wei wuxian is such a lesson in contradiction like he's so nice he's a jerk he's so smart he's very naive he's friends with everyone nobody likes him he's the best cultivator alive he can't use a sword he's a whore he's a virgin he's lazy he'll work for days without sleep he's so calm under pressure his temper is atrocious his ego is massive he has no self worth he's dead he's alive he's a saint he's a monster he's a victim he's a villain he's a great teacher he's a terrible student he's a charmer he's so so annoying he saves everyone's asses he's the reason they're in this mess he's a brother but not really he's a son but not really he's a father but not really he's a sect leader with no sect he's so selfish he puts everyone before himself he made so many choices there was nothing else he could have done like no wonder it's so difficult for people to understand him he's literally everything
all yall make jokes about couples and their nonromantic third wheel having fun together, but im the one getting treated to food tonight by the couple im nonromantically third wheeling. you wish you were me
I'm sorry I read this as "necromantic third wheel" and went on a very rapid powerful imagination adventure. hello lovebirds I'm the skeleton here for breadsticks
guy who is very stable and in control of his powers: hm that's weird. i can't even hear my usual cacophony of inhuman noises
his bestie who is also doing great: y̴̡̯̝̩̑̚ȩ̵̳̪̫̫̄a̶̯͍̬̜͐͆h̷̢̞̬͊̀̀͒ ̴̭̃y̶̙̺͆̈́͘͜o̸͙͇̜̻̓͒͗͜u̷̙͂́ ̴̦̖͔̰̎̋̄a̷̞̲̘̼̰̾͆̉̈́͝r̸̗͝è̵͈̮ ̶̡̡͓̭͙̍̈́̄r̷̢̩͇̞̀̃͘̚i̶̧̮͇̝͓̾̔ģ̸̩̾h̵̠̬̯̍̔́͜͝͝t̸̫̬̭̟̤̉̚͠
Alternative version of Cecil's test on Mount Ordeals.
Certainly the instant change from dark knight to paladin is very spectacular and classy, but actually, Cecil doesn't receive the armor. In the game he confronts the dark knight with only the sword and some clothes. Then it's possible to put a knight armor on him, if the gamer had enough money to buy it in Mysidia. I like this detail, because it shows how vulnerable the character is during this life change, abandonning a part of his identity, of his knowledge and of his beliefs. Also maybe going though darkness withdrawal ?
I like to imagine that the dark knight is actually his own armor animated by his dark spiritual energy. Pushing the compassion and understanding as to reach out to his hand as the dark knight succumbing to his own darkness, he just dispells the illusion without knowing.
Hey, people in the US! Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to implement mandatory biometrics and fingerprinting for all foreign travelers entering and exiting the US?
And that there’s a public comment period OPEN RIGHT NOW? It only has 18 comments. Let’s get this circulating!! Public comment period ends on 11/26/25. If enacted, it would go into effect 12/26/25.
I hope I don’t need to explain why this is a problem, especially in our current administration. But a few key reasons why this is a very bad idea and sets a very bad precedent:
- privacy and security. HIPPA and other privacy laws exist to protect the unnecessary collection of data so that it’s less likely to be leaked. Is this data going to be stored securely? Who will have access to it? For what purpose? What safeguards will be in place to protect the proper use of this data? Surely there could be no reason to collect personally identifiable information about “foreigners” and “aliens”. Surely this wouldn’t be used for mass deportation efforts.
- the public comment is aimed at “the specific collection process as well as costs and benefits” for the process. So in your comment, the most effective arguments will center around how this system is infeasible to implement, cost prohibitive, and has no benefit. Focus on how the collection process will cost a lot of money, infringe on rights to privacy, etc.
Others please feel free to add ideas or template messages!!
