Me too, Yin Hanjiang 🫂
original tags:
#I tried typing a whole essay about why I feel this realisation of wre is so important but it's too early and my brain's not there#but yessss yhj was slowly self destroying his true self for wre! and it is probably the true reason for his qi deviation!#and wre would never have known if he had stayed 'alive' the whole time
So I wrote that essay for you...
I think this is actually one of the main themes of the book. Which characters change healthily for other people (WRE - more later, ace-scholar-boy whose name I keep forgetting, ghost cultivator kid, implied that boy-toy does), which characters refuse to change when they should (Baili Q - more soon, He Wenchao, ghost-cultivator-lady who really should learn what to do with a body), and which ones let themselves change too much in response to outside pressure (YHJ but also a lot of He Wenchao's victims in the background).
The entire novel (as the title tells you) revolves around the question of why people do things and what makes them change, and I think WRE, BLQ, and YHJ are your three central pillars of that.
Changing healthily
WRE as our sympathetic viewpoint character is the example of doing it right (himself, while not understanding either his own motivations or what makes others do it). The books are the most obvious indication of this. He finds a prophecy that says "acting as you have been will kill you" and not only decides to change his behavior, he decides that he needs to spend time figuring out why he behaved "wrong" and how he can best maintain/be true to his existing relationships/emotional needs.
Note that he doesn't immediately jump to 'ditch anyone' or 'kill anyone' even the ones literally responsible for his death. But he *also* doesn't immediately jump to 'trust anyone' or 'prioritize anyone'. Part of the fun but also the work of his relationship with YHJ is him trying to figure out why he acted the way he did, whether he's as trustworthy as novel-him looked, etc.
This balance on its own does a lot of work in making him (despite his absolutely insane inability to understand how people work) feel both healthy and realistic as a character, and offers a strong contrast to the 'standard' revelation/rebirth novels where the main character often seems to blindly go "Let's do exactly the opposite of what got me killed/would have gotten me killed" and then shocked-pikachu-faces when it doesn't work as they expected (Scum Villain, lol). Or worse, the author just lets it work perfectly, and I stop reading quickly (standard revenge-fantasy trope - fun for about 15 chapters).
But the more we as readers learn about WRE, the more we realize that 'changing in response to circumstance while still holding true to himself and his ideals' is actually his whole story. (spoilers now, obviously, till the end of his section). First we learn that he views the righteous/unrighteous cultivator fight as a way of helping the world and start to go 'wait, why is he a demonic, harming-people, path-of-slaughter villain when he seems be thoroughly heroic as an archetype' and we readers are slowly shown more and more why being a villain is actually one of the more practical ways of being a hero - but also that none of the other 'villainous' characters have this as their motivation (until scholar-boy near the end, ofc).
Then - when we see his backstory flashback, we realize that this is his entire character arc. His righteous-soldier-child backstory is all about learning how to act and paying attention to why things work and looking beneath the surface instead of just reacting to what he sees (the ministory about the guy he beat up is the most direct example of this, obvs). His transformation into demonic cultivator is a further example of this under pressure - he makes a quick, un-thought-through change in response to pressure and then has to think about his motivations and decide what's important to him and then change his behavior again (see his response to being demoted for this).
And that what that experience shows - despite all the romcom stuff distracting readers through it - is how a healthy person responds to pressure. WRE doesn't change what he thinks easily. When he does change, it's only after thought and meditation on his own motivations (note how quickly he identified 'oh, this is why I was in love with BLQ - let's hold onto this'. No 'let's just fight my karma' for him.) But he also is willing to change when things don't go the way he wants. Which is where he contrasts with another central character...
Refusing to Change
BLQ is our poster-girl for refusing to change. I don't think I need to go into detail about just how much of the story is about WRE going 'what will make her change her mind' and 'why does this dumb girl refuse to let go of her awful love interest'. But - and this was central to my decision that this was actually a good book and not just a fun read - she's not just a stupid character or even just magically-forced-into-stagnation. What the novel explores with BLQ is why people might refuse to change, and it gives us I think 3 different answers (all of which are correct).
