画古董在他眼里就是一堆墨水泥巴，绝酿佳茗和路边摊茶渣在他喝来没有任何区别，

孟瑶挖空了心思也没试探出来他除了每天练刀和杀温狗以外有什么特别喜好，简直铜墙铁壁刀枪不入。

听他语带自嘲，聂明玦反而没那么反感了，道：“你少助长他这幅德性。”

In the past, when Meng Yao was still working under Nie Mingjue, Wei Wuxian had already experienced this: feminine charms, wine, and wealth were equal in that [nmj] did not touch them. Painting and calligraphy, antiques were just a pile of ink and mud. There was no difference between him drinking excellent tea and the dregs from a roadside stall.

Meng Yao hollowed out his brains [spent a lot of effort thinking about this basically] and didn't figure out besides practicing the saber every day and killing Wen-dogs if he had anything else of particular habits. <-- THE XIHAO HERE IS NOT HOBBY. THE XIHAO HERE IS HABIT, ESP ONE THAT YOU'VE WORN A GROOVE IN.

He [NMJ] was just like an iron wall, neither swords nor spears could penetrate it.

Hearing [JGY's] self deprecation, Nie Mingjue, on the countrary, became not as upset, and said, "stop encouraging that part of his character" <-- talking about NHS's love of painting and fans again.

Now, the important thing to remember about this analysis of both 1) the dynamic between JGY and NMJ and 2) what JGY thinks NMJ’s hobbies, preferences, vices, addictions are is this: neither JGY nor NMJ are implied to have been talking or thinking about NMJ’s wartime preferences during this conversation or even during the war.

What JGY and NMJ actually say in this scene are peppered through with WWX’s own thoughts on observing this scene between them, and neither JGY nor NMJ actually say “JGY believes that NMJ’s only hobbies [during the time JGY served under NMJ at Langya front] are practicing the saber and killing Wen-dogs.] In fact, JGY and NMJ don’t mention 1) the Wen at all in this scene and 2) the only time they talk about saber training is the fact that NHS is doing 0 of it.

What they DO however, say to each other is this:

JGY: you could probably persuade Huaisang to train by persuading him gently!

NMJ: lmao if threats don’t work, bribes won’t either.

JGY: Huaisang isn’t useless, he’s just talented in other ways.

NMJ: you’ve got him all figured out haven’t you?

JGY: haha, you know me Da-ge, I’m a natural at figuring people out. Except you, Da-ge, you’re very mysterious.

NMJ: don’t encourage his [NHS’s] bad expensive habits.

In the middle of this conversation, Wei Wuxian from his own (not unfiltered or unbiased) perspective observes this about NMJ during wartime: "yeah that JGY, he's great at finding out people's addictions, he sure is! but Chifeng-zun doesn't really have any of those lmao. at least from back when I knew Chifeng-zun during the war. He doesn't like girls, doesn't like wine, doesn't like wealth, doesn't like calligraphy or paintings or antiques. Wow! Meng Yao must've worked really hard and found nothing!"

JGY and NMJ in fact, don’t talk about 1) the war 2) the wen or 3) NMJ’s interests, hobbies, vices, or addictions here at all. Nor does JGY claim that he spent a lot of time searching for NMJ’s hobbies and found only saber practice and Wen-dog killing. Nor does JGY claim to be good at finding out people’s addictions, he just made a joke about how NHS’s interests are really obvious and “but you Da-ge are a mystery to me.”

And thus concludes my dissertation about how this really says nothing about NMJ’s hobbies, interests or vices, he could be collecting incense burners and a lover of bubble baths for all we know.

[leatherbookmark]

.

the "ideal modern profession for md/zs characters" polls are annoying. like, ideal for what? a perfect transposition of jianghu to a modern world? that's modern cultivation baby. the same, but without modern cultivation? well they can't just each have different professions, otherwise they wouldn't meet/wouldn't be the same people as they are in md/zs canon. ideal in our personal dream modern au? i don't have one. i loved a nmj/jc fic in which jc was a duck researcher, do i think he should have this job always everywhere or a fic sucks? take a wild guess

literally what are we talking about here. i don't really care for a fandom approach that's solely about analyzing v closely if something would be possible in canon, and if it wouldn't, then it wouldn't, we're throwing it out, but genuinely, what are we talking about. and why is jgy the only one whose ideal career path can apparently involve being a sex worker or a hitman? what's that about. i want to know. i must know

edit: someone in the tags went "are people upset that sex worker is an option for jgy because he's the only one who has this option or because they just don't respect sex workers"? screaming. aye! you read me. the only reason why i think it's weird that jin "spends his entire life to make people stop seeing him as less than dirt simply because his mother was a sex worker" guangyao is the only one whose IDEAL career can apparently be a sex worker is because i don't respect sex workers. no other reason at all. cheers

[veliseraptor]

☕ nhs, my/jgy, and nmj. and the interplay of relationships between the three

oh boy. I feel almost like I should just link to any one of the multiple cogent analyses of this (by for instance @xiyao-feels and @confusion-and-more) that have analyzed it much better than I really feel equipped to do.

I feel like the first things that I should establish off the bat are that:

I do not particularly like Nie Mingjue as a character.

My read on and interpretation of Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue's relationship has changed substantially over time, partly just because of the process of reading other peoples' thoughts/analysis and partly because of fandom trends.

Jin Guangyao did nothing wrong.

so with those things in mind...I think the major thing for me here as far as the nmj/jgy part of this is that I feel like people sometimes lose sight of the fact that jgy was nmj's subordinate, and that in nmj's eyes he remained his subordinate even once they were ostensibly equals, and I think claiming that they were friends or on equal footing is ignoring that power dynamic that was always present in their relationship, from start to finish.

like...I could go into that more? but I feel like that kind of covers it. the dynamic of superior/subordinate informs all their interactions, and has a lot to do, imo, with the way that jgy responds to nmj throughout, and the way that he relates to him, and the way that he responds to him as a threat to his safety.

I find the nhs/jgy relationship more...interesting, I guess? because I find the dynamic where jgy is, to a certain extent, nhs's caretaker, even as nhs is hard at work at destroying jgy's life, and particularly the fact that I think there is affection and care there, a compelling one. and at the same time there's something very...mmmmm about the way that nhs plays into a dynamic that is, again, superior/subordinate; even as jgy is chief cultivator and sect leader, nhs has him functionally still playing the role of his babysitter, same as he was when he was nmj's deputy.

and I find nhs's actions more compelling and also more awful if they're not born just out of a desire for vengeance for his brother (though that's certainly present) but also a sense of betrayal from jgy. that maybe part of why nhs goes so hard on destroying jgy's life and legacy in the cruelest ways he can has to do with the fact that he saw jgy himself as a trusted friend/confidant, and is all the more angry at him for "failing" to live up to that.

and how some of that outrage is informed by the contrast between how nhs perhaps sees that relationship between the two of them (as one where they are more equals) and the way jgy does (where he is, I think, as always, much more aware of the power differential). and that awareness doesn't preclude, again, fondness/affection that is genuine. it just also means that from jgy's perspective their dynamic looks different than it does from nhs's.