Also remember that if it DOES happen, not just American's will be in danger, but literally anyone who comes in for say. A embassy for other countries. People who were forced to temporarily visit for their job. Your grandparents from Germany. Your partner from Scotland. People doing their job and delivering goods.
i remember when mdzs first came out and i didn't know shit about the genre yet, so my friend and i found it in a bookstore and she went "grandmaster of demonic cultivation???? what is 'cultivation'. google says it's practicing agriculture. how can you do that demonically." and i was like "farming evilly and deviously......"
anyways this exchange became ten times funnier when i read mdzs years later and got to the part where everyone thinks wei wuxian is establishing a horrible evil demonic sect with the wen remnants but he's actually just trying to farm so they don't starve. doing some straight up evil and demonic and devious farming.
Wonder what Golbez and Fusoya talked about on their own trip to Zemus (how did they get there without the Lunar Whale anyways)
I mean, "nothing deeper than pratical stuff" is a possibility but... technically Goblez, like Cecil, just found out he has an uncle. An uncle from the moon no less and while he already knew he had a brother, he just woke up from years of mind control to the realisation that the thorn in his foot was his younger brother.
Fusoya and Cecil didnt talk at lenght either (ff4 is a game of few words) but...i am thinking about it
Idk , what i am saying is, nice angst potential in this undefinied off screen moment
I think that since Fusoya's time with Cecil is very fleeting (exactly One (1) dungeon), I agree that there wouldn't be as much time for the two of them to talk, versus, if nothing else, the time it takes to get through the Lunar Subterrane and Lunar Core.
As a add on to Fu's conversation with Golbez, how much (or little) would Fu reveal to Cecil?
We know Cecil still has questions at the point when his brother and uncle peace out for the moon, they go through his head. 'Our roles could have easily been reversed.' Cecil may have never questioned the order to raid Mysidia, and simply obeyed the false king's orders. Would Fusoya have then awakened Golbez to take up arms against Cecil? Could Golbez find his own redemption on Mt. Ordeals to combat the darkness eating Cecil alive from the inside?
Or would there now be two brothers, united in darkness to deliver the Blue Planet to Zemus?
Ngl, Cecil / Golbez role swap would be very interesting, especially since Golbez (or Theodore in this AU) already knows he has a brother, even if he may not recognize him at first. Maybe something went south when Cecilia died and Golbez found himself to Baron, his brother nowhere in sight. Maybe he even assume he died somehow. Cecil was found by Zemus's minions. I...am not really sure what kind of ressentiment you can pull to manipulate from a literal newborn though. Maybe he was just raised by the four elemental fiend and, no mind control needed, he just pulls a classic Cecil and is loyal to a fault.
But an AU in which they are both in the dark side would be interesting too, do they act like brothers? Is it genuine? What would Kluya and Fusoya feel about it (desperation probably)
sorry for joining in the thought of cecil and golbez mixing their role is eatting at my brain... especially the thought of Cecil raised by monsters controlled by Zemus. He could easily make sure he believes he was abandonned by his brother, perhaps everyone else around him, left to die and so on, so he comes to believe humans are deeply cruel and unworthy. Unlike Golbez, i feel like his loyalty would remain even knowing his brother is still out there (it may even fuel his hatred). Maybe then what Golbez receives on Mt Ordeal is a reassurance that he can save his brother?
But I could see them both together in darkness... Their hatred direct at humans while they're certain they have no ties to them. But even then I don't think Golbez could ever not love Cecil. This time he means to protect him from humanity (I wonder then, if the story could be of Cecil rebelling against his brother and the fiends he grew up with when he meets Kain and Rosa...)
Damn but i love it, especially since it keeps who they are. In a way, Cecil in canon was already lied to by the bad guys to commit war crimes, its not hard to imagine him doing that for longer especially if he didnt have a kain and a rosa
Cecil rebelling against his brother who loves him still would be deliciously dramatic , as would be Kluya giving Golbez the means to stop his little brother he is aware of
Also, Cecil being raised by nefarious monsters would make an interesting parallel with Rydia being raised by eidolons (since per canon, the main difference between an eidolon and a monster is that one is nefarious and attack people and the other is civil)
that'd be a fascinating parallel... it'd be even closer if he does spend his earlier years amongst human societies but during a travel is lost/captured/attacked and found by monsters and with just a bit of convincing (or possibly zemus' influence) believe he was willingly abandonned and saved by his new family....
