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wei wuxian vs. pragmatism: what MDZS intends to say about righteousness

copy/pasting most of my rather bitchy reply into its own individual post because i think it deserves to stand on its own.

so i think we can all agree that MXTX intends for us to read MDZS and conclude that wei wuxian is ultimately a deeply heroic and righteous person. whether you as the reader agree with this assessment of wei wuxian's moral character is another question entirely, but at the very least it is fairly obvious to all of us that MXTX intends for us to read him as a good person.

so why does MXTX call wei wuxian a good person? what aspects of his character and which of his choices make him a good person? what moral framework and what definition of morality does MXTX employ in order to call wei wuxian a good person?

i posit that MXTX argues that wei wuxian is heroic precisely because he is not pragmatic - because he adheres to his moral ideals despite the consequences, and because he did not make moral sacrifices at critical junctures of his life. the first half of this post will argue that wei wuxian is not pragmatic. the second half of this post will argue that this is exactly why wei wuxian is heroic, and that the moral framework employed by MXTX is deeply idealistic instead.

so let's begin.

let's start by establishing two things.

first: what MXTX argues about morality through the narrative of MDZS and the reader's own beliefs about morality are two different things. me saying "MDZS argues that xyz is righteousness" and me saying "i think xyz is righteousness" are two different statements. the following analysis is concerned not with what i myself consider to be righteous, but rather what MXTX argues through MDZS is righteous.

second: wei wuxian is not pragmatic.

what does it mean to be pragmatic? unless we are speaking about the school of philosophy specifically (which i am not here), being pragmatic means being grounded in reality and focused on practical outcomes. it means being result-oriented and considering the consequences of your actions before you act; it means acting only after you have considered the potential consequences of all possible courses of action and have then decided which outcomes are acceptable. being pragmatic also means recognizing when achieving everything you want is impossible. and, in such situations, being pragmatic thus entails compromising to achieve a desired outcome, even if that means you don’t get everything they want. to put it in edgier terms, being pragmatic means being able to make moral sacrifices.

an idealistic person attempts the impossible. a pragmatic person recognizes when something truly is impossible.

wei wuxian is not pragmatic.

first, wei wuxian is not someone who carefully considers the consequences of his actions before he acts. in fact, he displays a startling lack of consideration for consequences. it repeatedly falls upon other characters to either try (and fail) to hold him back.

when wei wuxian punched jin zixuan for insulting first jiang yanli and then jiang cheng, did he consider that jiang fengmian and jin guangshan might then dissolve the betrothal, and that jiang yanli might have wanted to make a decision regarding that on her own? no. he just punched jin zixuan because he was mad that jin zixuan had insulted two people he loved.

when wen chao threatened mianmian, and lan wangji and jin zixuan stood up for mianmian, and then wei wuxian stood up for them by holding wen chao hostage in turn - did he consider that there might be consequences for humiliating and threatening the life of the son of a warmongering great sect leader who has already proven capable of attacking other sects? no. did he stop and think "alright, wen ruohan has already attacked the cloud recesses, which proves that he's willing to wage war against the other sects. threatening the son of a sect leader is an easy way to earn any sect leader's ire, and since i'm the first disciple of the jiang sect, this puts not just me but the entire jiang sect on wen ruohan's shitlist"? no. it would be one thing if wei wuxian weighed this possibility and then decided that rescuing an innocent girl and the people who defended her was more important was worth the risk - that would show that he considered the consequences and then made his choice. but the thought simply never entered his mind. he acted simply because he wanted to save mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji from the wens; he did not think beyond that.

when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, did he have a clear plan as to how he was going to weather the political fallout? did he have a plan more detailed than "live quietly in the burial mounds until everyone forgets about us"? no. when jiang cheng challenged him as to how he was going to survive the situation, he did not in fact offer anything more concrete than "we'll just wait for everyone else to forget about us." he blustered about being a once-in-a-generation genius who could accomplish the impossible, but he provided no actual plan as to how he was going to do it. this leads me to conclude that wei wuxian did not in fact have a long-term plan for handling the consequences when he went ham at the qiongqi pass camp - that, instead of weighing the consequences and then making his decision, he instead decided immediately that this was something he had to do, consequences be damned.

and then - on top of this - all of his following actions then point in the exact opposite direction of his stated plan of waiting for everyone to forget about them. because instead of doing anything to fade into the background, everything wei wuxian did instead just convinced the jianghu he was an intolerable threat.

and this was not a sustainable strategy.

one thing i really appreciate about MXTX is that she does not make the rest of the jianghu into one-dimensional villainous morons. it's quite easy for lazy writers who want a persecution plotline to have the rest of the story's society magically start hating on the protagonist for no good reason, to make every background character in the story's world a three-braincell moron. but MXTX is not that author. it speaks to MXTX's skill as an author that, from the perspective of the rest of the jianghu, fearing wei wuxian as a mortal threat was an entirely reasonable conclusion for them to come to.

first, the gentry's most recent direct interaction with wei wuxian during this time period is him threatening to kill all of them. when jin zixun doesn't give him the information he wants, wei wuxian straight up says: "if i want to kill everyone here, who can stop me? who dares stop me?" this is a threat! and - surprise - threatening to kill people naturally makes people think that you want to kill them!