- The first reason why she refuses to change appears to be a combination of habit and confirmation bias. She's used to thinking of HWC as a good person, so it doesn't occur to her that he might not be. And when she sees things that convey mixed messages, she clings to the ones that confirm what she already 'knows'. (I like that this is shown both in 'he's a good person' and in her jealousy - 'he must like that girl' might be true a lot of the time, but she certainly jumps to that conclusion awfully fast and takes an awful lot of convincing to change her mind.) This is the thought process that WRE sees and starts trying to change through 1) piling up of revelations 2) presenting something that can't possibly be explained away and 3) shock value. But it doesn't work because he's missed the second reason she doesn't change.
- Not changing actually helps her. WRE doesn't see this because he's coming from the perspective of someone self-motivated, but it's fascinating and important to see how much of her desire to improve is driven by having that 'love' to drive her (she doesn't cultivate to get better, for example, but because she can't f*** her boy until she reaches a certain level), and how it's implied that she might end up as a sort of depressed lump (as she kind of does for a while ...) without him. Despite what it looks like to us, he does give her something important that is actually useful and valuable to her. And she needs something to replace what he can do for her before she can move past him (minor spoiler - I think this is what the revelation of her history and power provides. She's always wanted to help people but like most of us hasn't thought she has enough power to make a difference. But as the literally most powerful being alive, she is in a place where it makes sense to make her life's motivation about 'holding up the sky' for everyone rather than trying to focus on the 'small thing' - the one man - that she thought was all she could reach.)
- And finally, she doesn't want to change due to sunk cost fallacy - sunk cost in her own self-image (I am the kind of person who gives things up for love) and in her belief about the world being fair (I've given up so much for him. Surely eventually he will give me what I 'deserve' in return).
I think it's really important to BLQ's position as a character that EVERYONE wants her to change. WRE wants her to change into someone who will dump HWC and live for herself, but HWC also wants her to change into someone who will prioritize the things he wants - his own power and position - above the things he says he wants - justice, righteousness, etc.
But what's central to her as a message about change is that she can't start actually changing until she realizes who she is and why she acts. No amount of outside force, or realizations about how the world works, or constant failure to get what she wants will make her change until she understands her own motivations and can look for a different way to get what she really wants (which I'd argue, is, hilariously, the feeling of being in the right as well as the motivating factor I talked about above).
Changing Unhealthily
BLQ doesn't want to change, but YHJ is her equal and opposite - he changes too easily. And just like her, he grasps onto the one small thing (person) he can focus on and uses that as his anchor. He's the central love interest and has this whole arc about 'needing to find himself and his own personality', so I don't think he needs the long explanation the others have to explain why 'my bf doesn't like this about me so I'll just change it' is a bad idea or how he exemplifies it or how his relationship with his sword/spike (also, please note how much more phallic this becomes as he accepts what he wants - I actually think this is important, because part of his journey is accepting that he's allowed to have desires. Not just 'selfless love' and not just 'wants to lie next to him' but actually 'I do want that man carnally').
Interestingly, I think YHJ is the least 'fixed' at the end of the story. He's figured out what he can't do - people please himself into being whoever WRE likes best. And he's accepted that he's allowed to have desires. But he hasn't really figured out how to extend those desires yet, and I don't think he's found anything about his true personality that he actually likes for itself. He's accepted 'I'm the kind of "bad" person who isn't "worthy" of carrying a symbol of righteousness' and 'this is the kind of killing that comes naturally to me', but where he is at the end of the novel is 'it's okay if I act on my instincts and do what makes me feel good. My bf won't reject me for it' rather than 'I now know what drives me and am capable of figuring out for myself what things I can prioritize and what things I should reject in order to achieve my goals.' YHJ is in a much better place than he started, but he still has a long way to go.