(im getting really invested in these AUs so if you have more thoughts please please share them)
Mostly my main question is "since in canon, Zemus took advantage of Theodore's anger toward the way he lost his dad to ignorant people attacking him, then his mom died giving birth to Cecil, what could happen to make Zemus target Cecil instead, a litteral newborn with no strong feeling on anything yet?"
Could just be that Zemus was not paying attention when cecilia died, Theodore and Cecil were maybe raised by townfolks. Maybe they were not the best at it. I am thinking about the possibility that Theodore (i am calling him that in this AU since Golbez is the name that Zemus gave him), with the spectacular maturity of a young child, could have been a bit distant toward Cecil especially since the townfolks keep saying how much he looks like the late Cecilia, and nobody really mention Kluya anymore (maybe he was an elephant in the room? I am stretching canon a little there.)
Cecil grew up with decent care (food, clothes, a roof) but around distant people. Then something happened, maybe Zemus finally found his glasses and saw two young half lunarians and launches an attack on their village. Theodore takes Cecil to flee but gets separated from him in the Chaos (i am taking a bit of FF2 lore there.).
Cecil is found by Zemus's monsters, and maybe Zemus uses telepathy since he can do that, and convince him that his brother left him behind and also people where weird toward him because of his father who was unfairly murdered by those people. Maybe even he tells Cecil that he is not quite human, and promise to shows him other perspectives....
On the other side, Theodore is devasted to have lost his brother. Maybe he found himself in Baron on foot, or maybe he was wounded and took into care by Baron soldiers and then later the king (i feel like wherever Cecil and Golbez came from must not be too far from Baron because i don't think that Golbez gave Cecil to a stork to drop him around Baron, in canon...)
He grew up with a guilt that never quite left him, he regrets not giving a better care to his brother, to having lost him in the chaos, maybe he assumes he is dead.
I feel like Theodore/Golbez genuinely loves his brother but i personally feel like it's more dramatic if he was somewhat cold to Cecil as a kid because it would give him more "base" for guilt.
(even if that would not quite be his fault, he was a kid too and if anything the fault would be from a community failure)
Maybe Theodore still finds himself being a dark knight under Baron, i don't see why not, even if he would not have the same personality as Cecil. I don't see Rosa and him being in love, idk why. So there is not much of a love triangle with Kain. However maybe that he still grew up with Kain and Rosa as siblings-like and oh boy that pulls some weird feelings. (and maybe it would also give Cecil some weird feeling later too)
He found himself on Mt Ordeals and totally recognize Kluya's voice, telling him to stop his brother...
Alternatively, maybe Zemus found Theodore after that, and pulled the same thing he did in canon. Maybe even they were in the same "monster army" but without knowing they were brothers, there is some emotional drama to play with there but i feel like it's more dramatic if one of them is still "sane" because then Theodore can ask the same question than Cecil "why not me?"
I like to think it wouldn't take much for Theodore to not direct his hatred toward Cecil, and instead only on himself and perhaps others, and as such not leave room for Zemus to control him. The presence of his little brother that he needs to protect is a constant reminder not to lose himself. But I'd also see him act as you said, distant and a little cold because no matter how much he loves Cecil it's incredibly hard to express that after everything he went through. So seeing that, Zemus could wait for the right time to separate Cecil from him and convince him his brother actually always hated him, and so did the people around him. Now his true family is the monsters and fiends.
(perhaps it's also easier to leave the care of an infant to humans and wait for Cecil to be a bit more autonomous)
I wonder if Theodore would become a dark knight or some kind of court mage... I could see some interesting things in keeping Golbez and Cecil's original fighting style but making it both fit to their new role (so Theodore as a knightly court mage and Cecil as an army leading dark knight).