next, wei wuxian refined wen ning's dead body into the first sentient fierce corpse in history, and also the strongest fierce corpse in living memory - and then took wen ning with him on night-hunts. that's where the reputation of "the yiling patriarch and his ghost general" comes from. this very naturally made the rest of society fear him even more, because now the guy who has just recently threatened to kill you has demonstrated even more of the power to easily do so! the unparalleled power to do so, which no one else possesses and it would be very hard for anyone else to counter! add in the fact that wei wuxian's activities were also attracting prospective disciples - people gathering outside the burial mounds because they wanted to learn demonic cultivation - and naturally the public is even more frightened, because now it looks like the guy who threatened to kill all of you is also gathering the political force to do so!

the public is incorrect about wei wuxian's intentions, of course. but what does wei wuxian do to correct these misconceptions? to rehabilitate his public image, because now his public image has the life of not just himself but also all the wen remnants under his protection riding on it? to prove to the public that he isn't an active threat to their lives - that he does not seek to murder them all in their beds - that it is safe for them to allow him to live, and that they can in fact survive if they don't kill him?

nothing.

it would be one thing if the story mentioned how wei wuxian tried to correct the malicious rumors about himself and failed. but that is not what happened. what happened is that wei wuxian sat on his corpse mountain and let everyone else say what they wanted to say. and when he left his corpse mountain, it was to bring his one-of-a-kind unparalleled sentient fierce corpse with him on night-hunts, which of course just fanned the flames of the rumors instead. he doesn't even tell the prospective pupils camped on his front door to fuck off - he just sneaks in through the back door.

this is not pragmatic behavior. though you can argue that wei wuxian's strategy here was to become so powerful and so scary that no one would dare try to fight him, anyone with a brain can tell you that this is not a sustainable solution in the long-term. first, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to promise stability - you need to give people the reassurance that if they don't start shit with you, then you'll leave them alone too. if you drive the "threat" factor too high, as wei wuxian did, you instead end up convincing people that if they do nothing you'll kill them anyways - that they have no choice but to kill you if they want to survive.

second, if you want to use threats to keep someone from attacking you, you also need to prepare for the inevitability that, if someone does end up getting hurt, everyone will blame you first and no one will want to hear your side of the story. after all, if someone gets hurt, then the first suspect everyone looks towards will be the guy who's been consistently saying "i'm strong enough to hurt you! i'm strong enough to hurt you! don't start shit with me because i'm strong enough to end you!" for the past few months. this is basic common sense. and yes, the society of MDZS is unfair - wei wuxian deserved a proper trial and investigation after the death of jin zixuan. but the fact that society is unfair is something a pragmatic person would have recognized and planned for.

wei wuxian did not recognize and plan for this reality. even after he accidentally kills jin zixuan, wei wuxian still insists that if only the jianghu investigates jin zixun's hundred holes curse, they'll see that wei wuxian didn't cast the hundred holes curse, they'll see that there was more scheming going on, etc etc. wen qing has to directly spell out for him that, at this point, society no longer cares about the truth of the matter. it seems that wei wuxian was actually oddly idealistic about the true nature of his society all the way until the very end.

all of this leads me to conclude that, when wei wuxian busted the wen remnants out of the qiongqi pass labor camp, he did so without considering the consequences of his actions. he assumed that he could improvise and weasel his way out of this situation, as he's always done in the past with his typical genius - only this time, he was wrong.

wei wuxian acts without considering the consequences of his actions. he does not make a decision only after carefully deliberating over all of the potential outcomes - not at all. instead, he acts in the moment - not out of any rational consideration of potential outcomes, but rather because it is simply something he must do. this by definition makes him a deeply unpragmatic person.

to put it into more familiar terms, for wei wuxian, the righteousness of an action comes not from its consequences, but are rather inherent to the action itself. even if he were doomed to fail, he could not give up on the wen remnants.

second, at critical junctures, wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. to be pragmatic is to know when you have to sacrifice: to know when, in order to achieve the most inalienable of your goals, you have to give up on some of your other goals. this is something wei wuxian is consistently unable to do.

of course, when it comes to his own wellbeing, wei wuxian is all too willing to sacrifice. he'll carve out any number of his internal organs to save those he loves. but this honestly speaks less to wei wuxian's moral framework and more to his lack of self-worth from a troubled upbringing.

because, when it comes to any moral cause, wei wuxian is entirely unable to sacrifice anything, even if being unable to sacrifice entails more negative consequences. wei wuxian could not sacrifice mianmian, jin zixuan, and lan wangji to wen chao and his goons, so he took action and took wen chao hostage himself. to sit back and do nothing as wen chao threatened the lives of those three was simply unthinkable for him - even if it meant taking a course of action that put yunmeng jiang in danger.

wei wuxian's relationship with jiang cheng deteriorated because jiang cheng did not know about the golden core transfer: because jiang cheng did not know that wei wuxian could no longer cultivate, from jiang cheng's point of view, it looked like wei wuxian was just refusing to help out and fulfill his promises for kicks. wei wuxian could have made things a lot easier for himself and also any wen remnants he chose to rescue had he simply told jiang cheng the truth - but he knew that finding out the truth of the golden core transfer would make jiang cheng miserable, and [jiang cheng's happiness] was not something he was willing to sacrifice.

