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Jin Guangyao - Blog Posts
Everyone present was stunned, never having expected such a turn of events. Jin Guangyao mournfully cried his wife's name again and again, a hand cupping her face. His eyes were wide, and his tears fell like rain onto her cheeks. Lan Xichen said, "A-Yao, Madam Jin, she... I'm so sorry." Jin Guangyao looked up. "Er-ge, what is going on? Why would A-Su suddenly kill herself? And why would you all suddenly gather before Fragrance Palace to make me open the secret chamber? Is there something you're not telling me?" Jiang Cheng, who had arrived late to this impromptu gathering, said coldly, "Zewu-jun, please provide an explanation. We are all in the dark as well."
I don't think we're ever given a plot-driven explanation for why Jiang Cheng was late here, and I'm unclear if there's some kind of character note we're supposed to be taking from it (I personally like to imagine he heard a commotion going on outside his window, was like "Ugh, I bet Wei Wuxian is stirring up some drama again. Can't believe I have to deal with this again after 13 years," and shoved his pillow over his head, before remembering Jin Ling might be getting into trouble and getting up with a heavy sigh).
But there's something kind of darkly hilarious about the idea of him showing up late to find Qin Su bleeding out on the floor, Jin Guangyao sobbing over her dead body, and half the cultivation world standing around yelling accusations at each other. I just picture him bursting in there like that one Community meme gif:
Me, watching MDZS the anime: “Jin Guangyao is a sneaky little shit. I can’t wait for him to be revealed”.
Me, watching The Untamed: “oh no, this poor baby. Someone save him before he kills anyone else”.
The untamed gave me feelings. If only Meng Yao had been given a better life, he may not have been so evil.
What I find so interesting about Jin Guangyao's explanation about why he finally decided to kill Jin Guangshan is that even though he's lying in his retelling to get the others to lower their guard, the original convo and the impression it left on him gives us such interesting insight into the Meng mother-son duo. This is what he says in Guanyin Temple:
“Why was a sect leader who spent money like water unwilling to do the smallest favor and buy my mother’s freedom? Simple—it was too much trouble. My mother waited for so many years, weaving together so many difficult circumstances when she talked to me, imagining for his sake so many hardships. And the real reason was only a single word: trouble. “This is what he said, ‘It’s especially women who’ve read some books who think they’re a level higher than other women. They’re the most troublesome, with so many demands and unrealistic thoughts. If I bought her freedom and took her back to Lanling, who knows how much fuss she’d make. It was best that I let her stay where she was just like that. With her conditions, she’d probably be popular for a few more years. She wouldn’t have to worry about her spendings for the rest of her life.’ “‘Son? Oh, forget it.’” Jin GuangYao’s memory was extraordinary. With such a word-by-word repetition, one could even imagine that drunk expression of Jin GuangShan’s when he said these words, “Brother, look, these three words are all that I’m worth to my father, ‘Oh, forget it.’ Hahahaha...”
—Chapt. 106: Hatred, exr
This is the actual scene and context of what Jin Guangyao is repeating:
Jin GuangYao had long since gotten used to this. He knew when he should appear and when he should not. He gestured towards Xue Yang and stopped in his tracks. Xue Yang clicked his tongue, his expression quite impatient. Just as he was about to go downstairs and wait, he suddenly heard Jin GuangShan’s gruff voice, “Women—shouldn’t it be enough as long as they water their flowers, powder their faces, and make themselves look as pretty as possible? Calligraphy? What a disappointment.” Those women all wanted to please Jin GuangShan originally. With these words, a flash of awkwardness passed over the pavilion. Jin GuangYao’s figure froze somewhat as well. Soon, someone giggled, “But I heard that back then in Yunmeng, there was a talented woman who charmed the entire world with her poems and songs—zither, chess, calligraphy, as well as painting!” It was clear Jin GuangShan was dead drunk. The wine could even be heard from his stammering voice. He mumbled, “That’s——not how things work. Now I’ve realized. Women shouldn’t play with those useless things. Women who’ve read some books always think they’re a level higher than the other women. They’re the most troublesome, with so many demands and unrealistic fancies.” ... Up on the pavilion, the women agreed with laughter. As though he remembered something from the past, he murmured to himself, “If I bought her freedom and took her back to Lanling, who knows how much fuss she would’ve made. If she stayed where she was, she might be popular for a few more years and she wouldn’t have to worry about her spendings for the rest of her life. Out of everything, just why did she have to bear a son, a son of a prostitute? What could she have hoped to...” A woman asked, “Sect Leader Jin, who are you talking about? What son?” Jin GuangShan’s voice drifted, “Son? Oh, forget it.”