Also I see a lot of potential of a relationship with Kain and Rosa be much more familial... So he'd see them both as siblings because they're the same age as Cecil, maybe taught them some fighting, but ends up closer to Rosa because she's familiar with magic and Kain feels bitter towards that? And their dynamic with Cecil could be incredible too, if Rosa is still captured then Cecil would meet her then (and still fall in love), while if Kain joins his side it becomes a whole new kind of friendship-rivalry-romance.
I do love the full reversal between the two of them, having Cecil alone as his brother tries to save him. Though I feel like at the end, where Cecil thinks "it could have been me", Theodore would think "it should have been me".
Yeah mostly i thought about the dark knight to give in an excuse to go to Mt Ordeals....but now that i think about it Mysidia is exactly where a mage would find themselve at some point. He does not even need to receives an holy sword in the mountains, maybe he catches words about something special on Mt Ordeals... Tellah got meteor. Now idk if Golbez would want meteor (though he canonically has the strenght to survive it sooooo why not?) but you can make up any reason to have him go there. His ordeal does not have to be the same as Cecil it would be a little boring
I don't see Cecil being like "i will go on the moon forever to atone alone bye" like Golbez at the end, maybe he wants a chance to know his brother and Golbez takes him to Mt Ordeals and give him a chance to talk to Kluya (and maybe do his own ordeal while we're at it)
(even if Cecil doing a Kain on Mt Ordeals would be extremely funny, idk if he would. But i feel like keeping his whole "atone for your mistakes without hiding away" part of his narrative)
But yeah it would make a very interesting parallel, Cecil being lied to about being left alone (when it's actually what happened in canon thanks to zemus), Theodore thinking "it *should* have been me" ....
Golbez seems to retains love toward Cecil since even as Zemus's puppet he can't bring himself to strike him down, so yeah i think he loves his brother a lot but being a traumatised child would probaby sticks with him
Theodore may know his father remains there, or at least is connected to something at the top of the mountains, so he would have many reasons to eventually go there... I think Tellah got meteor by remembering the spell but Theodore may also learn it there... Or perhaps holy or some kind of white magic? KluYa grant it to him after soothing the guilt of having failed Cecil.
Cecil's personnality is different enough that I would much more see him want to directly repair what he did as atonement... Ah but also staying on Mt Ordeals is a nice parrallel to Golbez wanting to stay with his father's people (since here he wants to be with his father possibly). Maybe what FuSoYa told him after they met would change that decision? If they still go fight Zemus together.
I believe he loves him so much... I just love stories that change just a bit of their childhood and therefore their relationship.
There is a chance that Cecil gets his mind back before canon Golbez did (maybe even Zemus would not need that much mind controle even), maybe he Cecil joins the team sooner and can properly get to know Kain and Rosa a little better? Even if Kain being under Zemus's influence with Cecil would be super interesting!
But yeah i dont see him fucking off on the moon. He could stay on Mt Ordeals for a hint of familiarity (his town is gone and he grew up among bad guys) from his father....that he didnt know in the first place. Sad! At least there is Golbez
Maybe my main issue with "did JGY kill Rusong" being simplified into "do you like him or not do you find him sympathetic". Is like. I want fic. I desperately want fic. Fellow Jiggy apologists join me in considering the possibility of feeling like it's necessary to kill your son but like [sympathetic]. It has so much potential for tragedy and the only fics I can find tend to do it as baby survives or baby murder is why he's irredeemably evil exhibit 16386483. Which. HHHH. Come on.
More thoughts because I cannot get anything together enough to write the fic I want so:
This is immediately post being a torturer in Nightless City for an extended period of time. So he's probably got a lot of dissociative compartmentalizing going on like more than he does later even
AND. Torture technician probably means starting to conflate killing someone with putting them out of their suffering. Quite strongly at this point. Especially if he sees himself as the cause of the suffering or potential suffering.
It wouldn't be a huge leap to assume he sees subjecting Rusong to life as something akin to torture. The mindset and desperation and fucked-up ness is. there.
This is added to by the fact that his life has been one bad thing after another precisely because of his birth, so he has every reason to believe that the chance of Rusong's parentage being found out would be subjecting him to the same.