wei wuxian's single most prominent moral decision is his refusal to allow the wen remnants to be sacrificed. anyone with a shred of political sense had to know that rescuing the wen remnants and then protecting them would be near impossible - that it entails making an enemy of the jin, and due to the jins' power, the entire jianghu. wei wuxian himself knew this; he is no moron. wei wuxian also had no long-term plan, no allies, and significantly less power than the rest of the world believed. yet, despite this all, he acted anyways, because he could not let the wen remnants be sacrificed.

the wen remnants wei wuxian rescued from the qiongqi pass labor camp included both regular civilians and cultivators. perhaps wei wuxian could have negotiated a proper release for the non-cultivating civilians, such as granny wen and a-yuan, had he chosen to give up on the cultivators. but - the question of whether this would have worked or not aside - this was not a sacrifice wei wuxian would be willing to make.

nor could wei wuxian sacrifice the safety of yunmeng jiang. i am firmly of the belief that, had yunmeng jiang formally stood by wei wuxian's side after wei wuxian attacked the jin-run labor camp, lanling jin would have eventually declared war on yunmeng jiang, and yunmeng jiang's would inevitably be destroyed. both wei wuxian and jiang cheng understood this as well - which is why wei wuxian told jiang cheng to let him go.

(you can argue - successfully - that wei wuxian did in fact sacrifice [his obligations to yunmeng jiang and his promise to jiang cheng] by leaving yunmeng jiang to protect the wen remnants. this is true. but i think that - from wei wuxian's point of view - this was not much of a sacrifice, because due to wei wuxian lacking a golden core, he already viewed himself as mostly useless to yunmeng jiang. so him leaving - in his view - is not really that much of a loss for yunmeng jiang.)

wei wuxian promised wen qing that he would return wen ning's consciousness to his corpse. when wei wuxian made this promise, he had no idea if he could actually pull it off or not. but then he did - and, in the process, created the most dangerous weapon the jianghu had seen in living memory. wen ning specifically, or moreso wei wuxian's inability to control him, leads to so much of wei wuxian's eventual downfall: wei wuxian loses control of wen ning and accidentally kills jin zixuan; when wen ning goes to turn himself in at jinlintai, he ends up going berserk again and killing another 10-20 jin and lan cultivators, which leads to the nightless city pledge conference. frankly, wei wuxian could have avoided a lot of trouble - or at the very least, a lot of the public's fear - had he not raised wen ning from the dead. it's not like he'd be completely defenseless without wen ning, either. but wei wuxian promised wen qing he would resurrect wen ning - and he could not sacrifice his promise to wen qing because of what wen qing had already done for him.

a pragmatic person is able to make sacrifices, including moral ones. at the very least, a pragmatic person recognizes when sacrifice is inevitable, when all paths lead to something being lost. a pragmatic person, put in the trolley problem, would recognize that there were only two options and that both options involve sacrifice: either he must kill one person, or he must allow five people to die. there is no path forwards in which all six people live.

wei wuxian is unable to make moral sacrifices. he clings on to all of these moral causes, all of these promises and obligations, and it is precisely because he attempts to hold onto all of them that he ends up losing everything. to reuse the previous example, wei wuxian in the trolley problem tried to save all six people because he could not accept any of the sacrifices made inevitable by the trolley problem.

to put this all together - wei wuxian is not a pragmatic person. he makes decisions with his gut, not his head - he does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. nor is wei wuxian able to make sacrifices - even necessary ones in order to avoid greater tragedies.

but. none of this means that wei wuxian is not a deeply heroic person. rather, to do what you believe to be righteous and attempt to live up to your ideals despite the consequences is exactly what MXTX lauds as moral. and to be unable to make a moral sacrifice when everyone else in your society easily does so is in fact deeply heroic.

it is precisely because wei wuxian is not pragmatic that MXTX declares him a hero.

some people, including myself, favor a moral framework that centers pragmatism and reason as virtues. to us, the ideal moral character is someone who makes decisions based on reason and not emotion, who considers the potential consequences of every course of action before making a decision, and who then, based on these inferred future consequences, uses reason to deduce which of all of the possible outcomes is the most preferable.

but this does not in fact describe wei wuxian, nor is this how wei wuxian views ethics. and to be honest, i don't think this is how MXTX views ethics either.

in all three of her stories, MXTX repeatedly comes down harder on the characters who make pragmatic decisions, the characters who are willing to sacrifice. in fact, killing sunshot soldiers while acting as wen ruohan's spy, and then killing nie mingjue's men in order to ensure a chance at killing wen ruohan and saving nie mingjue, was the pragmatic thing for meng yao to do, because that was the least bloody path forwards towards a sunshot victory over qishan wen. in fact, cutting ties with wei wuxian after he attacked the jin-run qiongqi pass labor camp was the pragmatic thing for jiang cheng to do, because it was the only path forward that did not put yunmeng jiang, his first and foremost responsibility, in the line of fire. and yet (though the situation is less clear with jin guangyao), MDZS as a narrative criticizes both jin guangyao and jiang cheng for these decisions - because, to MDZS, righteousness does not lie in pragmatism.