—Chapt. 118: Villainous Friends Extra, exr
Jin Guangyao's scheming seems to be a trait learned from his mother. We've already seen and heard from multiple different characters by this point that Meng Shi bore a son in hopes that it would get her bought out of her brothel contract, but she did more than that. She learned the arts and education. She cultivated herself into appearing like any young woman from a noble family, even though she was a prostitute. The purpose of this crafted image was to attract the attention of a nobleman who would fall for her charms and hopefully free her from the brothel. The final part of that plan was to bear a rich man a son as, like one patron said, leaving a son to be raised in a brothel was both cruel to the son and embarrassing to the nobleman. And she wasn't aiming just to have her contract bought out, but to be bought out and her status elevated to that of a nobleman's wife, a plan that left her peers bitter. Unfortunately for Meng Shi, she picked the one lecher with a face thick enough to do exactly what the other patrons wouldn't. She bore a son, and Jin Guangshan disappeared like smoke. On top of that, her having a son decreased her popularity amongst other patrons. All of that hard work ruined in one fell swoop.
Jin Guangyao takes his mother's scheming and intensifies it. Instead of picking and sticking to one persona, he shapeshifts into soft, gentle, learned, efficient, helpless... whatever he needs to be in front of those he wants to curry favor with. However, he is also able and willing to do what his mother (willing or not) couldn't have: when those above him disrespect his station, he kills them. He forges a friendship with Lan Xichen by helping him escape the QishanWen and revealing curated moments of vulnerability with the other man to feign intimacy. He shows his efficiency and dedication to quality work to Nie Mingjue while subtly manipulating the man into attacking his enemies for him. He reveals his bloodthirstiness and petty, vindictive nature to Wen Ruohan, which earns him a spot as the clan leader's right hand man. And all the while, he is silently killing those who remind him of his low reputation, quelling dissent about his rise to power. But just like his mother, there's one target he cannot catch: his shameless father.
I won't make the argument that Meng Shi was wrong for attempting to use a child to manipulate her way into a marriage. The woman was enslaved to a brothel; there were no good means of escape in that system that didn't rely on manipulating some of the most immoral men in society. However, her lack of consideration (or possibly prioritization, since we do not get her actual thoughts) on how her actions would affect the child she schemed to have did backfire on her son. Meng Shi wanted her son to be what she thought his father would want: the powerful cultivating son of a cultivation clan leader. Jin Guangyao carries this same wish with him, that he be seen as his father's son. Instead, Jin Guangyao would be forever known not by who his father was but who his mother was: a prostitute.
What ultimately gets Jin Guangyao to commit to his father's death is not that Jin Guangshan disrespected his mother, but that he finally heard from the man's own mouth that everything he had been taught by his mother was a lie. It's not that he just hadn't found the correct persona that would make his father acknowledge him. It's that he would never be able to shapeshift his way into his father's acknowledgements. It's that no matter how many images he cultivated with how many different people, no matter how many people he killed in front of his father's face or behind his back, he would never be Jin Guangyao, proud son of the Jin Clan. Even to his own father, he could only be "the son of a prostitute" too uppity to realize that she'd never be a nobleman's wife and her son would never be a cultivator's heir. And that's why his father's death isn't the only product of overhearing this convo: Jin Guangyao's first order of business is actually to raze his mother's brothel to the ground along with all its patrons and prostitutes, already planning for the establishment of a Guanyin Temple with his mother's face in its place:
Jin GuangYao, “No, thanks. Save your energy, Young Master Xue. Will you be free the next few days?” Xue Yang, “Won’t I have to do it no matter what?” Jin GuangYao, “Go to Yunmeng for me and tidy up a place for me. Make it clean.”