[maladaptvs]

maladaptvs interests

LOST (long-standing)

kanan gill (long-standing, semi-casual)

tim key (fixation)

taskmaster (semi-casual, long-standing)

nmj (casual)

Hannibal NBC (casual reoccurring)

The 100 (semi-casual reoccurring)

DHMIS (semi-casual reoccurring)

Nine Inch Nails (fixation reoccurring)

Hozier (long-standing, fixation reoccurring)

Autoheart (long-standing, fixation reoccurring)

music ?! (hyperfixation)

Português (reoccurring)

my OC’s (long-standing, specifics recurring, fixation)

creating art (causal)

isopods (long-standing casual)

crows (casual)

Interior Design/Home Decoration (long-standing, specifics recurring)

GMM (casual)

UHNN (casual)

Superstore (casual reoccurring)

Overwatch (casual, reoccurring fixation)

making lists hehe (long-standing)

self analyzing (long-standing, recurring fixation)

…….james b jones from love on the spectrum ….. (hyperfix…..)

[thesummerstorms]

My friends.

Yes Nie Mingjue was not nerely so must as he believed himself. Yes, he majorly fucked up both his stance on the Wen Remnants and some of the things he said to JGY. There are moral paragons in this story, but he isn't one of them.

That said, that does NOT mean it wasn't incredibly fucked up for him to:

a) Kill his own wife

b) Kill his father using unwitting/unwilling sex workers and then kill the sex workers

c) Keep NMJ's severed head on a shelf in his treasure room

d) threaten to kill his own nephew, who loved him and done nothing to him

And those are just the things we have direct viewpoint witness to without any involvement of NMJ.

The idea that Jin Guangyao somehow got an unfair rap because people fail to analyze the flaws in NMJ's biases a) don't really hold up when Wei Wuxian is acting as a filter for all this information and b) when you look at the flat out actions we see him commit and he admits to.

There's nuance and then there's conspiracy.

[mostlikelytofangirl]

Is Nie Mingjue a heavily misunderstood character or not ? Sorry my question is a little bit vague .

Don't worry, I think I know what you mean ^^

Now, I wouldn't say that he is heavily misunderstood bc, for starters, he's not that popular a character (which personally hurts my soul bc I love him So Much), and secondly, we aren't given a lot about him in canon. At face value, at least.

That's not to say that he isn't misundertood, but I'd argue that it is more of a... simplification of his character. It's very easy to see him and fall for just the gruff, angry man whose entire personality is shouting and Saber and Killing Wens. Mxtx herself presented him as such in a way, when telling us how JGY couldn't find anything to use against him, bc well... those things previously mentioned were all there was, apparently.

But I think that, just with the man himself, there's a lot more we can get by looking at his actions than with what the story tells us directly.

He loves his brother, thats's one thing. Confirmed by the author even. And I have to state this bc I have seen ppl call him abusive bc of how he treats NHS, but we have to see things from his perspective. This is a man who knows he is going to die young, who had to step up and be a sect leader and guardian to his brother when he was still a teen. Who had to be diplomatic with the man who killed his father and all the other leaders who did nothing about it (if they even believed him). Is it really so surprising that he wouldn't waste time in anything other than becoming the strongest the can be and preparing his brother to succeed him? A little brother that, to him, is not even trying to get involved or help with what could very easily be his entire responsibility one day.

(Also the fact that you don't go on a decade long revenge plot for a brother you don't love. So yeah, Niebros loved each other, you can't change my mind).

He didn't try to get married and have his own descendants after the war bc I think it would have been obvious to him by then that he cultivated too much, he accelerated the inevitable and leaving a widow and a small child would have only been extra responsibility to NHS.

And yet he tried to get better. He let the man he didn't trust anymore treat his terminal illness bc he didn't lose hope that he could at least buy himself some more time to prepare NHS and protect the Unclean Realm bc the world post-SSC was still very much fucked up and in JGS' hands and (again) no one else seemed to care.

NMJ had one of the strongest moral codes of the entire cast, so much so that it would be easy to call it black and white, but damn if that at least made him one of the very few characters you would always know where you stood with. He was as reliable as they come.

Of course, he was far from perfect. He had his biases and even his privilege blinding him to some extent. Like his determination to wipe out all the Wen, regardless of their involvement or lack thereof in the war. Just bc he would have rather die fighting than staying in his line and survive and help as he could, doesn't mean everybody else would or even should have. As rightful and honorable as he is, he is also convinced that there is only one way to do things right and I think we can all agree that that is objectively incorrect, if at least more commendable than not doing anything at all.

In the end, I definitely think that there is more to NMJ than meets the eye. He was a paladin of justice and tried his best to uphold it according to the standards of society. He was brave to the point of it costing it his life bc he refused to give in to JGS' unilaterally decided reign, and was actively the only significant political opposition the Jin had post-war. He dedicated all he had to his sect and his brother even if his interpersonal skills didn't allow for better communication there. He was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who made all the alarms go off in his head bc of what he meant to him in the past and what he meant to LXC in the present. He was there to defend anyone with a righteous claim like the Chang clan when literally no one else cared. And all this while dealing with a degenerative and debilitating mental illness he couldn't let anyone outside of his circle know of.

He was one of the strongest, most honest characters. Not without his flaws, but a better person than many others, and I fully support how avenging him is literally the backbone of the entire story and the reason we have mdzs in the first place.

[xiyao-feels]

One of the things that drives me nuts about the 'their name means the same thing' thing, for nie//yao, is that—

even assuming it's meaningfully true, which is really not obvious to me—

But taking for granted that it's meaningfully true, what a stupid damn thing to hang a shipping analysis on.

Like, first, these kinds of details can be meaningful but their meaning must be analyzed through context! Do I think the description of the gentians with "their petals adorned dew like stars" in the Lotus Seed Pod extra is meaningful in a xiyao context? Yes—but only because of the relationship between LXC and JGY which is actually established elsewhere in the text. I don't start thinking Xi//cheng must be real because the gentians are purple! These kinds of details can be fun but they're not in themselves arguments, in the way "nie//yao have names that mean the same thing!" often seems to be treated. If WWX and LWJ and Lan An and his wife and Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan all had names that meant the same thing, then you'd absolutely have a case for understanding this as evidence that the relationship was romantic or at least should be interpreted against those relationships. But of course that's not the case! And relatedly—

Secondly, if I were going to interpret this as meaningful, which again I am not convinced of.... I think the natural point of reference isn't romantic at all, but instead a pair of brothers famously known as the Twin Jades. Which I do actually think is an interesting and meaningful lens for NMJ&JGY's relationship! I've spoken about this before so I won't go into depth here but if you look at, for example, NMJ agreeing to the sworn brotherhood because it will give him "the status and the position to urge Jin GuangYao, like how he disciplined his younger brother, Nie HuaiSang" (ER trans ch 49, emphasis mine) followed immediately by the flower banquet which is the one scene where LXC and JGY are present but don't interact on the page but where the brother-pairs LXC&LWJ and WWX&JC are quite significant, and where NHS is of course not present; I might throw in LXC talking about going to help LWJ during the teacups scene during Sunshot, when MY was serving NMJ, though of course that would have to be examined in more detail in a proper analysis; and just in general consider the ways in which LXC and LWJ's relationship seems the best and most functional fraternal relationship we see, and the ways in which NMJ comparatively fails as a brother against that model for both NHS and JGY—

In any case, I do think that's an interesting lens through which to examine NMJ & JGY's relationship! And if I were going to interpret NMJ and JGY's names as meaning anything, I'd interpret it as pointing, narratively, to that parallel and contrast. But you'll notice that the argument from the actual scenes they're in is the important part; the names might highlight it or draw our attention to it but they cannot substitute for an argument. I would never say, "why do you ship nie//yao? Their names both mean jade and they're sworn brothers so obviously they're paralleling the Twin Jades, so it can't be romantic!" Because that would be a ridiculous argument.