"Ok but JGY doesn't want to be killed so it'd be hypocritical-" Wanting to die and feeling like you can't die because that'd mean all your mothers sacrifices were in vain and feeling like you're not allowed to die now. Are not mutually exclusive. (You could get really fucked up and say he's giving his son the thing he wants that he's not allowed to have).
Especially given how Rusong's birth comes shortly after finding out about Qin Su and murdering Nie Mingjue (who at least the novel describes their relationship as briefly improving before the stairs argument) and hearing his father say "forget it" (timeline. bad. but from the VF extra at least we know NMJ was still alive when JGY killed his dad so that's partly what I'm going based off of). He won the war, for a brief shining moment probably hoped he might be safe, might have love and a family and everything he's wanted and maybe he just started to think about letting himself believe it - and then it all shatters one after another. And he has a toddler who whether he wants to or not he's going to associate with the living reminder of all the bad things.
It is fun to think about how many different ways he'd know to kill someone and you know JGY would be meticulous and research it and. Bonus angst. He tries to make it look like a murder and somehow be painless but he thinks the latter failed because it had to be convincing do you think he'd be fucked up about that because I do.
Also! Fun parallels with QS and LXC! Who already seem to have. Interesting similarities. But here! He could tell them the truth. Except! Now he never can. Because he killed the one person he can never ever tell them about. So he's trapped himself. Foreverrrr.
Also bonus Rusong thoughts here. "The child is the price" etc etc.
so on a joke post somewhat recently I wrote in the tags “xue yang exists to piss people off” and then I paused and looked at that sentence and was like. oh hang on.
because there is an interesting way to turn that inside out, which is to say: “xue yang pisses people off to exist.”
Xue Yang is not subtle. He’s sort of the opposite of subtle. He’s not interested in being subtle: he will be loud, and intrusive, and leave as much carnage behind as possible. He’s not interested in hiding or pretending to be someone he’s not or even in making an attempt to explain himself (with the one notable exception, which I’d argue proves the rule, actually). What Xue Yang is interested in is being noticed.
I’m still sort of feeling my way around this, but if part of the creation of a Xue Yang is active malice (on the part of Chang Cian), I think it’s also, perhaps even more so, indifference and invisibility. There’s something in his story about people who are seen as disposable, people who are discarded. I think there’s a thread throughout MDZS/CQL in general about the willingness of people to look the other way, and the terrible things that happen when they do.
Anyway, what I am getting at is: Xue Yang grew up as something invisible unless he was inconvenient, unwanted unless he was useful, and ultimately disposable. That is what he learns his place to be. That’s the position in which he spends some of his most formative years.
Other people have talked about how well that explains Xue Yang’s general attitude of ‘no one’s going to step up for me so why should I step up for anyone else,’ and I think that’s true, but what I’m talking about here is something different, which is the drive, the need, to be seen and acknowledged, to be recognized if not as a person (in fact, usually not as a person) then as a force, a menace, a monster.
Feared is seen. Hated is seen. Any attention is good attention because it means not being ignored, and to be ignored is to cease to exist, and Xue Yang demands acknowledgment of his existence. Without that acknowledgment, I think, that existence starts to feel tenuous.
There’s a short line in Xue Yang’s head between invisibility and vulnerability.
If he leaves a swathe of destruction behind him wherever he goes, if his name is a curse in peoples’ mouths - at least no one can say he wasn’t there.
I think one aspect of Nie Mingjue that is critically overlooked in fandom is that he failed.
What I mean is that I think it's strongly implied that a significant part of Nie Mingjue's moral rigidity and his tendency to universally fall back on his principles instead of trying to see the unique context of a new situation is that he is strongly aware that at some point his sense of judgement will be greatly impaired due to the saber curse, and he hopes that a strong rule-based morality system that he sticks to at all times-- ignoring any specfic feelings or doubts that may arise-- will help mitigate the damage when that happens. If he's trained himself to ignore his instincts and stick to the rules, he can continue doing the right thing even after he emotionally can no longer tell what the right thing is!