If he were to be forever damned as his mother's son no matter how much he changed, then let her change for once. Let him be not the son of a prostitute but of a goddess, instead.
Yo so my brain keeps thinking of 3zun expect as different songs from heathers and I dunno if I'm making myself sadder or just laughing at the idea of Lan Xichen wearing a skirt
Or maybe both
*Jin Guangyao walks into the room*
Lan Xichen: Mingjue, I'm going to ask you not to doing anything violent.
Nie Mingjue: What? What are you talking about?? I only use violence as an appropriate response.
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
Weird how people say Nie MingJue bullied Jin GuangYao when their late-game interactions were basically just Jin GuangYao being all, “I know Koi Tower said we would execute the mass murderer Xue Yang so that he can’t kill more innocent people, but keeping him alive in jail so my dad and I can continue to use his specialized skill sets in murder and demonic cultivation is totally the same thing as executing him, Da-Ge.”
And Nie MingJue’s response to that was a passionate, “NO, no it is NOT.”
Like Jin GuangYao wasn’t some hapless victim during these exchanges?? (And actually the victim between them has always been Nie MingJue so jot that down.) He willingly swore brotherhood with Nie MingJue too, knowing what Nie MingJue was like with Nie HuaiSang, knowing Nie MingJue was going to bear down on him with all that same Big-Brother-might to make Jin GuangYao get his act together.
“Where is your saber, HuaiSang?”
“Where are your braincells, Jin GuangYao??”
Calling it bullying just underlines the fact that Jin GuangYao only intended to use his new found family for personal gain and it was never out of any emotional care or support. His Sworn Brothers truly become nothing more than stepping stones. If Jin GuangYao was ever actually honest about what was happening to and around him at Koi Tower, it might have looked less like a one-sided argument with Nie MingJue and more like actual conversation. Even Lan XiChen’s support of Jin GuangYao was based on one-sided sympathetic presumptions rather than Jin GuangYao actually talking to him. Nie MingJue was demanding answers for all the BS and Jin GuangYao hemmed and hawed and acted spineless, which only made Nie MingJue angry because Nie MingJue knew Jin GuangYao was a capable and intelligent person who can get shit done.
If it was bullying, Nie MingJue wouldn’t have had to tell Jin GuangYao never to approach him again. If it was bullying, Jin GuangYao wouldn’t have needed to go to the Unclean Realm with a peace offering. If it was bullying, Nie MingJue wouldn’t have had to give Jin GuangYao a third chance at forgiveness when Jin GuangYao promised to have Xue Yang’s head in two months.
Because in the end, Jin GuangYao stopped trying to pretend to be pitiful and spineless in front of Nie MingJue because Nie MingJue knew him better than that. So Jin GuangYao had to own up to being capable and intelligent and admit, “I do, in fact, have braincells. You are absolutely right, Da-Ge, and I brought them this time.”
Except Jin GuangYao lied, he left his braincells at home, because once again he only brought the Collection of Turmoil which he used to kill Nie MingJue because Nie MingJue was always the victim of Jin GuangYao’s abuse and it was never the other way around!
I want to hate how hard I laughed at this
The Untamed (2019)
Yo I think a about this post a lot
One of my favourite Untamed moments of NHS so far is the soft smile of "ah, home sweet home" while everybody else are clearly "is the Unclean Realm a supervillain lair?" So, a prompt: 5 times the Nie sect's perfectly ordinary sect things got everybody else freaked out, much to NHS' puzzlement.
1
Even Nie Huaisang would agree with the general consensus that he’s a useless good-for-nothing, which is why he doesn’t understand everyone’s expressions when he helped out in making dinner when they’re all night-hunting. Scorn he’d be used to, but everyone is just goggling as if he’d suddenly summoned lightning.
“Were you not planning on eating the boar or something?” he asked, looking around in confusion.
“You broke down the entire carcass into edible pieces in less than an incense stick’s worth of time,” Jiang Cheng said, voice a bit strangled. “Not just the meat pieces, but the offal, too.”