[robininthelabyrinth]

for the prompts: NMJ/JC - Everyone with a functioning brain cell can see that JC just needs someone to tell him he’s doing a good job. And if WWX isn’t stepping up? Well, NMJ definitely will. (Preferably smut and/or fluff) Thank you! ❤️

Compliments - ao3

It started in anger, out of spite.

Traditionally, the world took this to be a bad thing, but in all honesty the vast majority of projects in the Nie sect were started that way – they inherited fiery tempers and spiteful personalities from their ancestors along with their saber cultivation traditions – and it didn’t always turn out badly. There were any number of buildings, techniques, or technological innovations in the Unclean Realm that had started life as a furious fuck you to someone and only turned into something worthwhile about halfway through, once the person involved had calmed down enough to think about what they were doing, realize they were already committed, and then shrug and carry on forward because there was no point in stopping a charge midway.

What Nie Mingjue meant was: there was precedent.

He liked to think it started with Jiang Fengmian, but if Nie Mingjue was being honest with himself, it started back in the Unclean Realm when Nie Huaisang had told him, quite casually over dinner, that he thought that the female cultivator in his class was very pretty and that he’d be happy to marry her.

“Uh,” Nie Mingjue had said, very intelligently. “Huaisang, you’re seven.”

Nie Huaisang had not seen the problem. Instead, he explained very forthrightly that it was only right that he start thinking early on about his marriage, as getting married and having children would be his great contribution to the sect on account of being useless good-for-nothing unfit for anything else –

“Wait,” Nie Mingjue said. “Who told you that?!”

Nie Huaisang claimed he had deduced it.

Nie Mingjue claimed that Nie Huaisang was full of bullshit, and also that he wasn’t good-for-nothing even if he wasn’t good at saber, and anyway even if he was a total good-for-nothing he was still Nie Mingjue’s good-for-nothing and no one had better say a single damn word against him or Nie Mingjue would bite them.

“I meant stab them!” he explained, far too late; Nie Huaisang was already rolling around laughing to the point of tears. “I have a saber. I can stab people! I’m actually very scary, you know!”

Nie Huaisang hadn’t believed him one bit and had carried on, seemingly at peace and forgetting everything, but Nie Mingjue had gone seeking advice from all of his elders and counselors and the more dependable senior disciples of his sect, abruptly terrified that he was permanently damaging Nie Huaisang by raising him the wrong way or something. Didn’t children need encouragement at that age? Weren’t they all young and tender peaches liable to be bruised at the slightest glance or young sprouts that needed to be sheltered from the harsh wind lest they grow up crooked?

Everyone assured him that children were hardier than they appeared, flexible and capable of bouncing back from just about anything. He'd pressed, though, pointing out that even the most flexible wood would eventually form a crack in the face of a vicious hurricane, and in the end they'd admitted that it was better to avoid applying too much pressure at too young an age, that a child squeezed too hard or not hard enough might develop neuroses that would hinder them in the future.

They mostly tried not to look at him when they said that, presumably thinking to themselves that Nie Mingjue was little more than a child himself and had already been subject to the worst pressures possible, which would undoubtedly result in who knows what future issues, but he hadn’t paid that part any mind. As far as he was concerned, his life was already a loss – he had sworn to take revenge for his father, to make that ancient monster Wen Ruohan pay with his life for what he had done and furthermore he'd sworn to pay back the blood debt in full before any of that burden passed to Nie Huaisang.

Letting Nie Huaisang grow up happy – that was what mattered.

Letting him be insulted when Nie Mingjue wasn’t looking played no part in that plan. If Nie Huaisang were going to be insulted, let it be by outsiders who he wouldn’t need to care about! Within their Nie sect, at minimum, he should be doted upon and honored, or else those responsible would have to explain themselves to Nie Mingjue.

Those dark thoughts still lingering in his mind, he had gone to the Lotus Pier for a discussion conference, and that, perhaps, was where it really started.

Rumor had already made the entire cultivation world aware that Jiang Fengmian had found the orphaned son of Cangse Sanren and Wei Changze, and that he had taken him into his home as his ward, allowing him to become a Jiang sect disciple – treating him almost as one of the family, even. That much was known, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Jiang Fengmian proudly introduced him or even more proudly showed him off, praising him to the high heavens.

What did come as a surprise was how little he praised his own son standing beside him, despite them being only a few days apart in age. It was as if Jiang Fengmian had simply forgotten that such a creature existed, much less that he had himself contributed to its spawning, and the constant looks of hope – invariably crushed – the child sent him made it clear that the present situation had been going on for some time.

Fuck you, Nie Mingjue thought, seeing red, seeing instead Nie Huaisang in his failed saber classes, struggling so desperately to keep up with the rest even though his body wouldn’t allow for it, being told he was useless and a good-for-nothing and fit for nothing but marriage. Fuck you, Jiang Fengmian.

He couldn’t say that, of course.

So instead he said, “Excellent stance,” to the child, who'd received the courtesy name Wanyin but seemed to be universally called Jiang Cheng. “Do you know the others in the set?”

Jiang Cheng, staring at him, very slowly nodded, and demonstrated them.

“Absolutely perfect,” Nie Mingjue said loudly, drawing attention to himself with his over-loud voice that everyone would automatically forgive on account on him being both a Nie and a young man. “You can see how hard you’ve worked at it, and it has paid off handsomely. You are very lucky in your son, Sect Leader Jiang.”

“…thank you,” Jiang Fengmian said, a little bemused at being interrupted. He’d been talking yet again about Wei Wuxian’s brilliance at picking up the sword again after years of living on the streets without practice, even though at the moment the smiling boy's admittedly impressive skills were still largely wild and undisciplined.

Nie Mingjue nodded, and said: “When exactly did you say the opening festivities would be starting?”

Jiang Fengmian had clearly forgotten about that in his enthusiasm, so he quickly hurried back to the actual subject at hand and the discussion conference was started in earnest.

It was almost enough to allow Nie Mingjue to forget the matter and put it behind him.

Or, it would have been, if only Jiang Fengmian hadn’t continued to insert praise for Wei Wuxian at every possible instance – it was as if he were the man’s first-born son, rather than another person’s child.

Irritated beyond belief, Nie Mingjue started complimenting Jiang Cheng every time Jiang Fengmian said something nice about Wei Wuxian, and he made sure to keep his compliments accurate: he was a hard worker, dedicated and sincere, thoughtful, clever, not overly arrogant…

“Wei Wuxian came up with his own ideas for a sword style already,” Jiang Fengmian claimed at one point. “You can see him on the training ground now, practicing it – take a look!”

Nie Mingjue picked up a stone and flicked it over with his fingers, making Wei Wuxian jump half a chi into the air and nearly fall on his ass.

“Weak foundation, and he over-commits,” he analyzed dryly, because it was true, and because no one else was saying it. He didn't make it any harsher than it had to be: he had nothing against the boy himself, of course; it was only that he knew from experience that it was much easier to be the one being complimented than the one not. “He’s got his head so high in the clouds that his feet are barely touching the ground – the weakest fierce corpse would knock him flat as a pancake with a childish style like that. He’d be better off sticking with orthodox or he’ll end up in real trouble one day.”