And it fails! Miserably! He essentially tried to destroy his ancestral curse with Facts and Logic and it didn't work! And he doesn't even realize that it's no longer working because surprise surprise: the curse that severely affects your sense of judgement also ruins your ability to gauge whether you're still standing by those rules you made up for yourself.
And the system was flawed from the get-go, because there is no such thing as a set of moral rules that are so universally applicable you'll never have to make unclear decision in edge-cases or re-evalutate the rules themselves based on new information-- a thing this system won't let him do because What If That's The Curse Talking? (nmj is basically a walking version of the slippery slope fallacy. Any small change is bad because it will lead to eventual catastrophy)-- and also because facts unfortunately do in fact care about your feelings and your attempt to be objective and unclouded by your emotions is still going to be subjective and informed by your own views, which is why Nie Mingjue's moral code has a core tentant that says self-sacrifice is not only Good but Mandatory and wanting to live is Bad, actually.
But even if the rules had somehow been perfect it would still, in the end, have failed. Right as the moment Nie Mingjue made that whole fucking system for arrives, it becomes useless. It's honestly really dark and tragic and deeply fascinating because of that.
Any fix-it that includes Nie Mingjue recovering from late stage saber poisoning should include him being absolutely horrified. Not just in the generic "oh my god I'm so sorry I hurt you" way, but in the sense that the thing he has committed to to the utmost degree since he was a child failed completely and instantly without him even noticing. Dedicated most of his life to it and it didn't matter at all. That's gonna fuck with a guy's head.
It seems the dash has been talking about the Lan Xichen - Nie Huaisang post-canon dynamics and it's gotten me thinking about how discussion around post-canon Lan Xichen's absolutely horrendous mental state often center around the question of "who is Lan Xichen angry at and who does he feel guilty about" which, at its worst, seperates into 2 camps where according to one side he feels guilty about not protecting jgy and hates the Nies and, on the other side he has completely flipped on jgy and despises him now while being filled with regret towards both nmj and nhs.
And I dislike both of these takes not just because it often feels like people projecting their own Blorbo opinions onto Lan Xichen which is never a fun time but also because that central question is flawed to begin with. It treats anger and guilt like opposing emotions that can't coexist or, if they do, have to compete until one wins and cancels the other out.
And that's not how that... works.
To be clear, the reason why Lan Xichen is so supremely fucked up at the end of the story is that he believes on some level he fucked over everyone in this situation. And, even more importantly, that even with hindsight he can't actually think of what he should have done instead. Every attempt to do better by one seems to involve fucking over the others even more because these people were in conflict with each other and choosing one would mean standing against another
And none of this would actually stop him from feeling angry at any of them. It's not "who is he angry at and who does he feel guilty about" it's: "he is angry at everyone and feels an immediate and bone deep guilt for daring to think badly of them."
Speaking from personal experience here, but feeling like you're not allowed to be angry at someone because you wronged them really doesn't stop the feeling, it just maks you feel like shit for feeling it. And this is all worsened by the fact that what he's in seclusion for is, at the end of the day, a moral question of what he, Lan Xichen, did wrong and every single emotion serves as further proof of the ways he's failed them.
Is he angry at Jin Guangyao, for killing his oldest friend, using Lan xichen's trust in him to do it, and then lying to him about it and countless other things for a decade when Lan Xichen thought of him as the person he trusted the most in the entire world? Yeah. That's a thing people get angry about! Except Jin Guangyao also saved his life and protected and helped him more times than he can count and never ever hurt him and can Lan Xichen say the same? No. He had to clean A-Yao's blood off Shouyue, he has to be haunted by the fact that if he just hadn't listened to Huaisang- hadn't been just like everyone else, in the end, and believed a lie about Jin Guangyao just to think the worst of him- then Jin Guangyao might still be alive.