Nie Huaisang shrugged. “My clan were originally butchers. It’d be weirder if I didn’t know how to do that.”
“Could you do it to a person?” Wei Wuxian asked, eyes alight with mischief.
Jiang Cheng smacked him.
2
During the preparations for the Phoenix Mountain hunt, Wei Wuxian gets a brilliant idea and starts writing furiously on pieces of paper in one of the Jin sect’s sitting room.
“Can someone get me some blood? Human, ideally, but pig will do,” he asked at one point, having already scabbed up all his fingers in making draft talismans, and when a bowl was put next to him, he doesn’t think too much about it, only happy that it didn’t seem to ever empty.
After a while, he looked up and noticed that Baxia was propped up on the table next to him, dripping blood into his bowl. Definitely human, too. There was no apparent source for it.
He stared for a while, then went to find Nie Mingjue.
“Did you just stab someone?” he demanded, and Nie Mingjue shook his head. “Then does your sword just regularly drip blood?”
Nie Mingjue shrugged. “I’ve stabbed a lot of people. Why wouldn’t it?”
3
“I don’t know what the problem is,” Nie Huaisang protested. “You wanted me to watch him, he was tired, he asked for a bedtime story!”
“You told him the story about people getting made into meat pies!” Jiang Cheng hollered, holding a wailing Jin Ling in his arms. “Right after he’d had meat pies at dinner!”
“It’s tradition to tell that story over meat pies. Don’t you remember the first time I told you that story? You and Wei Wuxian both turned green.”
Jiang Cheng glared at him and comforted Jin Ling to no avail.
Nie Huaisang tapped the child’s shoulder with his fan. “Stop crying. You know what happens to little boys that lose their temper.”
Jin Ling stopped crying at once, his face pale.
Jiang Cheng looked at him, then back at a smiling Nie Huaisang, then back again. “What did you tell him now?!”
4
“Today’s not a good day for a visit,” Nie Huaisang said apologetically. “We get ghosts today.”
“You’re a cultivation clan and you allow ghosts?” Jiang Cheng scoffed.
“They come here to be purified. Anyway, they’re really cute ghosts.”
“…what?”
“Mostly animals,” Nie Huaisang said. “Side effect of cultivation by butchering – at first it was mostly livestock, but after a while we started getting all sorts. Drowned kittens, run over puppies, that sort of thing.”
“…there are puppies?” Jiang Cheng said blankly. “Ghost puppies?”
“Mm, yes. Do you want to pet some of them before they go? They’re usually not powerful enough to take more than a very small amount of yang energy, and petting them makes the purification process easier.”
“Right. Show me the way.”
5
Nie Mingjue was unconscious, having put himself between his sworn brothers and their enemies as they tried desperately to escape the trap they’d been lured into; he’d been stabbed, cut or whipped a number of times before they finally managed to break their way into the cave and escape. Lan Xichen had put him on his back, while Jin Guangyao carried Baxia, his fingers dipping down to caress the blade every few minutes.
“As much as I appreciate dage’s sacrifice, he’s probably the only one who knows his way around this maze,” Jin Guangyao said after they’d been wandering for nearly a shichen without finding anything but more cave, but he settles down a bit after Lan Xichen gives him a look. “I didn’t mean anything by it, erge, you know that. I just meant that it would be nice if we had a guide – ah!”
“What happened?”
“Dage’s saber – it bit me!”
Lan Xichen blinked. “…I’m sorry?”
“The beast head on the hilt! It bit me!” Jin Guangyao took another step, yelped again, and retreated.
Lan Xichen frowned thoughtfully and looked ahead, then turned to go down another fork. “Anything now?”
“No, it’s quiet. Why do you – no. Erge. We’re not following the directions given by a saber! Who would do that?”
“It’s not a saber, it’s Baxia,” Lan Xichen said calmly. “It’s fine. Nie Mingjue always did say Baxia had a better sense of direction than he did.”
“I thought he just meant that he didn’t have any,” Jin Guangyao said. “I didn’t think he meant…”
He trailed off, a strange look coming into his eyes.