(this is a statement i personally disagree with. but we are here to discuss what MDZS wants to say about pragmatism and righteousness, not what i want to say about pragmatism and righteousness.)

by contrast, the one single act for which deeply controversial jiang cheng is ultimately lauded for in the narrative is also his single least pragmatic, most emotional act. the one single act of jiang cheng's that MDZS does not criticize is when, after the fall of lotus pier, jiang cheng ran out from his hiding spot to distract the wen soldiers from seeing wei wuxian. from a filial, duty-based point of view, this was a deeply stupid and unpragmatic course of action: jiang cheng's first and foremost duty, as the sole surviving jiang and new sect leader jiang, was to survive, rebuild his sect, and avenge his parents. from a consequentialist point of view, this impulsive choice is also what led to the domino-fall of tragedy that followed, since jiang cheng then got captured and had his golden core melted, which then led to everything else. yet this stupid, unpragmatic, and impulsive decision is ultimately the one act MDZS considers to be jiang cheng's single most heroic.

the key as to what MDZS considers to be heroic, what it considers to be righteous, lies in the jiang family motto: 明知不可而为之, attempt the impossible. this line, taken from the analects of confucius, can be considered to be a deeply deontological ideal. i find this twitter thread (warning to my followers: does kind of dunk on JC) to be rather helpful in elucidating this line's meaning.

to attempt the impossible, to try what shouldn't be tried. "ask yourself not whether you can do it, but whether you should...consider not the result but rather the journey - have a clear conscience regardless of outcome." in other words, what matters is less whether you succeeded or failed, or what sort of outcome your actions brought about - what matters is that you tried. what matters is that, in the face of overwhelming odds, you tried to do what you think is right. and even if you end up failing - even if everyone you sought to protect ended up dying - the fact that you tried still has moral weight.

this is why it was righteous of wei wuxian to save the wen remnants - even though the ultimate consequences of that decision were overall negative, even though everyone wei wuxian tried to protect died. in fact, if wei wuxian had died immediately - if he had been shot down by jin archers at the qiongqi pass labor camp the moment he came within their range - if he had died before any wen in the labor camp realized someone wanted to save him - he would still be a righteous person. because, for MDZS, what makes an action righteous is not its consequences. for MDZS, what makes a person righteous is not what impact their actions have on the world, but rather that they have the sort of moral character that leads them to never give up on their ideals.

wei wuxian does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. or, should i say - wei wuxian makes decisions despite their consequences, because despite the consequences there are simply some moral causes he simply cannot give up on. wei wuxian did not save the wen remnants because it was pragmatic to do so. it was in fact deeply unpragmatic to do so. no - wei wuxian saved the wen remnants without a concrete long-term plan, without having thought through anything beforehand, with the knowledge of how weak he was in reality - because he could not give up on the wen remnants, consequences be damned.

to have some moral causes you simply cannot give up on, no matter the consequences - to MXTX, is deeply heroic. in this sense, MXTX's moral philosophy is not pragmatic at all, because to be pragmatic is to be concerned with practical consequences. instead, both wei wuxian and MXTX herself are deeply idealistic, because what matters to them are ideals and principles that extend beyond consequence.

as the linked twitter thread notes, this is why MXTX waits until the very end of the book to reveal that wen yuan, now lan sizhui, lived. this is why wangxian only meet mianmian and her family at the end of the book. this is why all of the cumulative positive impacts of wei wuxian's resurrection - jin ling forgiving wei wuxian, jin guangyao, and wen ning, for one - are kept to the end of the story: because MDZS needs to move away from the consequentialist argument. MDZS needs to establish that wei wuxian's righteousness is separate from the impact of his actions: that wei wuxian isn't righteous merely because his actions had a positive impact for which others can thank him, but rather because the actions he undertook were inherently righteous on their own. that even if none of these positive impacts existed - if wen yuan had also died, if mianmian hadn't made it - then wei wuxian's choices would still be moral.

this is also why MDZS ultimately comes down harder on characters like jiang cheng and jin guangyao, even though a more results-oriented moral framework would instead laud such characters. both jiang cheng and jin guangyao are deeply pragmatic characters: they put concrete results before abstract moral ideals, and they're willing to compromise on their ideals in order to achieve better results. i am a JC stan and a jiggy apologist because of these exact traits. but MDZS is a narrative that criticizes such pragmatism and instead holds up wei wuxian's idealism as a moral ideal - so, in order to advance its themes, the MDZS narrative ends up criticizing both jiang cheng and jin guangyao.

ultimately, this idealism - this criticism of pragmatism - lies at the heart of MDZS's themes. wei wuxian's righteousness is directly connected to the fact that he is not pragmatic. the fact that wei wuxian makes moral decisions despite the consequences, and that he is unable to sacrifice any moral cause - is all part of what makes him at once deeply unpragmatic and deeply heroic.