“Sect Leader Nie, really,” Jiang Fengmian said disapprovingly. “He’s only nine.”

“Old enough to pick up bad habits,” Nie Mingjue retorted. “Your son’s the same age and he’s as steady as a rock. If Jiang Cheng keeps going as he is, he’ll have a strong enough base to outlast the fiercest storm.”

“A rock has no imagination,” Jiang Fengmian said, and was he actually arguing that his son was inferior? Out loud, in front of outsiders? Did the man have no shame? “Mingjue, you’re young, but you must know that my Jiang sect prizes freedom and creativity as the highest virtue –”

“Would you rather build a house using a firework or a foundation stone?” Nie Mingjue asked, doing his best not to outwardly bristle at the condescendingly intimate use of his name by someone who might be technically his elder but legally his equal. “Tell me, Fengmian, does your Jiang sect’s acclaimed ‘freedom’ only allow for people to be as fluid as the river and not as steady as the earth?”

Jiang Fengmian faltered, clearly not knowing how to answer that.

Nie Mingjue raised his hands in a sarcastic salute: “As the leader of a sect whose style is based on a grounded foundation, I would be very happy if you would educate me in your wisdom. No doubt my peers would benefit as well.”

Perhaps it was at that point that Jiang Fengmian realized that his words could be misinterpreted as an insult to all the sects whose styles were less free-flowing than the Jiang – just about all of them except for maybe the Lan and their subsidiary sects, given their preference for techniques modeled on the wind over the water – and moreover that this was a discussion conference, where every word was political, and that a great deal of people were glaring balefully at him. He hastily moved the conversation onwards, and left the subject of his sons for another day.

Later that evening, Madame Yu came over to where Nie Mingjue was nursing a bowl of very fine wine that he didn’t especially feel like consuming. Before he could start worrying about the Purple Spider’s intentions, she said, voice stiff, “Your words regarding my son are too kind. His skills are still inferior; he has a great deal of progress yet to be made.”

“He’s only nine,” Nie Mingjue said, feeling mortified that she’d noticed his little temper tantrum, which he had belatedly realized was probably extremely obvious. “Anyway, I wasn't lying. He has a good foundation; he’ll be a fearsome cultivator one day, there’s no doubt. I only said what I saw.”

“You didn’t comment about Wei Wuxian,” she said. “You must have noticed his genius.”

“Geniuses don’t need to be praised overmuch,” Nie Mingjue said. He himself had been termed a genius by his teachers, and he’d hated every single moment of it – couldn’t he just be good at things without having people fall all over themselves to compliment him? He’d enjoyed it at the start, but after a while it had started to wear on him; he was expected to be a genius in all things, and being simply ordinary was suddenly seen as failing. “It’s the ones that have to work hard that do, or else they’ll be discouraged…comparing someone to another person’s child works as a spur to a certain extent, but after a while it loses its potency as a tool.”

Your husband is a fucking idiot, he didn’t say. It’s his own son! How could he speak like that about him? Shouldn’t he be holding him in his palms like a gentle flame, protecting him from the wind and rain? How can he bear to scold his son when he hasn't shown that the scolding is meant for his benefit?

“Perhaps,” Madame Yu said, but it was clear on her face that she wasn’t about to start taking parenting advice from a half-grown sprout like Nie Mingjue. “Nevertheless, your words were kind.”

She swept away after that, much to his relief. He shook his head and daydreamed about a magic tool that would make this whole nightmarish experience go by that much quicker.

In the end, it went by at the same speed it always did. It could have ended there, but Nie Mingjue kept up the habit of blatantly complimenting Jiang Cheng in future sect conferences as well, if only because it clearly irritated Jiang Fengmian – less because Nie Mingjue was praising his son and more because it was so obviously meant as an indirect critique of Jiang Fengmian’s skills as a parent or sect leader, and moreover it reminded all the other sects of that unfortunate interchange and made them less inclined to listen to him – and of course, because, well, once you’ve started a charge, you had to finish it even if you came to your senses about halfway through.

He made sure to keep it proportionate, of course, since there was nothing worse than false praise. He didn’t really mean anything by it, other than the half-formed thought that someone ought to be doing it – that the boy should know that someone looked at him and Wei Wuxian and remembered to praise him first. Nie Mingjue praised Wei Wuxian too, of course, since the boy often deserved it; it was only that he made a particular point not to forget about Jiang Cheng, either.

(He also made sure the other sect leaders saw how well the technique could be used to fluster Jiang Fengmian, an intrusion into his personal life that could be masked in perfect politeness, and several of them picked up the same tact, though less consistently than Nie Mingjue – Sect Leaders Jin and Wen, naturally, always looking for a weakness, but interestingly enough also Lan Qiren, who was normally above such petty maneuvers. Possibly he was actually just complimenting Jiang Cheng because he sincerely approved of him.)

He didn’t think much of it.

Nie Mingjue didn’t think much of it during the other discussion conferences, or when he came to the Cloud Recesses to pick up Nie Huaisang, who had – amazingly – actually managed to pass this time, although the expression on Lan Qiren’s face suggested the pass might have more to do with the other sect leader’s desire to never see Nie Huaisang haunt his classroom ever again.

“You know what, don’t tell me. Tell me….hm…how did Jiang Wanyin do?” Nie Mingjue asked, hand over his eyes as if it could forestall the headache. “He’s a bright boy, and knows how to put his mind to something when he wants. Tell me about him instead, it’ll be less depressing.”

“He’s very bright,” Lan Qiren agreed. “Very thoughtful, and very thorough. He sometimes errs towards conservatism out of fear of giving the wrong answer, but that’s just a matter of confidence; his thinking is very good. He’s very clear-sighted as long as the matter is logical, rather than emotional.”

“No surprise,” Nie Mingjue grunted. “He’ll be a sect leader worthy of respect, in his time.”

When he’s rid of that father of his dragging him down, he thought ungraciously, and he saw Lan Qiren bob his head in a sharp nod of unspoken agreement.

“All right,” he said. “I’m adequately fortified now. Tell me about Huaisang.”

Lan Qiren gave him a look of profound sympathy.

It wasn’t until much later, during the Sunshot Campaign, that it was first called to his attention – by Jiang Cheng himself, oddly enough.

“Why do you keep doing that?” he hissed, having stayed behind after one of their meetings.

Nie Mingjue blinked at him. “Doing – what?”

“You – you said – about me…!”

Nie Mingjue tried to recall what he’d said during the meeting just now. “That you – were doing an excellent job while facing much higher level of obstacles than everyone else?” he hazarded, because he had said something like that. “Or was it the bit about how if any of them had needed to rebuild their sect and fight at the same time, we’d all be doomed because they couldn’t multitask for shit?”

Yeah, it was probably that one.

“I didn’t mean any offense by referencing what happened to your sect,” he said, hoping to explain. “It was only –”

“I didn’t take offense,” Jiang Cheng mumbled. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but – it happened, everyone knows that it happened, not talking about it isn’t going to make it not have happened. That’s not what I meant…why do you keep saying such nice things about me?”

Nie Mingjue blinked at him. “Because they’re true?”