Is he angry at Huaisang? For orchestrating the death of his best friend? For making him do it? For knowing what the real cause behind Nie Mingjue's death was and never telling him until he found out in the absolute worst way? Absolutely. But didn't Huaisang hide it from him for a reason? Wasn't it his clan's techniques and his personal faith in Jin Guangyao that cost Huaisang his brother? How dare he demand that Huaisang let him in on the secret of his brother's murderer when Lan Xichen is here wondering about how he should have protected that murderer better!
And I do even think he's angry at Nie Mingjue, sometimes I think it's pretty normal to be angry at your friend for kicking your other friend down the stairs and threatening to kill him, even when you know his mind is being poisoned. And years later the last thing he ever saw of Nie Mingjue was Nie Mingjue's thoughtless corpse coming to kill him before Jin Guangyao pushed him away and then proceeded to graphocally snap Jin Guangyao's neck in front of him. And of what he wants to do is protect Jin Guangyao, shouldn't he be mad at Mingjue? Didn't this whole mess start because Jin Guangyao was afraid Nie Mingjue was going to kill him?
Except holy shit, can you imagine? Lan Xichen feels like he personally has Nie Mingjue's blood on his hands. Your oldest friend is killed in front of you and you happily believe it's an accident for 11 years and now you think you have the right to be mad at him? You watched him get worse as he was being poisoned and attributed it to his illness and not to the techniques stolen from your library with the token you give his murderer. Does he think Nie Mingjue knew who he was in that moment and wanted to kill him? That he blamed Lan Xichen for his death? (For the record, I don't. I don't agree with most of what Lan Xichen thinks about himself, but I've been in a self-blame spiral and I know how it feels)
But what was he supposed to do then? Choose Mingjue's side and let A-Yao die? That's also unacceptable. But so is letting Jin Guangyao get away with it. Every single outcome is unacceptable. And really, if Jin Guangyao felt like he had to kill Nie Mingjue to save himself, when it was Lan Xichen who was supposed to keep the peace between them, isn't that another mark of his failure? That he couldn't protect Jin Guangyao well enough that he felt he had to do something so horrible?
But that's not an answer! He's supposed to know what he should have done different, and all he can come up with is "what you were already doing, but without failing this time" He can't pick a side because that means betrayal, but he's already tried not picking a side and it ended like this! There is no right answer, which can only leave him with the idea that he was simply doomed to hurt the people he loved from the start. No wonder the guy looks like shit when we see him post-canon. They put him in a real life trolley problem and gave him the lever as a souvenir.
I maybe totally off base here but it would not surprise me at all to find that Nie Huaisang plays up how delicate he is through tailoring his clothes to be very slightly too big on him and that he's been doing it since he was a kid to play up his "im just a little creachur, Da-Ge" act to get out of saber practice. It would make his "headshaker" act all the more convincing if people already thought of him as delicate and not worth much compared to his brother.
I mean, look at the difference between how he looks in the scene where he's weeping all over Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen or when he's shown attending to his duties, vs how he looks in the outfit at the end or that black and grey one from when he's paying the storyteller to talk about the Yiling Laozhu and not just because they're different designs of clothing.
For example, in a lot of scenes when he's playing up his airhead act his shoulder seams sit below his shoulder line, which would make them look too big whereas in his more serious mode they're at his shoulder line and make him look more broad shouldered and strong.
I like this. So much. Because it gives meaning to something that has bothered me about his costuming for so looong.
As someone who finds and tailoring as the most important aspect to what i make, his oversized clothing offend me so much that I’m always like there’s no way the costumers would do this without a purpose. Like everyone else’s robes are tailored and lxc even has his robes sitting nice and fit around his man tiddies and then you have nhs with those SLEEVES that drive me insane from how unfitted they are
SCREAM
And don’t get me started on how LONG his robes are. His hems are almost floor length while the rest have theirs cut much shorter.
Altho the fact that he always picks up his robes to walk/run make me happy 🤣 hehehe
I have a little sub headcanon to this that the whole "wearing oversized robes" thing came partially from stealing borrowing Nie Minjue's robes as a little, little child and insisting he was a big boy like his Da-Ge and that he purposely kept up the oversized robes thing (though no longer stealing Nie Minjue's robes because that would be too obvious) because he realized that it helped with his getting his way.