---

you see, the funny thing here is that i personally disagree with this theme. as i've said before, i'm a utilitarian. to me, the morality of an action does in fact arise from its consequences; to me, someone who compromises on their ideals to achieve better results is preferable to someone who adheres to all of their ideals and then loses everything. the character i consider to have had the greatest positive impact on this story's world is jin guangyao. the character i consider to have most dutifully fulfilled his obligations is jiang cheng.

therefore, i disagree with basically everything i wrote up there about "trying": i think that if you try to do the right thing, fail epically, and in the process of your failure get a bunch of other people killed as well, the fact that you failed this badly does in fact matter quite a bit. the bulk of my more haterish posts are born from this fundamental disagreement with what MDZS posits is righteousness.

however. as a reader i must recognize that [what i consider to be moral] and [what the author of this story considers to be moral] are two different things. my own moral philosophy may be heavily results-oriented, but MXTX's is much less so. therefore, regardless of what i think of wei wuxian, i conclude that MXTX ultimately intends for us to read wei wuxian as a heroic figure for the exact reasons i gave above - and that fact must then inform every analysis of MDZS i write.

qiu-yan

there's an interesting reply chain in the notes that i want to respond to:

[reply via @mxtxblank (too long to sceenshot so copy/pasting instead):

"I think my major disagreement with your analysis is that I think MDZS as a text is much more neutral in terms of judgment than you suggest. I think you are conflating fandom views and judgments of these characters with the actual text. The things MDZS The Narrative criticizes JGY for is not his acts of pragmatism that saved lives but the mostly the wildly UNpragmatic crimes of passion

Nie Mingjue is one of the most idealistic characters in the book who disapproves of JGY killing his men to save his life because he does not agree that his life is worth more than that of the rank and file Nie disciples

This is the idealistic position, that no life is worth more than any others, and so killing all his men to save his life is not an equivalent exchange. Yet I don't think that MXTX is siding with NMJ in this case, though I think she IS sympathetic to his stance

Similarily I don't MDZS The Narrative actually comes down all that hard on Jiang Cheng? The things that are most miserable about his life are not his fault and I do think the text means for you to conclude that there is almost no chance standing with WWX would have actually worked out for anyone. Because Jiang Cheng pragmatically broke with WWX the Jiang survived, and he now has the political capital to burn protecting Jin Ling

Had he not broken with WWX and Jin Ling still had been born before the fallout, and WWX still gets resurrected in a convoluted plot to take down JGY, solid chance that Jin Ling gets murdered by one of his cousins in a coup. Life is full of complicated choices!"]

thank you for your reply! and yeah, that's a fair point: i could be overestimating the moral judgment present in the MDZS narrative itself. it's been roughly a year since i first read MDZS, and in that time i've read my fair share of fandom haterisms. so it's entirely likely that i could be conflating what MDZS itself argues about the characters with what is commonly believed about the characters in the fandom.

i agree entirely with your analysis as to how jiang cheng's misery is largely not his fault, and that his pragmatism had positive consequences. more generally, i think that both jin guangyao and jiang cheng had overall positive impacts on the people they were responsible for protecting.

that said, just because a character's actions brought about positive consequences does not mean the narrative cares about those positive consequences...and tbh i just don't think MDZS cares all that much. the MDZS narrative just does not care as much about the positive consequences of jin guangyao and jiang cheng's actions as it does the inherent righteousness of wei wuxian's actions. i agree with what @radio-gaya says about narrative focus: the good things that came out of jin guangyao and jiang cheng's pragmatism fade into the background in comparison to wei wuxian's unpragmatic, idealistic goodness, which is what the narrative is actually concerned about. i guess this is where we disagree.

haterisms ahead, because i am kind of (potentially unfairly?) dunking on the MDZS narrative:

regarding jin guangyao: i think the question of [what the MDZS narrative most heavily criticizes jin guangyao for] is an interesting one. i'm not entirely sure of my answer, but in all honesty, it seems less any specific one deed and moreso all of jin guangyao's pragmatism in its entirety.

first, in hindsight, you're correct about the wen yao disagreement: MXTX does seem to come down somewhere in between jin guangyao's argument that he had no choice but to kill nie mingjue's men and nie mingjue's argument that jin guangyao shouldn't have done it anyways. that said, the fact that that conversation ends with nie mingjue going "oh, so you think you're just more important than others? they can be sacrificed and you cannot?" and jin guangyao going "yes, i do think that" does make it seem like MXTX is coming down harder on jin guangyao. to be fair, the context of that conversation was not just jin guangyao's actions as a spy in wen ruohan's court, but also jin guangyao's refusal to turn over xue yang for execution, and also everything else he did for his own survival. that said, i still think that the core issue at stake here is utilitarianism - because it's straight up true that if jin guangyao dies, then no one else will carry on with the watchtower project, which would in fact help millions of people. that MXTX has the conversation end as i described above seems to signal to me that MXTX is siding moreso against utilitarianism, moreso against the pragmatic philosophy in favor of a more idealistic one.

second, i don't actually think that the sin for which MDZS most heavily criticizes jin guangyao is the way he killed his father (assuming that was what you were referring to by "crime of passion," because i can't think of anything else)? certainly, this is jin guangyao's single most morally heinous act by modern standards, but the narrative itself seems to moreso linger on other wrongdoings. the scene at lotus pier in which the gory details of his father's murder are revealed does not read to me as a straightforward criticism of jin guangyao's moral character, given that the narration lingers on the voyeurism and sick joy of the crowd at a public figure's ugly downfall. rather, in that scene, the narrative focus is on how jin guangyao's downfall parallels wei wuxian's downfall, and on the central theme of how easily society turns against those who it never quite accepted to begin with. and afterwards, while the father-rape and murder of the prostitutes comes up again, it's always alongside a bunch of other jiggy wrongdoings...which makes it hard for me to say that this is the single act for which MDZS the narrative most heavily criticizes jin guangyao.