Jiang Cheng’s cheeks flushed red. “You’ve always said nice things about me. Ever since I was a little kid – every time you saw me, at the discussion conferences, or the Cloud Recesses, or even in your letters to my father…”

He had in fact done that.

“I just want to know why. Is it – my father’s not around, you can’t be doing it just to piss him off, even though I know that was part of it. Why me?”

Nie Mingjue coughed a little, having not realized that Jiang Cheng had noticed. Or possibly even overheard, in regards to the Cloud Recesses. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of the other person’s child,” he said, and Jiang Cheng nodded his head sharply, clearly thinking of Wei Wuxian. “You’re Huaisang’s.”

“Me?” Jiang Cheng seemed unduly vulnerable when he asked. “You compare him – to me?”

“It’s amazing he tolerated you at the Cloud Recesses,” Nie Mingjue said with a sigh. In fact, his brother had all but declared war on Jiang Cheng in absentia on account of all Nie Mingjue’s comments, only for his first letter home from the Cloud Recesses that year to be I see why you like him! He’s cute! A perfect match for you! because he’d apparently decided that Nie Mingjue had a crush on the boy.

Which he certainly hadn’t – at least not when he’d been that age, anyway. Jiang Cheng had grown up to embody every single one of the compliments Nie Mingjue had paid him when he’d been younger, especially with the maturity and natural aura of command that came to him after his personal tragedy.

“But why…you knew Wei Wuxian about as well as you knew me.”

Nie Mingjue snorted. “And that would have helped Huaisang how, exactly? If I wanted to compare him with someone who picked things up the first time they saw it, I wouldn’t need to go outside the Nie sect for that – I was also considered a genius when I was young. It’s no failing to be born without a vast and unending natural talent; Huaisang’s issue has always been his unwillingness to put in the effort.”

Jiang Cheng stared at him.

“Anyway, your father was so blinded by his adoration for Wei Wuxian that he overlooked your merits, which are different but no less impressive,” Nie Mingjue added. “As someone who was trying to figure out how to raise a child, it irritated me; I thought someone ought to make it clear to you that you were seen.”

“Yes,” Jiang Cheng said, his voice strangely hoarse. “Yes, you – you succeeded.”

He paused for a moment, meeting Nie Mingjue’s eyes intently, and then abruptly said, “I’ll be leaving,” and dashed out.

Nie Mingjue wasn’t entirely sure if that meant he should stop or not. Jiang Cheng had said he wasn’t offended…anyway, it was a fixed habit by now. He’d been doing it for over half his life! He couldn’t stop that easily! It would be like trying to stop his temper, or a charge – there was nothing for it.

Jiang Cheng would just have to live with a few compliments.

“Wow, you’re an idiot,” Nie Huaisang said when he told him about the incident, months later while he was lying in bed, recovering from the disaster that had been the end of the war. “I’ll fix this.”

“Fix what?”

“I’m going to tell him you’re dying,” Nie Huaisang decided.

“You’re going to do what?!”

“Stay in bed, da-ge! Doctor’s orders!”

The Nie sect chief doctor was an extremely terrifying person. Nie Mingjue stayed in bed.

Some time later, Jiang Cheng stormed in, face pale.

“Huaisang’s a rotten liar and I’m going to be fine,” Nie Mingjue said at once.

Jiang Cheng stopped mid-storm, and abruptly deflated. “Really?”

“Really. I would’ve stopped him, but I’m stuck in bed for the moment.”

Jiang Cheng took a seat next to him. “That sounds serious. You shouldn’t underestimate war wounds, especially given your sect’s tendency towards qi deviations...”

“Compassionate as well,” Nie Mingjue teased. “I’ll have to add that to the rotation of compliments.”

Jiang Cheng flushed red. “You’re…planning on continuing?”

“For the rest of my life, however short it might be,” Nie Mingjue said, because he was an honest person, even when it was inconvenient. He was going to explain about the habit, and the concept of stopping mid-charge, but he didn’t manage to start before Jiang Cheng grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up into a kiss.

After that, he figured that maybe explaining that part of it wasn’t necessary. He might be slow on the uptake, but he wasn’t actually stupid.

[tavina-writes]

Sorry may I ask you a question? Your meta is so interesting! In mdzs "debts" is a recurring theme and can you please explain it? I've read meta about how in Chinese culture jc's owed the wen siblings a debt and he should have saved them, but I've also read meta about how he owed a hugger debt to his own sect. I've read how jgy killed whr and nmj, people who he owned his educations (debts). I thought that mdzs was more about "Who is wrong? Who is right?" so that everyone is a bit wrong and a bit right but this kind of meta make me doubt myself and think that maybe in mdzs someone is really morally right (wwx and lwj) and everyone else is wrong. I am going a little crazy, that's why I asked you. Anyway, thanks in advance and have a good day!

Hi Nonny!

There's no need to apologize for sending an ask! I love asks!

Regarding your question about debts and what is "owed" in relationships, I think it's important to clarify that like, presumably if someone saved your life you'd also owe them a debt of gratitude, a life debt, or however and whichever other 'debt' terminology you'd care to use there. So this concept of "debt" because you owe someone for doing something for you is not in and of itself a 'unique to Chinese culture' problem, and I think looking at "oh this person "owes" this other person a thing" is not entirely a great? way to analyze how character relationships "should" or should not go. There are lots of ways we as people in a society owe other people in our society and the characters in this book, much like us, are trapped in a confluence of factors that pull them in different directions regarding what they should or should not do.

The book itself (at least from my own opinion) is meant to read as "everyone is both right and wrong at various points in this text because this is a book with complex characters and not a morality lesson" because lest we forget, WWX made a woman eat a chair leg at one point, which. We cannot say this was correct in really anything except the most reductive main character centric interpretation.

Regarding debts themselves that say, WangXian might owe their families in accordance to their society that sound just about the same as the examples mentioned above, we can say things like "since Wei Wuxian was raised by the Jiang, he should've been helping Jiang Cheng rebuilding Lotus Pier instead of sitting around drinking or running off with the Wen!" or "how dare Lan Wangji injure thirty-three of his family elders, doesn't he know he should've been filial to them and owed his education and position in society to the Lan Sect?" and "why is it that WangXian got to go fuck in a bush at the end of the story when other people who arguably did fewer crimes end up dead? Does this mean they owed less to society or made all the right choices compared to say, the other people who are still in fact super dead and don't get to fuck their beloved in a bush?"

Does this start to look like this concept of "debts" doesn't,,, actually explain anything about the moral complexities of the character's situations? That's because it isn't a good indicator of if character x made a moral choice or not.

But again, this whole concept of "debts" to explain why a character does a thing and why they're morally good or evil and reprehensible for not doing this other thing is entirely a thing fandom does in meta to make their fave look good or character they're an anti about look extremely bad under a case of "well ACKSHUALLY morality says they SHOULD HAVE done this!" None of these characters exist either as Perfectly Moral Beings or Perfectly Evil Immoral Beings inside a decision making vacuum.

It...also doesn't really matter if your fave is right or wrong either :D just for context. They're all fictional blorbos upon a page and or screen. No real person was harmed in over the course of the story. No woman deep throated a chair leg, no child was tossed down the stairs, no groups of people were massacred, no brothers were abandoned, no one was poisoned with rage disease until they died, nobody committed incest... etc etc and honestly debating about if fictional characters were right or wrong fascinates me a lot less than "what does the story tell us about what drove them and made them tick?" and "what adaptational and translational choices did other people before me make about this story and do I agree with them on their adaptational choices."

