#i guess bc wen kexing has lived the way he does is he so calm without resorting to violent outbursts of emotions or dissociative control

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

i dont know if this is a wildly shared take but im always ,, enraptured is maybe a fitting description ,, im enraptured by novel wen kexing's (specifically NOVEL wkx's) sanity. alright so he is not the sanest person around, obviously. he is unhinged and unashamed of it. but he is so contained and self-controlled in his insanity.

im used to characters like him, of the same or an equal standing with equal power, history, goal, and personality who end up externalizing their inner demons in some shape or form at some point in the story (or in their own backstory). and i have the impression that wen kexing never really does that. not really. even when he skins the old valley master and bathes the valley in blood, is this the culmination of long years of planning; it is a calculated statement of power. its politics. not explosion. he remains grounded and reachable throughout; and even though describing what he does to crown himself valley master this way is a stretch, i would say it is still within the perimeters of it. it definitely is not anything where he seems to lose his shit.

the one moment when he comes close to a slipping sanity, when he maybe loses his marbles a bit expresses itself so very different to how these moments usually look like; in heavy sorrow, instead of rage. at the end of the main story, when wen kexing has fulfilled a-xiang's wish and killed mo huaiyang to avenge cao weining for her, and when he attains an injury that could turn fatal and is sitting in the shards of his life and really feels the loss of his a-xiang, his little girl in purple. he comes very close to dying there, dying because he cannot bring himself to remember his will to live. and only when zhou zishu asks him whether he wants to live does wen kexing seem to regain some spirit. only when zhou zishu tells him he is not going to leave him, does wen kexing regain his hope. and this is so interesting because this is not an explosion of rage, it is not violent. its just grief and sorrow, as simple and mundane as that. it makes him seem ,, well, not human, because rage is human too ,, maybe common. an everyman. i find that absolutely insane.

how can a guy like wen kexing, with a life and a lived experience like wen kexing, rettain his steadiness, his psychological stability, to that degree? absolutely maddening