(i feel like other jiggy wrongdoings, such as trying to kill everyone in the jianghu at the second siege of the burial mounds and the specific way in which he killed nie mingjue, get more straightforward moral outrage from the narration. at the very least, both of these wrongdoings get the lion's share of the narrative focus - though, to be fair, that could simply be because of how the story is set up.)

instead, if i had to identify a single crime for which MDZS the narrative most heavily criticizes jin guangyao...i don't think i can identify one? rather, it moreso feels like what MDZS takes issue with is all of jin guangyao's pragmatism. i see this pragmatism in two main areas, in both of which jin guangyao contrasts his foil wei wuxian: first, jin guangyao uses extensive deceit to achieve his ends (while wei wuxian does not); second, jin guangyao aims to survive at all costs (while wei wuxian sacrifices himself)--both of which the MDZS narrative heavily criticizes jin guangyao for.

first, the one common thread between all of jiggy's crimes and how the MDZS narrative assesses each one of them is that the crimes in question are executed specifically with betrayal and extensive deceit. jin guangyao tricks nie mingjue into thinking that he's committing suicide. jin guangyao hid the incest knowledge from qin su. jin guangyao murdered nie mingjue in an incredibly roundabout, subtle, and nonconfrontational way, specifically abusing nie mingjue's and lan xichen's trust in him to do so. jin guangyao hid his murder of nie mingjue from lan xichen and nie huaisang and continued to act as their good friend. jin guangyao lied about wei wuxian. jin guangyao lured the entire jianghu to the burial mounds by taking their children hostage, and then depowered them using people they thought were allies. when each of these deeds was described in the story, it felt like what the narration took issue with was not merely the harm caused, but also the fact that deceit, betrayal of trust, and underhanded methods were used to cause said harm. it legitimately feels like the MDZS narrative would take less issue with nie mingjue getting killed had jin guangyao just challenged nie mingjue to single combat and won instead.

i think this is why the MDZS narrative - not just jin guangyao himself! - lays so much of the responsibility of jin zixuan's death at jin guangyao's feet, even though from a consequentialist point of view that makes no sense. su minshan cursed jin zixun on his own, not as a part of some convoluted scheme, and even in sending jin zixuan to qiongqi pass there is still very little chance jin guangyao could have anticipated wei wuxian going that batshit and killing all of those people; thus, from a consequentialist point of view, the party most responsible for jin zixuan dying is still wei wuxian. so i always found it strange that the MDZS narrative blamed jin guangyao so much as well. but it makes sense when you consider that, in directing jin zixuan towards qiongqi pass, jin guangyao had harmful intentions and was being deceitful - because, to the MDZS narrative, what seems to matter the most about jin guangyao's crimes is less so the actual harm he caused and moreso the fact that he lied about fucking everything.

from a more pragmatic point of view, lying to achieve one's ends is...not ideal, but not especially evil, either. in fact, using deceit to achieve one's ends when all the other methods are far bloodier is the morally preferable choice in most pragmatic moral frameworks; thus, from a pragmatic point of view, isolating deceit as a uniquely criticism-worthy evil is stupid. but from a more idealistic point of view, deceit - even if isolated from any consequences, even if it leads to good consequences - is morally suspect. that's why i think that the specific way in which MDZS comes down hard on jin guangyao marks MDZS as a story that heavily favors idealism over pragmatism.

(the other reason why MDZS's narrative focuses on jiggy's deceit instead of jiggy's harm is probably that, in terms of net harm caused, wei wuxian has jiggy beat by far. killing 3000ish people and inventing demonic cultivation and all that. the moral leg up wei wuxian has on jiggy here is that wei wuxian doesn't pretend to be morally purer than he actually is.)

second, jin guangyao aims to survive at all costs. this is his most dramatic contrast with idealistic hero wei wuxian, because wei wuxian is the sort of person who sacrifices himself for other people. wei wuxian is the sort of person who walks away from omelas (postcanon) or tries to save everyone in omelas and ends up blowing up the whole city (first life); jin guangyao...would not walk away from omelas.

but why would jin guangyao not walk away from omelas? what does jin guangyao do with his life once he's preserved it from annihilation? he does good.

wei wuxian dies for good causes: he sets himself on fire to keep those he loves warm, he destroys himself defending a justice everyone else has given up on. but jin guangyao survives to do good. once jin guangyao's father is gone, he gets rid of all the demonic cultivators. jin guangyao personally carries the watchtower project despite massive pushback from a lazy gentry, and in doing so brings relief to thousands of people. the jianghu under jin guangyao's rule is safe and peaceful.

from a pragmatic point of view...jin guangyao is correct. someone who is alive and in a position of power has a greater capacity to help others than someone who makes himself public enemy number 1 and then dies shortly after. from a pragmatic point of view, it may very well be preferable to compromise on some of your ideals in order to survive to help more people, than it would be to adhere to your ideals no matter what and then die.

