successiontamed real

cdrama sideblog of @torturelabyrinth / about

[shenzhiheng]

Wenzhou + Live Slug Reaction

[yesdramas]

[baek1nho]

wenzhou + little moments i think about a lot

[dramas-vs-novels]

“The Untamed” as Onion Headlines: Jiang Cheng Compilation (pt. 1)

[dimpleviolence]

the way i could read your tags all day

Ty :*

[byallaccountsitdoesntmakesense]

It’s his little heart breaking. 🥺

[dimpleviolence]

Wtf why did i lose like 30 followers on this blog overnight....did the mdzs blogs get purged.... is it my pussy stink or....

[calocera]

[sandushengshou]

endless gifs of jiang cheng [6/ ∞]

[dimpleviolence]

I think what makes jgy such a fucking great villain is precisely that at the end of the day his motivations are pretty much inscrutable. Like, even after all the explanations he offers at various points throughout the show, there’s still this ambient unintelligibility to his actions. I think this is especially clear when you compare him to someone like nie huaisang, who while much more morally grey than jgy is nevertheless easier to explain: he does what he does because he wants to avenge his brother’s death. Meanwhile, jgy has every justification at the ready for his deeds, and is clearly meant to be seen as morally in the wrong, and yet there remains this eerie gap between what he does and why he says he did it. 

In this way he really is a classic iago type villain: at a certain point (by which i mean his death) he finally stops talking, refuses to explain further, lets his crimes stand on their own. The rest of the cast, as well as the viewers, theoretically have all the information we need to make sense of him—we know his tragic backstory, we know all about his resentment and vengefulness and pain, we know about his twin desires for both control and acceptance. Yet it seems, somehow, that his actions cannot be reduced to these motivations alone. It’s as if he operates outside the realm of human psychology entirely, and is instead a natural force, a monolith, a void turning away all attempts to rationalize. He is a gap in the otherwise easy-to-read text of cql, and it is exactly this illegibility that animates him as a villain, that gives him his outsize narrative power.

The way I see jgy treated in fandom is often as a puzzle to be solved, usually with an undercurrent of anxiety involved, as if by filling in the missing pieces we can finally once and for all Understand Him. In this sense it doesn’t really matter whether this explanatory impulse ends up coming down on the side of “he is a consummate evil person, and here is why,” or “he is a maligned blameless victim, and here is why”: both are a kind of uncomfortable moral fidgeting, an attempt to escape the queasiness that jgy’s actions make us feel. Personally I am not very interested in this puzzle-solving, both because I think it tends to be inadequate—it still falls into the chasm of inexplicability—but more importantly because it has nothing to do with why I like jgy as a character. I think he’s great not in spite of but because of the simple fact that we just don’t know why he did any of it. All we know is that he exists. 

We, as fans, have to reckon with the same ultimate horror as the characters who survive guanyin temple: that this is a world where men like jgy can exist, and can do the things that he did. One specific instance of incomprehensible villainy may have died in the temple, but we now know there could be another one out there, or many others. This is a world with evil people in it, and we don’t know where they come from.

[majestictortoise]

my saltiest mdzs take is that meng yao/jin guangyao is interesting not because he was forced into anything he did but because he wasn’t forced. he chose it all. he looked at his options and acted according to what he wanted. none of it had to happen. that’s what’s interesting.  

because, yes, actually, “give up trying to get dad’s approval” is an option. “back out of the marriage and accept the dire status consequences” is an option. “play healing music instead of evil music” is an option. “don’t kill people” is an option. “just fucking leave and start over somewhere else” was always an option, as he himself demonstrates, as it is his backup plan. “just find a way to live as a poor person with no political power” is an option. 

it is so weird to me that some interpretations want to take all of his agency away by claiming he was forced into all of his actions. he wasn’t! that’s why he’s a complex character! not because he had no agency! he’s interesting because he had tons of agency–which is not the same thing as status or power!

it is certainly not the same thing as being able to make good choices. dear lord no he has terrible options, and they are all choices that people shouldn’t have to make. (gosh i wish i didn’t have to just find a way to live as a poor person but haha here we are.) i am not arguing with that. and people with a shitty array of choices before them will often do shitty things. poverty sucks! rigid class structures crush the people at the bottom! powerful rich people are garbage! but he has better options than, say, a-qing or xue yang at various points, as literal orphans on the streets, or the sex workers and servants he used in his schemes. at the same time, he has much worse options than most of the other characters, as people from families with abundant wealth and status. within that context, he made deliberate, calculated choices (while not always having all the data) that led to unforeseen consequences that required new deliberate, calculated choices! that’s why he’s interesting and why his story as a person struggling in a rigid and unfair class structure resonates. 

“don’t keep a severed head as a souvenir” was also an option but really who can blame him for that one. whomst among us etc etc.

[surii]

- Shakespeare

[coquelicoq]

# the gulf between baby sect leader jc sitting in a chair too large for him # to sandu shengshou who learned to own it (via @amedetoiles)

[pebblemagic]

me, lying awake with the cursed weight of knowledge: “lan xichen is 3zun’s auspistice and like, not very good at it”

[mikkeneko]

#canon is silent on if he failed the `don’t let them fuck` step#but he failed the `don’t let them kill each other` step TWICE OVER#which is not usually POSSIBLE#AND YET

[dimpleviolence]

I think I need to watch word of honor again... I need to see blorbo from my shows (zhou zishu)....

[dimpleviolence]

SOS did anyone else read that one xiyao fic that was like a post canon where they escaped guanyin temple together and settled in (what would now be called) singapore and then elizabeth swann from pirates of the caribbean was there as like the pirate king... It was so good and i thot I bookmarked it but now I can't find ittttttt did it get deleted 😭

[rhymesswith]

Saw these screenshots and got overwhelmed with A-Xiang feelings (but what else is new)

[tashaneva]

love is stored in the siji shanzhuang domesticity