:( sorry this came out so messy anon! I just don't think the "did this character repay their debts -> is this character a good person -> a morally good character therefore doesn't owe anyone anything anymore and if they do owe someone something that doesn't count/no they don't." pipeline is particularly useful from an analyzing the story standpoint.

[plan-d-to-i]

(this is me again, a Russian girl with a google translator, but now I have an account !!!) (I already asked this question, but during its sending my internet froze and I still don’t know if it reached you, so that if you've already seen it from me, well, it's not my fault ..)

why do you think JGY gave JL a dog and not JC? Considering the fact that JC is clearly obsessed with them, it is rather strange that he did not immediately instill in his nephew a love of dogs, and JC himself in the book was cold about even Fairy.

While I was thinking about this, I was able to find only two, presumably correct answers, which are related:

I think that JL spent quite a lot of time as a child at the lotus pier, and perhaps JC believed that when WWX comes back to life and comes for a flute, the Fairy will be a hindrance, since it is easier for WWX to make a new flute than to meet by chance with a dog.

JC considered WWX his most loyal dog and that's why he has such a cold attitude towards Fairy.

Hi!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Thank you for resending the question, I didn't get it before!!

Well, I wouldn't say jc is obsessed w dogs. More like some fans are obsessed with the idea of jc being obsessed with dogs. In the Guanyin temple at the end jc rages against WWX & blames him for everything under the sun but not once does he bring up dogs. He kept dogs around Lotus Pier when he was 8-ish. jc doesn't really show any interest in dogs after that. It's not like he's described longingly gazing after dogs any time he sees one.

I do love your idea that he didn't get any bc he didn't want it to be a deterrent for WWX to attempt retrieving the flute he was keeping as bait in Lotus Pier. But probably the simplest explanation is just that he doesn't care about dogs all that much. They just provided him with companionship he couldn't get anywhere else as a child & with something he could control. Now he can just order YunmengJiang disciples around like he did his dogs. It's clear jc was never really looking for equality in his relationships & interactions with others, or in his requirement list for a wife.

Honestly JGY giving Jin Ling a dog is probably an example of the healthier parenting that Jin Ling has been on the receiving end of since jiang cheng decided he's not going to take any cues from growing up around YanLi's nurturing nature & is just going to become Madam Yu 2.0 to her son. In the book JL spent his time equally between Jin and Jiang:

“When Jin Ling was young, he was brought up by two sects. He lived at the LanlingJin Sect’s Jinlin Tower half the time, and the YunmengJiang Sect’s Lotus Pier the other half” (Chapter 38)

JGY is very adept at reading human nature and discerning people's needs. WWX notices this in empathy w NMJ's head:

“He knew of people’s likes and dislikes so that he could find suitable solutions; he loved running errands and could do twice the work with half the effort. Thus, Jin GuangYao could be said to be quite a talent at analyzing others’ interests.”.

He gets Fairy for Jing Ling bc he understands JL can't build any bonds with other kids his age and has a lot of pain that he's not finding any way to express other than through anger, violence, breaking things & terrorizing the servants in Koi Tower. JGY probably realizes that it will be easier for Jin Ling to be vulnerable around a dog instead of a person, and to, in that way, foster some positive emotions & expression of those emotions in Jin Ling.

“Jin Ling suddenly remembered that when Fairy was still a clumsy little puppy that couldn’t even reach his knees, Jin GuangYao was the one who brought it over. Back then, he was only a few years old. He fought with the other children of Koi Tower, and didn’t feel satisfied even after he won, smashing everything in his room as he bawled his eyes out. None of the maids and servants dared approach him, afraid to be hit.

Grinning, the younger uncle of his snuck inside to ask, “A-Ling, what’s wrong?” He immediately smashed half a dozen vases beside Jin GuangYao’s feet. Jin GuangYao, “Uh-oh, how fierce. I’m so scared.” He shook his head as he left, pretending to be scared.

The second day, Jin Ling refused to go outside or eat anything as he sulked. Jin GuangYao walked around right outside his room. With his back against the door, Jin Ling shouted to be left alone, and suddenly the bark of a puppy came from outside the door. He opened the door. Half-squatting, Jin GuangYao had in his arms a glistening-black puppy with round, wide eyes. He looked up and smiled, “I found this little thing but I don’t know what to call it. A-Ling, do you want to give it a name? The smile was so kind, so genuine that Jin Ling couldn’t believe Jin GuangYao faked it. All of a sudden, tears fell from his eyes again.”

I'm not saying JGY's move was wholly altruistic, or that it even was primarily driven by altruism and not just say a desire to restore order to the servant staff of JinLin tower, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily devoid of it. & ultimately “This black-haired spiritual dog was a rare species” not just any random dog, and it ended up being Jin Ling's only friend/companion until he grew closer to the Juniors & WWX. & ironically enough in part it foiled JGY's last escape plan lol. I'm seeing kind of a trend in mxtx works where baddies get screwed precisely by the few semi nice things they tried to do.

[veliseraptor]

I have two unpopular opinions, you don't have to answer both if you don't want to! The first is this: cultivator society kind of sucks and all the characters that are "good" did as terrible things as the "bad" characters, they just got away with it because of their positions in society and their high cultivation (nmj, lwj, and lxc especially get cut SO MUCH SLACK for doing things that other characters are despised for in the fandom and it drives me up a wall) and the second is this: Jin Zixuan kind of sucks

aslkjsdlkj this is a lot to dig into but the answer to both is the same and it is

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I think that saying the ‘good’ characters are as bad as the ‘bad’ characters engages in a certain false equivalency that I don’t buy into. I think it’s fair to say that they made some bad choices, and in many cases were shielded from certain consequences by virtue of their positions in society and high cultivation, but I don’t think that actively makes them, like. as bad as “literally shooting arrows at fleeing civilians” Jin Zixun, for instance. 

in general I tend to feel like fandom actually comes down too hard on specifically Lan Xichen for not having done more when he was, in fact, in a very difficult position both personally and politically for a lot of the show, and that really frustrates me. I’ve also gone on record talking about how what I love about the post-Sunshot Campaign politics stuff is how messy it is, and how much there’s not a simple easy solution that wouldn’t require a lot of people acting in ways that are a) contrary to their initial impulse and b) often not in their best interest. 

I think the idea that cultivator society sucks is actually integral to the themes of MDZS/CQL, which seems like it is in part fundamentally about the injustice of that society and how it treats the people in it, particularly the vulnerable. I think that it is very textually present that the society is fucked up and unfair and perpetuates a lot of injustice, institutionally and possibly inherently. and I think it’s possible to recognize that characters like Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen did make some Decisions without saying that puts them on a level with Jin Guangshan. 

