Today I am at that point of my life,where I think JGY dying is what good happens with him, I read so much,watch so much, but nothing have that permanent satisfaction.
All his life I don't think for single moment he wanted to have problems in his life,like life would have been better,that little guy just had lived with his mother in random small village,farming somewhere.
But just because they were in Yunmeng and his mother get hope seeing WWX getting adopted in Jiang family,she want her son to also get those thing, good life,his father and name in cultivation world.
But it just that things never turn out good for them or maybe she had hope from wrong guy (like who even believe JGS). That's why they both have this much tragedy.
In the conclusion, it's good that for whatever reason he were killed, it's better than mourning whole life, let just him have meet up with his mother in afterlife, I believe that guy believe no one like he believes his mother.
By the way will someone show me few meng yao-mengshi arts?
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Modern problem required modern solutions
The Evidence:
Jin Guangyao is referred to as looking so much like his mother that people mistake the statue of her as being of him.
JGY's mother was widely known as an incredibly beautiful woman.
JGY wears an iconic and silly looking hat (to draw attention to his attained station, even though no one else of the same station in any adaption is wearing that hat style)
My (Totally Correct) Conclusion:
JGY was tired of people looking at him and thinking "what a beautiful woman" so he started wearing a gender affirming hat. Now people look at him and instead think "what a silly hat"
And it's better
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Thank you for this, I will maybe print it out stick it on face of jiggy antis
drives me nuts when people treat jin guangyao or wei wuxian like they're socialist revolutionaries like no! they're not!! in fact their respective roles in society and complacency regarding its hierarchies is why ANY of the story even happens to begin with!!!
jin guangyao doesn't hold bitterness just because he was born lower class. he is bitter because others deride him and his prostitute mother in spite of both their intelligence, skills, and efforts to climb the ladder.
why do you think we were shown scenes of other prostitutes in the brothel deriding meng shi for being literate, for "trying" so hard? why do you think we were shown scenes of anxin taunting meng yao and throwing shit at him because he was trying to learn cultivation at his mother's behest?
why do you think jin guangyao arranged for the arson of that brothel, burned to the ground with everyone except sisi inside? that's not the behavior of someone who believes in true equality and the inherent worth of sex workers as human beings!
that's the behavior of someone who thinks he's better than them. the behavior of a man who already came up on top through political games and war crimes, backstabbing and spying for the sake of the "greater good".
i won't rehash his argument to nie mingjue that he didn't have a choice-- he had some choice, but no matter what he does his class will come up and people will always assume the worst and try to hurt him for it, which forces his hand to do whatever will protect him best (hence 'no choice').
jin guangyao did everything he could to secure his own safety and a place among those already higher up. and by that point, he'd won it.
the fact that the temple rebuilt on the brothel site is to guanyin, the goddess of mercy, is even more ironic! the fact that jin guangyao has the goddess's statue carved to look like his own mother is proof that he viewed both her and himself as higher than them. more worthy than them.
of course he cared about the general welfare of others (read: the watchtowers). but consider also that there is no watchtower near yi city, which ended up being one of xue yang's playgrounds. jin guangyao can and will turn a blind eye to certain sufferings if it is convenient to him.
sure, jin guangyao made undeniable contributions to cultivation society and accessibility, but he is not at any point trying to topple existing class structures. his adherence to them is in fact integral to his own downfall in the end.
it brings with it the inevitability of society conveniently ignoring his triumphs and genuine moments of humanity to deride him once more as an evil, disgusting son of a whore once his crimes come to light.
now for wei wuxian. he's the righteous protagonist of the story and he doesn't give a fuck what society thinks, yes, but he wasn't out there trying to cause an uprising so that all the poor servant classes and lower could become cultivators. he wasn't trying to redistribute wealth or insinuate that those who are lower deserve to be viewed as equal to the gentry.
the most critical and non-explicitly stated fact of mo dao zu shi is that wei wuxian has always been resigned to his position in the social hierarchy.
his unreliable narration, especially regarding his own past and thoughts, is so damn important. he doesn't EVER tell the reader directly that people treated him any which way at their leisure because of his parents' differing social classes.
no. instead we are shown how much prestige he is afforded as cangse-sanren's son-- reputation as a talented and charming young cultivator, made head disciple of Yunmeng Jiang-- and how little respect he is given in the same breath, as the son of servant wei changze.
