#mdzs character study

[pocketsizedowls]

Lan Xichen, libra extraordinaire, has never made a decision in his life.

He's been trained to, of course, but only in an official capacity. His uncle once told him to only make decisions after gathering sufficient information, and that has since become the most important rule in his life. This means he's great at mediating conflict, hosting banquets, and making executive decisions like which village gets more rice and what policies he should enact, but he never knows what to eat for dinner and what to do during his free time.

Lan Wangji, neurodivergent/autistic icon, is the complete opposite. He's a picky perfectionist with a strict daily routine, which no one ever interrupts because why should they? It's just Wangji being Wangji. And, in fact, everyone should strive to be like him. Perhaps if he grew up somewhere rowdier like Lotus Pier or the Unclean Realm then someone would finagle him into being spontaneous, but this is the Cloud Recesses. Of course nobody bothered him until Wei Wuxian came along and turned his world upside down.

Before Wei Wuxian, though, there was Lan Xichen. He stops by the Jingshi often, not because he is concerned for his antisocial little brother (well, maybe just a little), but because he gets so bored sometimes and he never knows what to do. Whenever Uncle is busy, little Xichen likes to find little Wangji and follow his routine with him. Can I join you as you meditate, he asks, and can I eat dinner with you? What do you suggest I do after lectures tomorrow? The other day I took your advice and made a painting, do you wanna see it? Can you pick a book out of this pile for me to read first? I can't seem to decide.

This is why Lan Xichen gets along so well with people. He goes along with things, lets people make decisions for him, and genuinely enjoys it. He earns the trust of the skeptical people without even trying to, just because he lets them pick which wine to order at the inn and what day they should go on a night hunt. You might think it's quite counterintuitive for an all-important sect leader to be this indecisive, but it worked out for the majority of his life. Just like how he chooses to believe in the good in people, people also believe in the good in him.

These days, though, Lan Xichen is reconsidering his behavior. As weeks turn into months turn into years, he stares out the windows of the Hanshi and wonders: Would everything turn out differently if he made more decisions based on instinct? Who can he even trust anymore? Would Nie Mingjue still be alive today, if he didn't force him and A-Yao to become sworn brothers? Would A-Yao still be alive today, if he listened to Wangji and Wei-gongzi's warning sooner? All the people who tell him he did nothing wrong must be lying. How can nothing be his fault?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Cloud Recesses, Lan Wangji adds more items to his routine. With Lan Xichen in seclusion, he's busy now. He teaches and he nighthunts and he sits through meetings and he spends time with Wei Ying. He also visits his brother. He drops by the Hanshi every three days and says, can I join you as you meditate, and can I eat dinner with you? What do you suggest I do after lectures tomorrow? The other day I took your advice and wrote a new song, do you wanna hear it? Can you pick a book out of this pile for me to read first? I can't seem to decide.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[indulginginbeauty]

🧙‍♀️🔮🧛🍂It occurred to me today that I’ve read no fics where Wei Ying’s birthday being on halloween has ever come up. How is there not a fic about Wei Ying throwing an outrageous halloween party in an abandoned house and wearing some kind of Lan-Zhan-breaking sexual costume? How is this day not his whole everything? How is he not characterized as decorating his house outrageously scary starting on Sept first and not taking it down until snow starts falling on it? How is he not the guy who spends two months watching horror movies and tv shows until after midnight every night? How is he not the guy who would drive to every haunted house he can reach without a plane ticket for 8 weekends in a row. How is this not the reality we live in? 🎃👻💀🦇

[whetstonefires]

Very fun thing actually about Jin Guangyao is he spent so much time and energy passing himself off as normal. The Normalest Guy, Look How Normal I Am. The Very Best And Most Skilled At Normal Things, Like Being Normal And Having Normal Opinions.

Which is great because on the one hand it reflects how he was kind of aware he absolutely was not. (And that by default this isolated him and this was Very Unsafe.) But on the other you see, with all the times he falls into the typical mind fallacy under stress and projects weird shit onto people, he also on some level believed everyone was doing this.