(I’m a little harder on Nie Mingjue, but partly that is because Nie Mingjue is harder on everyone else, so.)

and in general I guess...augh, anon, I don’t want this to come off as being pissy with you because I’m really not, but I just really wish that people would let go a little of the question of who is bad and who is worse and who is more right or more wrong in a canon. I just don’t think it’s very interesting to try to set up a hierarchy of who did more bad things. I don’t think it’s productive. as far as I can tell it just leads to a lot of bad feeling and fandom fights. 

this is not to say it might not be a worthwhile question to compare how the morals/actions of people in a text are treated, relative to each other! that is a very interesting thing to analyze! but I think framing it in terms of who is “just as bad as” someone else doesn’t go anywhere.

when it comes to Jin Zixuan - he seems to have a weirdly polarizing effect and it honestly surprises me? I can see why people don’t like him. I personally find him sort of endearing and have ever since I first watched the scene where Jiang Yanli catches him planting lotuses and he tries to hide one behind his back. 

which honestly changed how I watch the rest of his scenes when I watch again, and possibly that kind of backreading makes me more charitable than is earned? but I think his actor is doing the work.

sometimes if you show me a character who is trying, even if they’re not doing very well, then I will adopt them, because look at him, he’s trying.

[miyu-hyperfixates]

About Jin Guangyao & Nie Huaisang

Recently I have been thinking about JGY and NHS’s dynamics and about how JGY never saw NHS coming even though he knew that NHS was smarter than he looked like.

One of the reason is of course arrogance and pride. But, I think that in JGY’s defense NHS might as well be his worst natural enemy. If a blind spot had a form then JGY’d would be distinctively NHS-shaped. And here’s why:

《 Their core personality traits and beliefs 》

While JGY is very familiar with acting weak, vulnerable and so on to manipulate his ennemies (both from a physical and emotional point of view), he had never not even once appeared less smart than he truly was.

I think it never even occurred to him that people would act dumb (in the long term) or incompetent to deceive people because it clashes fundamentally with his whole existence.

Think about it. If JGY had shown less competence than he had, would he have managed to attract the attention of NMJ and be promoted (regardless of how bullied he was)?

If JGY had been anything short of super-competent would he manage to enter the rank of WRH? If he had not managed to prove himself and maintain such level of hyper-competency would he manage to keep playing spy by WRH and staying alive ?

If JGY had not been so convincing would he manage to kill WRH and crawl his way to his father’s grace? And even then, if he had shown the slightest amount of failure or incompetency he probably would have been kicked out of Jinlintai. If he had not maintain that high-competency could he manage to keep his position as chief cultivator?

For JGY incompetency and failure to do his designated jobs doesn’t just mean a small wound to his pride. No most of the time for most of his life it meant death or being kicked out.

So for someone who lived such a high-strung and stressful life, where his next breath, his next warm meal was entirely reliant on how competent he was at his job... how could it ever occur to him that someone could act incompetent on purpose?

Maybe if it had been for a short time then he might have been suspicious and notice but NHS acted this way for 10+ years... who would willingly lower themselves that way for so long, especially if they had the weight of a whole sect on their shoulders?

This is just fundamentally clashing with who he is as a person that it is no matter NHS could sneak on his blind spot. One of JGY biggest mistake was probably not to realize that having no ambition doesn’t mean not having any motivation.

《 JGY’s bias towards the elite 》

I thing JGY had encountered a certain amount of smart/competent/strong people in his life. And while he is naturally weary of physically strong people, he probably view them as less threatening than smart people.

Likewise even among the smart, he probably differentiate between ‘book smart’ and ‘street smart’. Of which JGY stands easily at the top of both. However the kind of smart that’d allow you to survive/thrive is definitely the street kind.

Even if he were aware of the fact that NHS hid his intelligence and cunning, he’d probably expect it to lie within the realm of “book-smartness” and not even the useful kind but the ‘useless’ kind of intelligence directed towards poetry, arts etc.

So of course how could this pampered young master, whose hardest struggle growing up had been on thinking how not to get drag on the training field by his big brother, ever be able to compete with JGY in term of street smartness?   Comparatively WWX and XY, because of their background, make way more of a threat than NHS could ever be in JGY’s mind. And that’s because he grew up prejudiced towards the rich and the elite.

《 NHS & JGY are two different types of masterminds 》

If you’re familiar with TV tropes and especially the Gambit tropes then I’d describe JGY’s plans as strongly lying in the Xanatos Gambit areas (with now and then a hint of Batman Gambit). Basically what it means, is that JGY is the type of mastermind who plays chess. He’ll look at all the outcomes and try to plot things so that no matter what outcome ends up happening he’d still win one way or another.

And while he can more or less improvise when things go sideway, it’s pretty obvious that it is when he has to make hasty decisions that he tends to make a lot of mistakes. 

NHS’s plans are of the  Gambit Roulette kind. In other words, his plans mostly rely on luck and chance occurrence. He had absolutely no way of knowing that MXY would succeed in resurrecting WWX, and even if MXY did, NHS had no way of knowing that WWX would be curious enough to investigate the case of the possessed arm, he had no way of knowing if WWX and LWJ would manage to find all the other body parts and successfully find discriminating facts about JGY... 

So basically what NHS was doing was planning stuff one step at a time. He didn’t need to have a whole plot with thousands of contingencies, he just needed to be nearby where the whole chaos was and try to nudge things in the direction he wanted. Therefore... How could JGY possibly predict NHS’s moves when probably even NHS didn’t know what he would do at that time?

In other words, while JGY is busy analyzing and trying to predict other people’s moves like they were merely pawns on a chessboard...he can’t predict NHS’s move at all because NHS is playing a whole other game altogether.

NHS is basically playing Texas Hold’em Poker, with his two starting cards being WWX and LWJ... Then he’d look at the cards start to appear one by one (calculating the odds, weighing whether he’d be able to get a good combinaison throwing chips here and there to bluff his way out), and hoping that at the end he’d get a better hand than JGY.

So yeah that’s probably why JGY never really stood a chance against NHS.

And while we’re on the game analogy, I’d like to make an aside here to talk about the juniors, who are probably NHS’s natural enemies (just as NHS is JGY’s).... They’re like those wild joker cards that keeps randomly popping for no reasons whatsoever, causing mayhem and chaos ... [especially Jin Ling haha]... And you’re not really sure if they are helping or making everything worse. And so NHS’s approach to dealing with those unknown wild cards was like “If you’re going to cause trouble and pop up anyway, then rather than having you appear out of nowhere and ruin everything, I’ll be the one to lead you there so that you stop surprising me!”

[I hc that this is one of the main reason NHS lured the juniors to Yi City, because he didn’t want to get blindsided by them popping out of nowhere and nearly dying again... like that time at Mo village or in Qinghe... (And he was probably laughing his ass off at JGY, when Jin Ling randomly appeared at the temple and he probably was like “See? That’s why you fail at masterminding! Always expect a dumbass kid with no self-preservation skills whatsoever to appear when you expect it the less!”)]

[spockandawe]

So, I was thinking about Nie brother tragedy times, because I didn’t even come CLOSE to getting it out of my system with that fic

(oh dear, this got longer than I expected)

So first, a few snippets on the things Nie Huaisang does and doesn’t value, and how... strained his relationship with Nie Mingjue is when it comes to these things (based on the last quote I’ve copied over for this post, I get the impression that they might have argued over art vs sabers a lot, but that the genuine, intense anger on nie mingjue’s part is a very new, very shocking development for nie huaisang)

First of all, generally setting the scene

One day, the moment [Nie Mingjue] returned to the main hall of the Unclean Realm, he saw about a dozen folding fans, all lined in gold, flattened out one next to the other in front of Nie Huaisang, who was touching them tenderly, mumbling as he compared the inscriptions written on each one. Immediately, veins protruded from Nie Mingjue’s forehead, “Nie Huaisang!”