but this drive towards survival at all costs is also something the MDZS narrative heavily criticizes him for. of course, jin guangyao does terrible things in order to survive, and of course, it is morally questionable to sacrifice that many other people for your own life. but the MDZS narrative's criticism of jin guangyao's drive to survive...seems to extend almost beyond that? i can't say for sure, but at times it feels like what the MDZS narrative is criticizing is not the harm jin guangyao causes in his drive to survive, but rather the mere fact that he is this driven to survive at all. at times, it really does feel like the MDZS narrative itself, not just nie mingue, is saying: "it would be more honorable and righteous to risk death. the fact that you still seek to live even at this point makes you a coward."

quite unfair! and maybe i'm being too harsh on MXTX. but that is the impression i got from the text.

this is why i say that the MDZS narrative's criticism of jin guangyao seems to be based on the fact that he is pragmatic in itself. sacrificing oneself under a pragmatic framework is admirable only if it achieves good results, and seeking to live instead when no good results come out of dying is simply rational. but under an idealistic framework, sacrificing oneself can still be called heroic even if it doesn't achieve anything, and seeking to survive instead can be called cowardly. that the MDZS narrative, in its assessment of jin guangyao's drive to survive at all costs, seems to skew more towards the second than the first indicates to me that MDZS thematically rejects pragmatism.

regarding jiang cheng: i do in fact think that the MDZS narrative (unfairly) comes down rather hard on him. this is mainly because the narrative focuses so heavily on his failure to stand with wei wuxian and in contrast is largely unconcerned with the positive consequences of jiang cheng's actions.

regarding his failure to stand with wei wuxian: this is where i must make the distinction between a watsonian analysis and a doylist analysis. from a watsonian point of view, i am able to write justifications for jiang cheng's choices: i fully believe that jiang cheng standing by wei wuxian after wei wuxian freed the wen remnants would have only ensured that, when wei wuxian inevitably went down, yunmeng jiang would go down too.

from a watsonian point of view, i am able to defend him from the criticisms of other characters. i don't think wen ning and jin guangyao's back-to-back JC roasts (golden core reveal + guanyin temple scene) are accurate portrayals of his character or the political situation at the time. everything wen ning knows about jiang cheng logically must have come from wei wuxian during his yiling patriarch period, during which wei wuxian was quite literally resentful and also not too stable; furthermore, wen ning has no shortage of his own reasons to hate jiang cheng. thus, when wen ning said that jiang cheng was an overly competitive and bitter person and yet everything jiang cheng accomplished was because of wei wuxian's golden core, wen ning was probably trying to be as hurtful to jiang cheng as possible, which therefore means that we really should not take everything wen ning said during the reveal as objective truth. meanwhile, jin guangyao during the guanyin temple scene was also trying to be as hurtful as possible, and i think has also projected quite a bit of his own relationship with nie mingjue onto the wei wuxian + jiang cheng dynamic; therefore, when jin guangyao said that "things would have gone differently had you only stood with him," i don't think we can take that as objective truth either.

that said, the doylist point of view. when i consider the way each of these scenes is framed in the story, it kind of feels like MXTX did indeed intend for us to take those JC roasts to heart. for one, the golden core transfer reveal is very much framed in a "take that, you ungrateful bastard!" way. the overwhelming impression i get every time i reread that scene is that MXTX intends us to read this scene as one in which "the ungrateful asshole character finally gets destroyed with the truth." jiang cheng has spent the entire story being a dick to unfairly-maligned protagonist wei wuxian, and now we're finally breaking the haughty! you get what you deserve! there is something at once incredibly exonerating of wei wuxian and vindictive towards jiang cheng in the way that scene is written: that the most important takeaway from that scene is not intended to be the interpersonal tragedy, but rather the fact that wei wuxian can no longer be straightforwardly blamed for causing jiang cheng pain - that jiang cheng no longer has the right to say that wei wuxian hurt him.

perhaps i'm being too harsh towards MXTX, but that was the impression i got when i read the golden core reveal scene: that the writing was first and foremost concerned with exonerating wei wuxian and taking the wind out of jiang cheng's sails for the reader's schadenfreude. at the very least, the impression i get from the text is that MXTX thinks of both the golden core transfer and the way in which it was done as unambiguously morally good, and that, to her, it does render jiang cheng incapable of justifiably blaming wei wuxian.

now, jin guangyao's roast during the guanyin temple scene, wherein he says that if only jiang cheng hadn't allowed the other sect leaders to drive a wedge between him and wei wuxian, that if he had stood by wei wuxian's side instead, things might have ended differently. my own watsonian view of the situation is that there is no way yunmeng jiang could have stood by wei wuxian and not been destroyed. however, from a doylist point of view, when i consider how jin guangyao's roast is framed in the story, it does feel like MXTX intends for us to take said roast as legitimate. the way in which none of the characters have a rebuttal, and the way in which the narration itself pauses as if someone's made a mic-drop-worthy observation, lead me to conclude that in this case MXTX intended for us to take jin guangyao's words seriously.

i'm not sure about this one, though. it's also very likely that MXTX intended for the question of [could jiang cheng have saved wei wuxian by standing with him] to be a grey area, like so many other things in MDZS. the version of MDZS i would most prefer is the one where it is intended to be a grey area.

