last question made me think - thoughts on modern AU Jin GuangYao? Because I feel like while in a modern au maybe he has the luxury to be a bit more open about his anger or ambition at times , he's always going to be a very gracious and well-mannered person.
man this is SO tricky
let's just establish up front that i am tragically very weak for modern aus, i can't explain it, i have hated them in every other fandom i've been in, but for some reason here we are
but i think part of the reason i do like them so much is because The Villain Is Society to such a dramatic extent in MDZS, the questions an alternate setting opens up about who these characters could have been if they'd had other choices are sooo compelling
i don't know the Fandom History well enough to say, but i sort of assume the semi-default 'barely contained rage gremlin' take on modern AU JGY is heavily influenced, if not all but originated by the Meng Yao vs the HOA series, which is a story i deeply enjoyed but also found upon revisiting did not really ring true to me in its characterisations (though again, i really still enjoy them for what they are)
the biggest problem for me with a modern AU JGY is what his anger and ambition are directed towards. bringing down the local HOA and ruining wei wuxian's sex life? yes, sure, extremely funny. but i think it's a mistake to imply, as this kind of characterisation does, that JGY is inherently seething with semi-aimless ruthlessness and ambition that just needs to find a suitable target. his resentment develops because he is being deprived of a position he (correctly!) feels is not only his by right, but that he is very aware he has the talent and intelligence to make use of-- and even though it never gets framed in exactly these terms, from his earliest days in the jin clan, he is trying to pursue his own agenda in addition to doing his dad's bidding. the watchtowers come up, and are rejected by JGS, very early! JGY does not just want to be a jin just to be a jin, he has goals and plans for what he is going to do with the position he was born to
so in a modern au, it doesn't make sense to me to just give him a new setting to be ruthless for the sake of ruthlessness in. he pursues that strategy because it's what's required by the circumstances: his birth, the jin clan, the necessity to solidify his place in the clan no matter what as a first step. and that last one is the other key element: what exists in a modern au that he can only get through his family the way he can only achieve a stable place in cultivation society by being recognized by the jin? why can't he just pursue his goals by other means, and make JGS's recognition the final step, not the first one?
because i think of course you can build in a lot of that resentment and anger in emotional terms by whatever paternity bullshit you decide to have JGS pull. he doesn't need recognition, but he wants it, so maybe he goes to extreme lengths to get it for not-entirely-rational reasons, okay. but that just... doesn't feel like what JGY is actually doing in canon? as stated above, he has actual goals. his ambition is not 'i'm gonna be the jin heir woooooo,' it's 'i'm gonna take my place in society and make a difference.' but it's a misreading I think is really, really common?
and okay, this has gotten off-track, but i'm getting there now, because what this slight misreading does is turn JGY's constantly discussed and CONSTANTLY ignored persona of kindness and graciousness into-- well, a persona. an assumption that it's the customer service face, the emotional labour, that he's putting on entirely against his will. and this is partly a book/show divide, because ZZJ's performance leans into that reading quite a lot, with the way they cut to his eyes going dead in the smile. but I think we get so much evidence that this gracious and kind person is who he ideally wants to be. it's there in his title imo, it's in the way he leaves up JZX's murals, it's the fact that it seems the way he is most around LXC, a relationship that represents basically everything he truly cares about (and also, re: that last ask, really represents the idea that one of the things that comes with privilege is the power to be gracious!). i think there is less than no reason to think that in a modern AU, he wouldn't also dream of being that kind of person, even if he's in a job or a social situation or whatever where he can't always live up to that ideal for himself.
obviously the customer service jokes are all extremely funny in a modern setting, and i'll always allow a bit of sloppy characterisation for the sake of a good joke, but i do feel i have come across vanishingly few modern AUs that really consider the kind of person JGY would choose to be in a world with more choices, rather than just exporting his canon coping mechanisms with no real justification for them
