Hoo boy. Okay. I wasn't even around for the Drama this post is about, but from the state of the notes, I feel like I as OP have a duty to get out in front of explaining the background of the joke before anything gets out of hand.
So, first: as I alluded to, the Guzu Lan sect in Mo Dao Zu Shi are extremely Buddhist, in a way that's unmistakable if you're at all familiar with East Asian religious culture. It's mentioned several times that the founder was a monk, and details like the vegetarian diet and ban on alcohol and the rule against killing any animal inside the sect make it even more obvious. They aren't making the disciples fully live like Buddhist monks, but it's not that far off, including the presence of an extremely long list of very particular rules. This is the context in which both Lan Finishing School and the Wens' attack on the Cloud Recesses exist. In many places with a strong Buddhist presence in the culture, it's not especially unusual for many young men to spend a year or two as a monk to get some Proper Morals hammered through their heads; conversely, there are many, many instances throughout history across many countries of Buddhist monasteries, as institutions that sometimes hold significant wealth and power, being targeted for religious persecution that tries to wipe their monastic tradition out. The Lans are really, really Buddhist.
Anyway a few years ago some poor bastard found that the way the novel depicts the experience of living in an insular community with lots of strictly enforced rules about proper conduct for moral and spiritual development resonated with their experience growing up in Orthodox Judaism, and wrote an AU fanfic, inspired by the historical Kaifeng Jews, where the Lan sect are Jewish.
And to reiterate: I get it. The Lans are so Buddhist. The Vibes are, you can recognize immediately, so weird. Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.
But also... I get it. The thing is, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is a good writer. She is incredible at depicting the messy nuances of her characters' emotional lives, and Lan Wangji struggling with how the same highly regimented sect culture that forms the foundation of so much of who he is and what he cares for and which he's had to defend over the smoking ashes of his home has also brutally hurt him and everyone he loves is not, in fact, something no one has ever experienced feeling outside of a bunch of Buddhist Taoist sword wizards in fantasy historical China. And also, there were, in fact, literally more Jewish people in ancient China than there were hot peppers, and that didn't stop hot peppers from appearing in the novel.
But for some totally mysterious and utterly inexplicable reason, a whole bunch of people who had never previously been concerned about cultural erasure when a whole bunch of people were writing fanfiction in which the characters from ancient China live in the United States of America in the modern day and the Gusu Lan sect are fundie Christians were suddenly really concerned about how absolutely terrible and racist it was for someone to write fanfic, labeled as an AU, where the vibes were weird. For, you know, no particular reason.
And so they harassed the author off the internet! Though a fair number of people saved copies, because of the, you know. Author getting antisemitically dogpiled.
And thus, my opinions on the subject of Cheesy Bacon Bites.
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