“Do you think Baxia took it personally, back in the Sun Scorching Palace, when I said – ow!”
“Maybe you should consider apologizing,” Lan Xichen suggested, doing his best to hide a smile.
Okay, so I recently read a fic that I just really needed to make fanart for! It’s by @treemaidengeek and it was written for whumptober, so mind the tags, but I loved it!
The is a canon divergence fic where Jin Guangyao corners Lan Wangji by using Wei Wuxian, and though all the painful stuff is offscreen, Paperman Wei Wuxian can still feel it and reacts accordingly.
Fic Link
Nie Huaisang becomes an uncle and immediately sets out to be a jokester about it
A boy and his uncles
I love Zu Zhan Jin's portrayal of JGY so much. Like he's so expressive! His face! His body language is so fluid! His voice has so much emotion! And yet his intentions anv emotions are as opaque as a block of solid wood. I love Villains like that
I present to thee, Doomed Gays
[Left to right›› Hetalia, Owari no Seraph, Alien Stage, MDZS, Paradox Live]
Any more to add to this Trainwreck?
Seriously, though, I'd be happy about fifteen more versions.
so I found this sketch languishing in my WIP folder and was like "omg why did I never finish this, it's really nice" and only after finishing it yesterday did I realise that. uh. I did already finish it. nevermind! here's an alt version for you guys :)
I love how NMJ doesn't even care that Jiggy is ripping his scalp off. :D
@little-meowyao They're swords, they tend to be rather literal about this sort of thing u.u
Nothing like a fifteen hundred foot trust exercise between two people who absolutely do not trust each other, one of which has very good reason to fear long falls!!
Okay this is lovely. They have an extremely lovely longfic, too*, which I've just read and I have no words.
The Waves are Rising and Rising, to be found on Ao3. Seriously. It's so, so good.
happy valentines day! have some happy 3zun, based on a lovely moment from the Good Mornin'! sequence in Singin In The Rain :)
It's bloody 7 A.M. and I was not ready for this.
it just wasn’t meant to be
The only point of contention I have is that if Jiggy ascended, they wouldn't need Ling Wen so very desperately.
WHY TF IS JIN GUANGYAO IN THE TGCF MANHUA
Wait, people say WHAT now? Did we read the same book? There are so many legitimate reasons to dislike Jin Guangyao - trust me, my best friend has listed all of them to me as if I didn't know myself - that there is no need to make up new ones.
Look. I don't think anyone is (unironically) saying that man hasn't done anything wrong. But this is the kind of stuff that I'd respond to with, 'Whatever you say, Sect Leader Yao', because no-one with more sense than him could have come up with that tripe.
It's fascinating. Apparently people completely fall for the unreliable narrator - even though Wei Wuxian says that the stuff happening to Jin Guangyao is the same mob mentality that got him killed and that they're trying to pin everything that ever went wrong in all of history on him, no matter if it's true or not.
"actually jgy harassed mxy and then framed mxy" is fucking wild bc consider:
wwx got the account "mxy harassed jgy" from mxy's own writings. if things were actually the other way around and mxy got framed then don't you think that mxy's writings would have mentioned that. like mxy's diary entries were all about how everyone persecuted him and how his life was miserable, so if mxy actually were framed don't you think his This Is Why I'm Making An Evil Spirit Kill Everyone essay would have brought it up lol
even if mxy didn't harass jgy, then....that still doesn't imply that jgy harassed mxy?????
like im sure that with enough Free Invention you could construct a full explanation of events that has jgy harass mxy and also doesnt directly contradict anything directly stated by the novel. but you still need quite some insane leaps of logic to even get there lmao
But ... that read is complete inane?? As in ... single-brain-cell level? It says explicitly in the text that while the Jin clan BUILT the watch towers, they are manned by members of several sects EACH?* Exactly BECAUSE Jin Guangyao doesn't want to recreate the supervisory offices? Trust me on re-reading I paid an inordinate amount of attention to everything Jin Guangyao does. This was a good thing for everyone (except people near Yi city, which by total coincidence *cough* had no watchtower near it).