That being a Normal Person who had Normal Reactions to things, like being appalled by brutal violence, was an elaborate social lie everyone had to maintain to keep up the facade of civil society, and actually everyone was basically the same as him deep down. He was just better at it, and also the smartest.

Which is a very long way to say his character arc is heavily tied up with his evolving relationship with and skills at masking. I'm not gonna armchair diagnose him because that's beside the point, the point is that he is trying so fucking hard to be normal, but without a particularly well-developed definition of what's abnormal about him to begin with, resulting in some misfires.

And then you contrast him to some other characters and it gets more fun. One of his direct foils is Nie Mingjue, who literally does not know how to mask at all, not the slightest bit, but is fortunate enough to have been born the exact kind of weirdo his position in life demands, with special interests in 'saber training' and 'destroying evil.'

(He explicitly, per narration from wwx being inside his head, has no other interests and doesn't really understand the idea of having more than one activity you care about, do not tell me Nie Mingjue is walking around with a normal brain.)

So he is (jgy has a point about this, although he actually makes it about the luxury of having moral compunctions) free to totally embrace the conviction that everyone should basically be their authentic selves at all times, and just not do evil things about it.

On the other hand, and this really illuminates their relationship for me, Lan Xichen is absolutely trying to be normal. Like, he does try to excel, he wants to be best and he knows he's good, but as a person he is also trying to be as normal as circumstances allow.

He understands 'being normal about things' as a goal not in jgy's terms as an elaborate social fiction but as aspirational shaping of the self; if everyone is normal about everything then there won't be needless conflict. Living as normally as possible will optimize your mental health and your respect for others, and it's just a good baseline from which to be good.

Which is fine as far as it goes, but means harmless eccentricity (including gay) is to be tolerated and swept under the rug rather than really supported, and prejudices him to instinctively side with Jin Guangyao and anyone else who is pushing for Let's Be Normal About This, even when the people being weird are in the right.

(This is also to a non-zero degree a trauma response behavior; what Lan Xichen experienced as the largest existential threat to him growing up was something along the lines of being perceived as a selfish disruptor of norms, like his father.)

And then contrast that to Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, who are both very concerned at least initially with how things and people and they themselves are supposed to be, and feel some responsibility for ensuring this supposed-to is reflected in reality.

But neither of them makes any particular attempt to be normal about it.

And then ofc Wei Wuxian, another jgy narrative foil, never attempts to pass himself off as normal. He will sell 'I'm better than everyone ever' and 'I'm scum of the earth' in the same breath before he will try for normal.

Except that he genuinely seems to think his most virtuous traits, his throw-himself-between-victim-and-weapon impulses, are basically normal. If not everyone (who isn't a total shithead) does it, it's because not everyone has his insane confidence they can pull it off.

Which in a good mood he would say is fair, because he is in fact awesome and really good at winning. (In a worse state of mind he would definitely hate on all the selfish cowards.)

Nie Huaisang is probably the most genuinely normal human being in the main cast, probably even more normal than Jiang Yanli, and he's very happy to play that up and present himself as actually even more normal and average than he is, in order to keep expectations down.

Up until his whole life gets fucked and this little pretense turns into the most elaborate and successful mask in the entire book.

[lurkinginnernarrator]

Honestly MXTX is a master comedian.

" Wei Wuxian preened. “Get outta here!” Then he turned his head and asked, “Lan Zhan, you’re from Gusu. You know how to speak the dialect, right? Teach me, how do you tell someone off in the Gusu dialect?”

Lan Wangji threw him a single word, “frivolous,” then boarded a different boat. Wei Wuxian hadn’t really expected him to answer in the first place. He just thought the kittenish local dialect was incredibly fun and that Lan Wangji must’ve spoken it since he was young, so he was having fun teasing him.

He tossed back a gulp of the sticky rice liquor. Then, with the round, black, shiny little jug dangling from his fingers, he picked up the bamboo pole and lunged over to fight Jiang Cheng.

