#like mdzs is a VERY morally grey thing. everybody did wrong things there

[theawkwardvillainess]

Some more of my art! This time it's Jin Guangyao and (young) Nie Huaisang, two of my favorite characters in all of MDZS. I think I will come up with my original designs for all the characters in the future, but for now they are based on the donghua which I btw started watching (everything is so fast ahhh)

Also I know I probably messed up some anatomy/face features/other things but please don't point it out! I start to get ashamed and afraid to post my art even with soft criticism... So please let it be imperfect

[hamliet]

What exactly is being morally grey? I feel like I see so many variations of it in fandom and I'm confused. How does this work in let's say MXTX works?

It's so used it's almost lost all meaning.

But in actuality, it means that in contrast to more simplistic tales, the good guys aren't always good, and the bad guys aren't always bad. To quote Buffy:

Giles: The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day! No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

Sometimes we don't even know who the good guys are, in very gray stories.

Sure, there might still be a protagonist, but our protagonist might have murdered several thousand people in despair (Wei Wuxian). Even though there were other factors, does that matter to the actual people who live in that world who lost their family members?

And then you have like, Jin Guangyao, who, aside from Lan Wangji and Xiao Xingchen, is the only other character in the entire novel we see even attempting to help the common people and better their lives. At the end of the novel, his reputation is in such tatters because of the truly bad things he did and the things he didn't do that all those protections and reforms are sure to be viewed through a lens of "le problematique" now, if not completely undone. Like, think about the watchtowers. Those are surely now viewed as a way to get control, but they also actually protected people. So... more common people are absolutely going to get harmed as a result of the novel's conclusion.

If we go by utilitarian ethics, since more people will be harmed, the novel's conclusion is immoral. However, clearly that's not fair, because we see why the conclusion matters for individuals too. So, MDZS's answer is a very raw and honest look at life, albeit with a hopeful, kind hint to it: the world sucks and is immoral, and what is right and what is wrong is never certain, but the only way through is empathy.

Because of that, I don't think MXTX's works are remotely morally nihilistic, which would be "morality doesn't exist at all."