the way he is treated by others is as fickle as the wind. if he obeys and does as told, there is no reward. of course he did that, that was the expectation to start with! if he does anything even slightly inconvenient, there is a punishment. of course he has no manners, what else would you expect from an ungrateful son of a servant?
wei wuxian's righteousness is not a matter of adhering to principles he was explicitly taught, the way nie mingjue values honor or the way jiang cheng always tries to prove himself. wei wuxian does the right thing regardless of what the consequences are to him because his good deeds are always downplayed and his bad deeds are always singled out, no matter who or how many people were doing it with him.
he has faced this double standard since childhood. there are points in the novel where it's clear that this sticks out to wei wuxian, but does he ever fight back against that view of himself? does he EVER, at any point in the story, explain his actions and choices to jianghu society and try to debate or appeal to their sense of reason?
no. because he knows, at his very core, that any explicit deviation from their interests whatsoever will be punished.
slaughtering thousands of people is fine when they want him to do it, and when the alternative is unjust torture, re-education camps, and encroachment upon other sects' lands.
slaughtering thousands of people who are trying to paint him as evil for not going along with their genocidal plans, however, is punished.
wei wuxian knows his acceptance among the higher classes is superficial and unsteady. from the age of 10, when jiang fengmian took him in, he knew subconsciously that he could be kicked out at any time.
he knows that cultivation society doesn't care about war crimes and concentration camps and mistreatment of the remaining wen survivors of the sunshot campaign. but the right thing to do now that they aren't at wartime is to help them, plus they'd punish him either way for it, so he will.
in this regard wei wuxian is more self-aware of his position than jin guangyao. he does care about common people and he does try his best to help them as an individual. even if that ends up with him disabled, arrested, targeted in sieges, or dead.
but is he revolutionary? in the full equality, fight the establishment, rewrite laws, change social structures and people's perceptions of class sense?
no. no. he isn't.
now my knowledge of chinese society and history is fairly limited to my hindu diaspora upbringing and our shared cultural similarities ... but speaking to what i absolutely know us true, adherence to one's social class is expected.
this is rigid. efforts and merits might bring you some level of mobility, but in the end, the circumstances of your birth will always be scrutinized first, and your behavior compared to the stereotypes of where and how you originate.
mdzs is not about revolution, and none of its characters are able to truly change its society. there is no grand "maybe cutsleeves aren't inherently bad" or "i'm sorry for persecuting you and believing hearsay, you were truly a good person all along!" at the finale.
people ignore history and repeat it again with the next batch of ugly gossip and rumors.
wei wuxian, lan wangji, and luo qingyang find peace only by distancing themselves from cultivation society and its opinions.
jin guangyao and wei wuxian both cannot ever escape from others' perception of their origins and actions. regardless of their personal beliefs, they are not revolutionaries.
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What great day to curse at society
In mdzs, when the public opinion started shifting and everyone turned on jgy it made me feel vindicated. Finally they're siding with me against the guy that keeps pissing me off. But that only lasted an instant. Slowly, progressively, I started going wait. Wait no hold on. Go back. I didn't mean it that way go back. Because they were saying about jgy the exact same bullshit they had been saying about wwx the entire novel. And suddenly it felt really off.
Then, during the flashbacks leading up to Nightless City, I kept thinking back on that thing wwx tells nhs in volume one, when nhs explains his family's solution to their haunted saber problem. "Well, that's hitting a bit close to the demonic cultivation path". Doesn't nhs refuse to swordfight as well? Is he even carrying a sword? How come he can get away with this (and wwx can't)?
Wwx and jgy have similar origins but were raised in different environments. They learned similar survival methods and tried to play by the rules up until they couldn't anymore. They had the two more prominent roles in winning the sunshot campaign, and yet everyone forgot about that the second they decided they were irredeemable. They met similar ends, fighting and protecting people they loved.
Nhs became the kind of person his brother would despise in trying to avenge him. He became like his brother's murderer. His survival method is also trying to make himself seem harmless, not with polite smiles or clever distractions but with tears. The only reason he didn't meet the same end as the other two is that he managed to stay out of the public's eye, and because his reputation was unstained from the beginning. Although I should note that he is Nie Mingjue's half-brother, which might hint at a more complicated heritage, more similar to that of the other two, than one would suspect at first glance. But whether that's the case or not, the point is that nobody would call nhs a bastard, and that means that people will overlook certain things he does that have condemned the other two to death.
That's what makes them such great narrative foils. In the end all three of them are cheating, but nhs had better cards to begin with.
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