Lan Wangji, on the other hand, stood side by side with Lan Xichen. This time, both wore similar expressions, each appearing laden with thoughts as they contemplated how to handle the Waterborne Abyss—and how to inform the mayor of Caiyi Town of the many follow-up arrangements to be made. A heavily loaded cargo boat approached them from the boat’s front, laden with baskets upon baskets heavy with golden loquats. Lan Wangji glanced at it and continued to look squarely to the front. Lan Xichen, however, said, “Shall we buy a basket of loquats, if you want to try some?”

“…”

Lan Wangji swept his sleeve and turned. “I do not!” Then he boarded a different boat, again. "

-MDZS Book I, Chapter 4: The Elegant Flirt

[lgbtlunaverse]

Life as a JGY stan is so hard because sometimes I want to make posts about the ways his very justified paranoia turns against him sometimes, rare moments where I think being more trusting or vulnerable would have helped but he felt like it couldnt, or talk about how his brutal survival instinct intersects with society's existing bigotries in a such a way that most of his violence is actually aimed at people lower on the ladder than him, with people like Jin Guangshan being the exception not the rule. Because he's a fascinating character and these parts of him are interesting!

But when I do that I have to live in perpetual fear of the moment that it escapes its target audience and someone takes it to go "Yeah he's a monster who fucked over everyone and is incapable of love! I wish he was killed earlier and his death was a thousand times more painful 🤪"

I mean, take my last example. Due to existing hierarchies it is, at any point, easier and safer for jgy to harm people less powerful than him instead of more powerful than him, even if the more powerful are the ones threatening his safety in the first place. Even knowing how it harms him and while working against it, Jin Guangyao is not immune to internalizing the mindset of the world he lives in. Even when killing Jin Guangshan- one man- it ends up costing the lives of 20 sex workers. You think I can bring up the sex workers in this fucking fandom? You think that will go over peacefully? The well has been so thoroughly poisoned here it feels like any conversation around morality automatically turns into a courtroom to determine a sentence for this fictional fucking character who's already dead.

[carrot-felisidad]

Why I prefer my pookie as bottom?

(answering the question you never asked)

Because FANFICTION or even ORIGINAL WORKS in general are usually bottom-centric. If Jiang Cheng is the bottom in a fic, there will be detailed idealization of his pain and suffering and as a bottom, the story will promise him a gentle care and acknowledgement of a Top (aka Lan Xichen), which will nourish me as a reader of course. I will always prefer a pookie-centric fic, sorry I don't make the rules. Lan Xichen also has his own pain, (dare I say he got one of the most tragic ending in canon), but he's not my pookie, so... Sorry man. I can't ship Jiang Cheng with Nie Huaisang because NHS is also my pookie and if they're in a fic together I will combust.

And that's why I ship XiCheng and not SangCheng. I have no care of the canon and the chemistry, I just want the purple man to bottom.

Thank you for reading my important feature essay.

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

One more time

A Positive Change Arc -- often called a Hero's Journey -- is one possible shape a story can take. It is not the only or the best character arc, it's just one option. In a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist begins the story believing the Thematic Lie, and must learn and embrace the Thematic Truth over the course of their journey.

TGCF and MDZS are not Positive-Change Arcs. They are Flat Arcs.

(I have not read SVSSS)

A Flat-Arc is a story where the protagonist begins already knowing the Thematic Truth, while the world around them believes the lie. In a Flat Arc, the protagonist will have their knowledge of the Truth challenged and tested, they will be tempted by the Lie, and they will ultimately use their conviction to inspire the world around them to also embrace the Truth.

Flat Arc characters do not need to learn the Thematic Truth. They already know it. They may be seduced by the lie, they may falter, but they will always rally back to the Truth in the end.

(If they ARE successfully converted to the lie, then that isn't a Flat Arc anymore, it's a Corruption Arc, and it's usually a tragedy.)

"But Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian learned--" Nothing they learned impacted the Thematic Truth. Did they learn things? Yes! That's how Being A Person works. Both of them DID change and grow as people from the start of the series to the end. But neither of them learned anything that impacted the Thematic Truth. Because they already knew it.

