lmaooooooo no i'm not saying that. 😂 i suppose i am, as a sidebar to discussing how these two set off the protagonist
(please reread more carefully, this post was about the protagonist and the way other characters framing him within stories within the story is a driving force of the plot lmao)
saying that jin guangyao would say that.
because you see he is fucked up about the whole concept of society and its rules, and whether or if they actually mean anything.
and the thing is: the idea that society's rules and conventions surrounding how you sort What's Okay from What Needs Punished are frequently complete bullshit is true! he's right about that part! the text backs him up, to a point!
jin guangyao is cynical about the idea of society as an arbiter of right and wrong for very good reasons.
jin guangshan was an untouchable, shameless, widely admired monster, and for his sins meng yao entered a cultivation world where his fellows (other than nie mingjue and lan xichen who were far above him and could afford to ignore such contamination anxieties) would not drink the tea he poured, because he was made filthy by the brothel in which he was born.
(but none of that filth could cling to his father's golden hem no matter how many times he walked in and out of such places, hm?)
so he doesn't believe in any of it. he looks at how an act by one person can be fine and the same act by another a crime, and says: there is in Justice no justice, there is only inequality playing itself out self-righteously upon a broad, bright stage.
there is no use in letting yourself be bound by these hypocrisies. right and wrong don't exist.
so his destroying, decapitating, and dismembering nie mingjue because it will satisfy his need for revenge and his ambitions isn't really different, according to this point of view, from nie mingjue doing that to wen xu, for the sake of his revenge and his quest for victory. it's the same.
and it obviously, obviously isn't. oh my god! of course it isn't. 😂 that's the point. half the point of him. jin guangyao is over here in 'nothing is real' territory, a (not total, but pretty far along) moral nihilist, and he's clearly wrong.
but nie mingjue is deliberately positioned as the most upright and morally uncompromising person available, and still yet morally compromised.
and wei wuxian is there. right in the middle.
because jin guangyao is right: it doesn't take Nightless City II and atrocities against them, to turn the world on Wei Wuxian. it doesn't even take jin zixuan, and the horrific fuck-up of accidental but profound personal betrayal + political transgression.
it just takes finding some villains who had the protection of those in power, and killing them. the same damn thing that was so righteous to do during the war, and now it's damning. now it's indefensible, and forfeits him all protection and the respect of society.
it's enough to take a hero of the war and make him, in a matter of months, into a baby-eating monster.
because his reputation was fragile. because his position was not strong.
that was all it took to turn him into a villain, because he was only an arrogant young man of low birth, who did not abide by the rules.
jin guangyao takes the premise to a logical extreme that collapses into monstrosity, but he's responding to a world wherein it is true, it is fact that what makes right and wrong is relative, is sensitive to context.
and that what will be judged as good or bad depends much more heavily on the convenience of those who sit in judgement than upon any such thing as justice. and that all of truth will never see the light.
what is black and what is white; who decides? you see? society is not a reliable judge.
it will tell you that being gay is more shameful than sexually harassing the maids.
it will tell you some lives matter more than others. it will tell you matters of justice are easy to parse out, that the victors of a war triumphed through greatness and heroic deeds, that only the deserving are sent to die in labor camps, that the police never commit crimes. that there is always one villain, and you will know him at a glance.
it will tell you that a decapitation is good when it's one sort of vengeance and evil when it's another.
is it right, then? when it says that last? about nie mingjue? well. probably. certainly more right than wrong!
but why? parse it out, name it, hold its shape in your mouth, the exact reason, so you will know it again. some other time, when the lines are less dark and clear. the weight of the difference, of how the context of an act can change its meaning, and how you draw that meaning out of it. roll it with your tongue like a stone.
you have to go through the process of determining these things for yourself. you can't just trust that society knows. you can't let yourself be told. you have to look. you have to learn to decide.
and the world will not make it easy.