But yeah, his sleeves and hem and shoulder seams and everything...
It’s cause the robe makers in Qinghe only know how to work with Da Ge’s type of body so they’re like
“Aw fuck do we just scale it down? No this isn’t working. He’s still swimming in them! Eh, Whatever he’s always wearing his brothers robes anyways, he’s fine with it”
I was seriously like okay do the costumers not realize that the whole big shoulder illusion tricks they do with wang yizhou doesn’t work with ji li 🤣
This is interesting! I have this far only looked at Nie Huisang's first robe set in my little series of costume posts, so I'm just relying on (often vague) impressions and memory here, but I think that we see him wearing most of the too big robes in scenes after Nie Mingjue's death. And I think on those occasions, the robes actually were Nie Mingjue's, like the black embroidered ones above, or like this one, which Nie Huaisang is wearing when LWJ and WWX confront him after rescuing JL from the Nie tombs:
This is of course pretty much identical to one of Lan Xichen's two Nie robes, you know the gorgeous one with the same pattern in shades of green, and I can easily imagine that they were originally made to be a matching set for Nielan (whether as a couple or as sworn brothers). And an interesting detail: if you look at the lapels and the sleeves, you'll see there are no trimmings, but there are the narrow black stripes about 10 cm or so from the edge? I am speculating here, but could those be the original trimming? In which case the robe would have been altered to fit Huaisang better by folding the extra length at the sleeves and the width at the lapels out and sewing it there instead of just cutting the excess fabric off. Thus, the fit is actually not that bad, but yes, I am pretty sure this was one of Nie Mingjue's robes.
On the contrary, when Nie Huaisang is wearing what are clearly his own robes to begin with, the tailoring is, in my opinion, good:
His robes are not as form-fitting as these fine examples...
...but that is more of a stylistic difference, and due to the Nie preference for heavier, stiffer fabrics and more layers, which results in a "bulkier" look. It can also bee seen in the robes Meng Yao wears:
So yeah, the point... It seems that after Nie Mingjue's qi deviation/disappearance, Nie Huaisang takes to wearing his brother's robes, at least on occasion. Why? Perhaps he does it first to alleviate his grief? To feel his da-ge is still close? And, come to think of it, at what point does it become clear to him that Nie Mingjue is actually dead? There is no body, NMJ just disappears, so Nie Huaisang probably keeps hoping, for some time at least, that he might, just might, be alive still.
But anyway, I think the points made by op and in the previous comments are very good, and that as the years go by and Nie Huaisang lays out his plans, he keeps turning up in Nie Mingjue's robes just for those reasons. To play the role of clueless, harmless, good for nothing younger brother still missing his da-ge (because some of those robes will surely be identified). But also to keep reminding the quilty ones and perhaps to throw them off balance and to make them slip, to discreetly assess their possible reactions and gather clues. To find out the truth and to carry out his vengeance.
What never came across in either translation or the drama is that JGY spoke in kindergarten teacher voice (the one people often say the use to pacify angry customers) almost all the time, esp during guanyin temple.
The reason I assume he does this (pardon me as I have not checked canon in a while) is because he adds a 呀 (polite lighthearted exclaimation) to the end of some of his sentences under REALLY TENSE SITUATIONS. The cultural equivalence would be saying "oh my..." at the beginning, but it's much more subtle so I understand not translating it that way.
forever amused at how the book mdzs fandom just straight up adopted untamed meng yao’s dimples as universe-spanning canon. i’m continually coming across fics where every other aspect is book ‘verse but jgy is still played by zhu zan jin
Atoner-type character who, through a series of increasingly unlikely coincidences, keeps surviving their grandiose self-sacrificial schemes. Everybody thinks they're a tactical genius, but no, they really didn't plan on living through that, and at this point it's kind of freaking them out.