Xie Lian was already kind, he already wanted to help people, he already believed that common people should be protected and uplifted. His suffering at the hands of BWX did not teach him any deep or important lessons. He already knew the Truth. BWX tried to tempt him to embrace the lie -- that people are undeserving, that you should never do anything for anyone who won't grovel with gratitude, that caring for other people is a waste -- and failed, because Xie Lian knew the truth and even when he was at his lowest he was searching for confirmation that he was right. Xie Lian only needed one single act of kindness to reassure himself that he was right and BWX was wrong. He did not learn anything new, he reaffirmed what he already knew and understood.

Wei Wuxian is good, and righteous, and morally upright. He is a character who does the right thing regardless of the consequences he might face. The sects collectively wanted to destroy him because he refused to bow to them, not because he ever at any point actually did anything wrong. Even the vengefulness he showed while actively at war is narratively justified, and it's key that the sects did not care about the desecration of bodies while it served them. He did not learn any valuable or important lessons when the Sects raided the Burial Mounds. The fact that Lan Sizhui exists at all is proof for us as the audience that everything Wei Wuxian did was worth it. All of it mattered, and all of it was the right choice, because a-Yuan is alive. He doesn't come back to life having learned anything new, he already understood the Truth.

Obviously neither of them are Omnipotent. They learn that there's dudes in love with them, they solve the mysteries of their respective true Big Bads, they uncover some other stuff. But the Thematic Truth, the core theme of the story, is not a lesson either of them needs to learn. It is a lesson they teach others by refusing to bend to the Lie the rest of the world believes.

[raddestrose]

Knowing what Wei Wuxian was the class clown makes so much sense now

[bokutoasavillain]

I fear this may be too controversial but i really don’t get the hate on junlian when so many people ship xuexiao? Like I know they’re not exactly the same but it’s fascinating to me how one fucked up ship is so popular while the other is so incredibly hated?? Like they both have incredibly complex relationships in canon and both have one character who felt wronged by the other and then went on to force them to do things that went against their morals while also being really close to them and outwardly caring for them. Do you get what I mean? Xue Yang and Jun Wu both did these things yet Xue Yang is loved for the complex and fascinating character that he is but Jun Wu is reduced to a stupid jerk and people hate him. Maybe it’s the difference between the fandoms but I don’t think that’s the only reason. Idk I’m not telling people who they can and cannot like but I do think the difference is weird

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Clown to Equine communication failed; They are separate species.

[First] Prev <--> Next

[19silvermirrors]

💙 蓝曦臣1008生日快乐

[navarice]

my dearest fellow mdzs stans, i really don't want to spoil anyone's fun but sometimes some things must be said. please do NOT mistake fanon characteristics for canon characteristics because by GOD is it frustrating to dissect a character when all anyone wants to do is blindly turn away from the very vivid and metastasizing flaws.

jiang cheng is an extremely complicated character, and that's why we love him. but by god, he is a jealous, self-victimizing asshole with a massive inferiority complex who likes to torture (probably) innocent look-a-likes of his (as far as he knew) dead adjacent family member. jesus christ this isn't some simple case of miscommunication (well it is but, you know no amount of communication will ever mend the giant chasm that developed between them. especially not with asians raised within the most classical case of asian parenting, i mean come on now) but a matter of deep and intense self-loathing developed since early childhood projecting violently outwards. let me be clear. he hates wei wuxian. he loathes him. he wants to kill him with his own hands again and again so some part of his convoluted sense of justice and superiority will be fulfilled. he's a classist, a bully, and abusive to everyone around him. ong at the end of mdzs, i was nearly crying tears of joy when jin guangyao flayed him flat on his ass bc that man needed to hear it. he needed to feel it. he needed to stop blaming others and blame himself.

and!! he's homophobic!! the entire cultivation world is, yes, but he's the only one we see give wei ying and lan zhan active shit for it!!