Nie Huaisang fell at once.

He really did fall to his knees from the terror. He only staggered up after he finished kneeling, “B-b-b-brother.”

Nie Mingjue, “Where is your saber?”

Nie Huaisang cowered, “In… in my room. No, in the school grounds. No, let me… think…”

Wei Wuxian could feel that Nie Mingjue almost wanted to hack him dead right there, “You bring a dozen fans with you wherever you go, yet you don’t even know where your own saber is?!”

Nie Huaisang hurried, “I’ll go find it right now!”

Nie Mingjue, “There’s no need! Even if you find it you won’t get anything out of it. Go burn all of these!”

And then, introducing Jin Guangyao as a brother figure who understands Nie Huaisang in a way that Nie Mingjue doesn’t/can’t, and one who’s happy to indulge Nie Huaisang’s hobbies. In fact, even when Nie Mingjue is already generally pissed at Jin Guangyao, has tried to kill him in the past, and is angry right now, Jin Guangyao is still willing to speak up on behalf of Nie Huaisang.

All of the color drained out of Nie Huaisang’s face. He rushed to pull all of the fans into his arms, pleading, “No, Brother! All of these were given to me!”

Nie Mingjue slammed his palm onto a table, causing it to crack, “Who did? Tell them to scurry out here right now!”

Someone spoke, “I did.”

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. Nie Huaisang was absolutely delighted. He greeted Jin Guangyao again and again as he grabbed the fans in haste. Seeing how his younger brother reacted, Nie Mingjue was so outraged that he almost found it amusing. He turned to Jin Guangyao, “Don’t send him those useless things!”

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?”

Nie Huaisang nodded as fast as he could, “Yes, Brother is right!”

And then, more of Jin Guangyao being indulgent when it comes to Nie Huaisang.

BUT. Also.

Explicitly bringing up that Jin Guangyao is a pro at figuring out people’s likes and dislikes, and using that to figure out how to ingratiate himself to them.

Jin Guangyao nodded lightly and sat as he had been told, “Brother, if you’re concerned for Huaisang, softer words would do no harm. Why this?”

Nie Mingjue, “Even when a blade’s at his neck he’s still like this. Looks like he’ll always be a good-for-nothing.”

Jin Guangyao, “It isn’t that Huaisang is a good-for-nothing, but that his heart lies somewhere else.”

Nie Mingjue, “Well you’ve really discerned where his 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.”

He knew of people’s likes and dislikes so that he could find suitable solutions; he loved running errands and could do twice the work with half the effort. Thus, Jin Guangyao could be said to be quite a talent at analyzing others’ interests. Nie Mingjue was the only person whom Jin Guangyao couldn’t probe out any useful information about.

Now, this is brought up in the context of how Jin Guangyao was never able to get this sort of read on Nie Mingjue, but it comes right at the end of a LONG passage where... yeah, this is exactly the thing he’s been doing with Nie Huaisang. And considering how much he leans into these tactics and how he’s already been established as a skilled spy and double dealer, it’s... telling that when he can’t do this to Nie Mingjue, he’s working his little brother this way instead.

And then, change of pace. One quoted passage about how as time went (and as Jin Guangyao cozied up to Nie Huaisang more, and as Nie Mingjue’s instability built towards that last qi deviation), Nie Huaisang even more clearly saw his brother as an adversary and Jin Guangyao as an ally.

If only Nie Huaisang were like Wei Wuxian and could feel how great Nie Mingjue’s rage was, he wouldn’t grin in such a bold way. He protested, “Brother, the time is up. It’s time to rest!”

Nie Mingjue, “You rested just thirty minutes ago. Keep on going, until you learn it.”

Nie Huaisang was still giddy, “I won’t be able to learn it anyways. I’m done for the day!”

He often said this, but today Nie Mingjue’s reaction was entirely different from his past reaction. He shouted, “A pig would’ve learnt this by now, so why haven’t you?!”

Never expecting Nie Mingjue to burst out so suddenly, Nie Huaisang’s face was blank with shock as he shrunk toward Jin Guangyao.

So, I’m not terribly inclined to regard Nie Huaisang as a chessmaster manipulator type, more someone who’s good at sneakily inciting chaos, while Jin Guangyao relies on having ironclad control. But Nie Huaisang is definitely smart, and had plenty of time to put certain pieces together. I’m fascinated plenty by whatever it was that took him from ^^^ to this

(I love what fatal journey did, and I love the idea of jin guangyao making nie huaisang more actively complicit in his brother’s death, because that is deliciously fucked up, but I am also trying to be careful with any claims as to Absolute Canon, so I’m not going to go into the movie)

What I’m even more interested in... is the aftermath. I’ve read delicious self-recrimination fic from a variety of characters, but it seems like there’s less when it comes to Nie Huaisang, and I think that’s such a shame.

Because this storyline is so tasty! So tragic!! I love the one post I’ve seen a few times, where it contrasts lan wangji’s and nie huaisang’s reactions to New Brothers, where nie huaisang is like ‘new brothers! excellent!! I will expect backdated presents for each of my birthdays, thank you.’ Which, like... that might not be canon, but Jin Guangyao pretty much rolls with that exact idea. He works out what Huaisang likes best in no time flat, and starts bringing him all kinds of fantastic presents. And he starts arguing in favor of Huaisang’s own preferences and strengths to Nie Mingjue’s face.

There’s something that really gets me about the tragedy of a situation where someone doesn’t realize they’re caught between ‘someone who doesn’t understand me, but loves me’ and ‘someone who understands me, and uses that to use me.’

It kills me, because at the very end of Nie Mingjue’s life, Jin Guangyao was definitely using the disconnect between the two brothers as a way to provoke Nie Mingjue. He might not have caused the division, but he was happy to lean into it. He’s capable of mediation, but instead, he wholeheartedly takes Nie Huaisang’s side in these arguments, which looks gr8 to Nie Huaisang, but has the end of effect of infuriating Nie Mingjue, until that last time, when he finally snaps and qi deviates to death.

I just love the tragedy of realizing someone you thought was an ally was actually... probably indifferent to you, and was definitely using you as a tool to hurt someone you love. 

(I don’t necessarily think that the relationship was established just to manipulate nie mingjue, I think jin guangyao tends to establish this kind of relationship with anyone who’s likely to be a power player of any sort, but I do think that when he wasn’t able to ingratiate himself with nie mingjue directly, nie huaisang was the best method available to steer him)

I wish there was more fic getting inside Nie Huaisang’s head as he works this all out, but it’s not like I have much confidence in my ability to write anything so much in his head and emotions myself, haha. My fic scratched some similar itches, but just taking things away from nhs pov dramatically limits how much you can do with this situation. 

Because it really was an internal situation. Who would he have shared it with? Jin Guangyao definitely had spies in Qinghe, Lan Xichen would have been grieving Nie Mingjue and absolutely would have been reluctant to blame Jin Guangyao for anything, and it isn’t like Nie Huaisang ever had proof. The situation is so tragic and so isolating that I keep coming back to it in my head, and while I was writing the nmj fic, I reread the section I quoted above, and was struck by the nature of the relationship that Jin Guangyao established with Nie Huaisang, on this kind of emotional foundation, and how Nie Huaisang had to maintain that relationship, for years, knowing that the relationship was something Jin Guangyao used to hurt his brother.