There Will Never Be A Day Where I'm Not Salty About LXC's Treatment Post Guanyin Temple

My favourite trope in MXTX's novels is finding one that one person is a criminal/traitor so we need to get rid of them but it turns out they're the only competent people in this whole fucking place so we desperatly scramble for what's left of them to menage our taxes.

Jin Guangyao: Of course I have a lot of pent-up rage, you fool! I've been the same height since I was twelve!

Dragon Xichen and his A-Yao 💛

Spirited away redraw

Lan Qiren: I pray that my nephews won't share their father's weakness for women!

Monkey's Paw: *curls a finger*

Nie huaisang: what's your body count?

Jin Guangyao: oh me ? Like 30 now

Nie huaisang: oh my god, you're a hoe

Jin Guangyao: how does it make me a -

Wait are we talking about people we have slept with?

Nie huaisang: yeah

Jin Guangyao: oh well I have never done that yet

Nie huaisang: then why have you say 30 ?

Jin Guangyao:

* pre qin su accident

Wei Wuxian: Me and Lan Zhan are dating

Lan Xichen: We have known for ages

Wei Wuxian: ? We started dating 2 days ago

Jin Guangyao: tf were you doing before that

Akutagawa: you have disappointed me.

Atsushi: like how you’ve disappointed Dazai?

Akutagawa: *heavy breathing*

Atsushi: OKAY I’M SORRY-

Ukrainians holding their pride march in a subway because of russian bombs are immeasurably more powerful and real than any western tankie with a hammer-and-sickle or a Lenin profile on a trans flag.

MDZS Character height chart

This was the author’s footnote in chapter 115, unit in cm.

Nie Mingjue 191

Song Zichen 190

Lan Xichen 188

Lan Wangji 188

Wei Wuxian 186

Jin Zixuan 185

Jiang Wanyin 185

Xiao Xingchen 185

Wen Qionglin 183

Xue Yang 180

Mo Xuanyu 180

Nie Huaisang 172

Jin Guangyao 170 (without his hat but it’s doubtful whether the interior is heightened)

if i had a nickel for every time i encountered some version of the following observation in the mdzs fandom:

"i'll never understand why fans of jin guangyao and jiang cheng and xue yang keep insisting on defending these characters' virtues. you can just admit that your favourite characters are assholes and terrible people. it's fine. why are you defending them."

i could probably buy myself a packet of some really sick edibles the next time i hit up the dispensary. but more to the point, what truly frustrates me about this observation (aside from the implicit arrogance that seems smugly baked into it every time i stumble upon it) is how completely it misunderstands what villain and antagonist fans are doing when we discuss the positive attributes of our favourite characters. it's the assumption that what we're doing must always be about defence, about arguments, about insisting that the characters we like are Good, Actually, And Here's Why--when in reality i have never, ever, ever encountered a fan of any of these characters who has been interested in definitively declaring that any of them are good or bad people. like that just straight up hasn't been part of the conversations we've been having with each other.

like, what you are interpreting as us "defending a character's virtues" is very often just us literally stating how the characters' actions have had a positive impact on other characters' lives, or the world more broadly. or we are just trying to compare acts of cruelty/violence committed by one of these characters vs the acts of cruelty/violence committed by the protagonist and his inner circle, to draw inferences about one or both characters, to better understand them and the story and how they illustrate various themes, whether mxtx meant for them to appear in the text or not. it's just... analysis. and yes, a core competency when it comes to literary analysis means being able to critically defend your arguments using examples from the source material.

jokes about the jgy or jc stans and "defence squads" aside, it's not about defending individual characters, because the characters don't need a defence, because they're not real. but the work we've all collectively put into examining these characters, and contextualizing their actions within their circumstances within the source material, is certainly real, and it makes sense that we'd want to step up and defend our work when people who disagree with us choose to misrepresent our arguments.