point is...his complexity makes him interesting. as a child, he was pretty alright tbh. he was understandably upset when three of his dogs got taken away and he saw his dad give a completely random kid such a gentle hug when jiang cheng never received one so far. he was a kid, and it was sad and helped the readers get a glimpse at the already dysfunctional family dynamics before wei ying came into the picture. as an adolescent/teen, yes he had a lot of unresolved rage and inferiority issues building up when he was constantly being compared to wei wuxian by his mother and not given enough reassurance from his father (once again, all present before wei ying...everyone just likes to dump the shit on him bc it's easier to point fingers at others than at yourself). perhaps he could have turned out differently if literally either of his parents stepped up and took accountability. however, after the burning of lotus pier? after the golden core transfer? after wei ying stuck around as his subordinate just as he promised, and protected jiang cheng like he promised, and defected just to save the yunmeng clan's reputation so jiang cheng doesn't have to put up with the other clan's shit, still continuing to keep his promise? after wei ying's death? idk abt y'all, but all bets are off bro.

mxtx makes it a point to make him so irredeemable. he's an exploration of what can go wrong if you let your traumas, self-hatred, and revenge fantasies blind you. he has the worst traits of his parents for a reason, directly contrasting with the other sibling, who is a perfect picture of eldest daughters born into a dysfunctional family. jiang yanli has the best traits of her parents (in terms of compassion and standing up for her family), but the family dynamics also made her the way she was. the responsible, the mediator, the occasional mother, stepping in where madam yu cannot.

there's just so much potential to hold him accountable buried under the pretense of misunderstandings and kinnie moments. he just had so many chances, more than any other character, to make a different choice. to actually look past his misgivings and unlearn the bad habits he used to protect himself as a child. i'm not saying he has to magically heal from all his traumas, but at the very least know not to be like his parents. but he wasn't written that way. because that is what happens when you give into your insecurities and generational trauma.

bottom line: jiang cheng is a fantastic archetype that needs to be explored in all his authenticity, including his moments of loyalty and cruelty.

[friedwizardwhispers]

It always bothers me when I see people say "the mxtx main characters are unreliable narrators" because....well... they are not the narrators of their stories. They are the main point of views and there is a difference. If they were the narrators the text would be them talking to us, the audience about theirs stories which is not what's happening and we would only get theirs point of view which is very much not the case.

We have Luo Binghe's point of view at least two times that I can remember of the top of head without looking it up (right before the abyss and right after the skinner) in svsss we also have Feng Xin at least once in tgcf and Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling in mdzs (and maybe more).

The narrators of said stories is an omniscient third person who is mostly sticking to the protagonists' point of view but can sometimes jump to some other to help the story flow better and give different perspective

[raffinthebox]

breaking the art block (nearly a year :c) with a short and sketchy comic about lwj and wwx.

it's inspired by a very specific scene from a hogwarts au fanfic: Magic for Beginners, written by my dear friend HollowNightmare.

[wangxianficrecs]

Why Not Me? by Eleanor_Fenyx

Why Not Me?

by Eleanor_Fenyx (@eleanorfenyx)

G, 26k, Lan Jingyi

Summary: Lan Jingyi knows that he's a Lan by blood. He wears the Lan family headband, with its special embroidery and everything. He's a disciple like everyone else, even though he's not so good at sitting through his classes, and he's racked up more punishments than anyone else in his age group twice over already. He's trying, so why is it none of his family want to raise him? Maybe they don't know he's here, in the children's home. Maybe they just need to learn who he is and they'll take in their orphaned cousin with open arms. If he could only learn to behave and earn their approval then he'd be set with a new family to take over for the parents he doesn't really remember, but why is behaving so hard?! Mojo's comments: Oh, I LOVE me some lonely, unloved Jingyi stories, and this one delivers. I think I might have cried for the whole first chapter, because poor misfit BABY! He's just so full of feelings that he splits at the seams and they all come jumbled and spilling out. But that's good, because it turns out there are people who will actually LISTEN to him. And then it turns out that there are people who will love him, too.

pov lan jingyi, child lan jingyi, orphan lan jingyi, loneliness, self-esteem issues, self-worth issues, adhd, neurodivergence, lan jingyi has adhd, found family, angst, fluff, family, lan jingyi & lan qiren, families of choice, gusu lan sect rules, character study, rejection sensitive dysphoria, thirteen years of wei wuxian's death

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)