And let's just say that this is a great point to prove how useful they were? Because shit like that didn't go down in other places that did have one.
*Exact words from 7 seas, volume 2, page 183: "These watchtowers were distributed in remote and impoverished lands, and every watch tower was allocated a number of sect disciples from various clans."
gonna be honest here chief a lot of "uhhhh Ackshually the watchtowers are Bad because xyz" does not read like you guys critically analyzing the text or even drawing from irl historical precedent.....but rather you guys seething and coping that jgy (the villain!!!!!! who is Bad!!!!!!!! excuse you!!!!!!!) dared do something that could possibly be described as having a positive impact on the world
... And the juniors he lured to Yi City. And the cats he killed in order to do that. Making NHS out to be a sort of saint is so odd to me. Most of the characters have done a lot of unnecessary and cruel things. And the margin between them is really, really thin.
Like, look. I don't hate Huaisang. I don't hate anyone.* But thinking that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth just means he hoodwinked you, too. Congratulations.
*Okay. Notable exceptions: Jin Guangshan, whose existence I tend to forget, and Wen Ruohan, who's a turd. I'd like to add Sect Leader Yao, but he doesn't even deserve that much attention, and Wen Chao ... well, neither nature nor nurture worked in his favour so I'm on the fence there.
sorry to be a hater but i gotta say. fics where other characters find out about the full shit nhs pulled in his anti-jgy revenge quest, and then act as if nhs did some Great Moral Good.....are kinda missing the point
pretty sure that one of the Major Points of mdzs is that revenge isnt morally justified and should not be glorified....if jc was wrong to hold a grudge against the wens for literally killing almost everyone he grew up with, then nhs is also wrong to put innocent third parties only tangentially related to jgy into the line of fire in his pursuit of revenge :/
After watching CQL, I feel the need to write a fanfic. Because of course I do. Now I just need to finish my current project and then read the books.
Until I have, my ability to predict what it'll be like is limited, but I do know that it'll be a Xiyao fic. I know from my friend that things end a bit differently in the books, but I don't know how. She thinks I can work with it. 😅 She did not word this in a promising manner.
Oh, and there is one more thing. Jin Guangyao is going to have a huge, HUGE praise kink. I'm prepared to die on that hill.
The title might be 'No Bonds Can Hold Me', but that might very well change.
Oh and the friend I mentioned is the same one who asked me to write beefleaf. There is a tendency there, but this time no persuasion was necessary.
People like to joke about Jin Guangyao being a little too invested in Wangxian and not taking his hostage situation seriously enough, but he was not the only clown in that temple.
When Jin Guangyao dropped the cord he had held at Wei Wuxian's neck, did Wei Wuxian turn and attack? Did Lan Wangji take the opportunity to attack? Did anyone?
No. They did not.
Instead of doing anything to try an get out of being hostages, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji started hugging and talking to each other. Everyone else just watched.
That whole temple was filled with people who were more interested in the ever shifting drama of the situation than the danger.
Pretty sure he’s the only one happy with their arrangement
er-ge is very happy with this arrangement
Do ya'll ever think about how every character in MDZS is living in a radically different genre of story?
Cause yeah, sure Wei Wuxian is living in a danmei fantasy novel with strong romantic comedy elements, but if you slide over a bit Lan Wangji is living a serious and heady drama about regret, loss, yearning, the passage of time, and ultimately atonement.
Scooch on over to Xichen and your in a straight up Greek tragedy, right down to the parable about hubris and trust. Jin Guangyao is living meanwhile in a political dark fantasy al'la Game of Thrones, Nie Huaisang is in a Gothic moody Monte Cristo-esque reflection on revenge and deception, and while Lan Sizhuhi and Jin Ling are living in two VERY different YA fantasy books ('magic boarding school/secret orphan of destiny' and 'Steven Universe style coming of age/discovering all your family are some flavor of evil and magic' respectively).
Everyone connected to Yi City is living inside a dark psychological thriller/horror flick, except for Xue Yang who is in a Found Family/Enemies to Lover fic right up until he isn't.
Jiang Cheng's entire life has been one long soap opera, and it is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.