Re: @jiangfamilytherapist 's reply: in so many ways but mainly the way they are confused for each other in terms of social standing because being a poor cultivator son of a 'courtesan' is infinitely worse from a social standpoint than being a genius son of an immortal's famous student.
I think first and foremost this fandom often attempts to involve in the story the belief that moral virtue is inherently tied to present/existent lack of wealth and agency. And thus, Wei Wuxian, popular protagonist, must be always poor and abused and the villain must be rich and abusive, both of which are true in very limited contexts. For instance, as much as Yu Ziyuan tormented him, Wei Wuxian does not live a life of joylessness and misery as a child, except the years between his parents' deaths and Jiang Fengmian finding him (not sure if there is a timeline in the story but Idt it's longer than one-two years). All of this is naturally extremely traumatizing. However, his poverty is limited to those years, and the couple when he lived with the Wen - who were, crucially, fallen cultivation nobility and many erstwhile cultivators and keepers of supervisory offices, and not inherently commoners. However, for some reason, this is by and large framed as Wei Wuxian standing up for poor, non-gentry people and an act of class consciousness (in relation to him being referred to as "son of a servant").
Meanwhile Meng Yao, who grows up in extreme situations (I do not think having a mother who must handle several men like Jin Guangshan is anyway not traumatizing) and who is actually kicked out of his father's house (literally), and who, upon coming to power enacts as widespread project that helps common people, is somehow not a self-made man who looks out for commoners but a class traitor.
Idk this just rubs me the wrong way. Wei Wuxian is not nobility but he very much lives a privileged life from around 7 or 8, which he gives up for the Wens but regains by the end of the book by accompanying Lan Wangji. You could argue that being fostered and relying on marriage/love is not a stable material situation but it is certainly given to him. As a child he receives the same high-quality education as Jiang Cheng, a sect heir, and is secure enough that him punching/attacking another sect heir ends at his expulsion, which is honestly not that terrible in the grand scheme of things. As a reincarnated adult, he laments his terrible financial situation (cue Lan Sizhui's joke) but it ends with Lan Wangji bankrolling him. Even in the Burial Mounds, it was Wen Qing managing the finances, and his contribution is going to Yiling with Wen Ning and burying a-Yuan in the dirt. People were hostile to him because he was extremely powerful, erratic, prone to saying that no one could control him and violating social taboos. Also he holed up with the people who murdered his clan after murdering guards of another important clan, and then killed said clan's heir and his sister's husband.
If you are thinking of a person hated by the cultivation world because he was reaching above his station and who would always be mocked for his birth in spite of appearing perpetually approachable and kind, it's Meng Yao.