on top of this, i also think that the MDZS narrative is just straight-up unconcerned with the bulk of jiang cheng's positive accomplishments. i myself completely agree with everything you said regarding the positive consequences of jiang cheng's actions: because he didn't stand with wei wuxian, the yunmeng jiang sect survived to the present and is politically powerful enough to protect characters we as the readers care about. in addition to this, the fact that jiang cheng was able to raise yunmeng jiang back to respected-and-feared great-sect status after it was completely annihilated during the sunshot campaign is nothing short of a miracle. to the thousands of yunmeng jiang disciples who follow jiang cheng, jiang cheng must be nothing short of a mythic hero.

but these are conclusions that we the readers came to, after our own analysis of the events of the story - which are not the same thing as what the author intends for the readers to focus on. in fact, in terms of narrative focus, the MDZS narrative is largely unconcerned with the positive consequences of jiang cheng's actions. jiang cheng sacrificed wei wuxian for yunmeng jiang - and yet, in the post-timeskip half of the story, the only named yunmeng jiang character is jiang cheng himself. all of the other human beings who call themselves yunmeng jiang members are instead abstracted away into a faceless, nameless mob of cold purple disciples. the people wei wuxian sought to protect are largely given names or descriptors: wen qing, wen ning, a-yuan, fourth uncle, granny wen, mianmian / luo qingyang. but the people jiang cheng sought to protect - ie. literally everyone in the yunmeng jiang sect - are not given names or faces at all. the message this narrative decision sends to me is that MDZS as a narrative is simply not concerned about the positive impact of jiang cheng's actions. the MDZS narrative certainly knows that jiang cheng has other human beings he's duty-bound to protect, and that he mostly succeeded in doing so...it also just doesn't really care.

perhaps i'm being too harsh here. perhaps MXTX simply did not want to name that many characters, and expects her readers to be able to extrapolate the obvious from given information. however, judging from the state of JC discourse in the fandom, it seems that many of MXTX's readers were in fact unable to extrapolate the obvious from given information. and to be honest, i think MDZS's narrative apathy towards jiang cheng is exactly why the simple fact that "yunmeng jiang is comprised of human beings whose lives have moral weight" seems to fly over the heads of so many people in this fandom.

in my view, though, the narrative choice to not include any named yunmeng jiang characters in the post-timeskip half of the story save jiang cheng himself - was deliberate. as i argued above, MDZS is a story that champions idealism, that champions adhering to your ideals, sticking up for what you think is right, and refusing to make moral sacrifices, despite the consequences. regarding consequences, the narrative is already quite busy addressing the impact wei wuxian's actions had on the jiang family, embodied by jin ling specifically; however, the fact that jiang cheng and jiang yanli both loved wei wuxian and considered him family changes this conflict from purely abstract-ethical to personal and familial. if MDZS then also included a new yunmeng jiang character, one who did not have this personal connection to wei wuxian, the greyness of wei wuxian's actions would then move out of the realm of the personal-familial and back into that of the abstract-ethical - which would obstruct the MDZS narrative's intended themes of idealism and righteousness, because MDZS needs the audience to accept that wei wuxian is morally good in order to argue for that idealism.

i ended up writing a lot. i tried to keep the focus on [why i think the MDZS narrative does come down rather hard on jin guangyao and jiang cheng] and [why i think the MDZS narrative isn't really concerned with the positive consequences of said characters' actions], but i may have gone off-topic.

it's entirely likely that i'm wrong about how MXTX intends for us to read MDZS, and that she actually wants us to see these situations as morally grey and uncertain. but the above was written based on my own impressions of where i felt MXTX was trying to lead me when i first read MDZS - impressions that did not change upon subsequent readings.

i don't know how quite to say it, but there's something rather spitefully schadenfreude-ish on the writing's part in how wangxian just blithely swans off into the sunset at the end of the book without a care for anyone else, when so many other (more controversial) characters just got emotionally (or literally) obliterated. a very sort of "you suck, so you get what you deserve!" air i'm perceiving not just from the fandom, but from the text itself.

grumpysunfish

The ending of mdzs lives rent free in my head bcs it's just so weirdly out of place to me. I've always told my friend that if I meet mxtx my first question would've been what reading did she intend for that ending? Maybe this is the answer to that.

Can't say I'm very satisfied tho bcs my reading of mdzs is ultimately more generous than yours. I think at the very least jc and jgy's ending is supposed to leave a bad taste in your mouth. I've always thought that that particular part of the ending is one where it dares you to flinch and take an easy answer out. Label them bad and call it a day kind of takes. (Always thought a lot of the fandom fell for it.)

You know that popular reading that mdzs is a story where people don't get what they deserve? It really makes a lot of sense when it comes to jc and jgy but it's a reading that is kind of begging you to extend that towards wngx!an. This, combined with the fact the mdzs is a story that satirizes its own genre really makes it seem that there is something up with wngx!an's fairytale romance ending. Like, this too, should leave a bad taste in your mouth. It's just so perfectly set up.

But that would mean mxtx ruined her own happy ending and that's metal actually but, is that what she intended to do? Her interviews really make it seem that's not the case, right?

Idk. I think I'm just trying to deal with the dissonance of mxtx being a brilliant author who likes to deal with complicated situations and moral grayness and yet, seems to prefer straightforward answers. It's almost like she flinched at her own dare when it comes to wwx.

(And I did read wwx as his own form of dare. Hey look at this person who did a lot of things. I'm going to show you all the consequences of his actions both the good and the bad. Go make your own judgements about it. (Thats is until the ending))