Ooooh please share your uncharitable thoughts about how the fandoms have approached MXY, pretty please yes!
i'm so sorry it took me 5 million years to answer this :'3
i have many uncharitable thoughts about how the fandom approaches MXY, but i'll share just one of them today. idk how to phrase this exactly, but when it comes to approaching MXY as a character, on the part of the english-speaking left-leaning fandom there's almost this sort of....copium? towards what was written in the text?
textually, the story tells us that MXY was accused of sexually harassing his half-brother, faced heavy homophobic abuse from his family, and committed suicide, with the intention of killing his abusive family as well, as a result. the story never refutes the allegations that MXY sexually harassed his half-brother.
let us call a spade a spade. this is a homophobic writing decision. this writing decision is based on and reinforces preexisting, deeply bigoted stereotypes about gay men - the gay man as a sex pest, the gay man as someone who simply cannot stop himself from sexually harassing other men, male homosexuality as a perverse abomination on the same level as incest. the fact that MDZS is a BL novel (a genre aimed primarily at straight women) does not change this fact.
now, more controversially - in my opinion, the fandom is actually fully aware of this.
but the fandom doesn't want to admit this fact. they, especially the more discourse-brainrotted ones, want to position MDZS as a perfectly woke and morally pure work of Ideal Gay Rep TM, and MXTX as the perfect author of a perfect work. in order for this to be true, MDZS cannot have any blatantly homophobic writing decisions in it. MXY, the only non-w/angxian canonically gay character, having actually sexually harassed his half-brother, would be a homophobic writing decision. therefore, the only way out of this conundrum is to conclude that Actually, MXY didn't sexually harass anyone at all - this way, MDZS as a work can be cleared of charges of obvious homophobia.
in the story, MXY is accused of having sexually harassed his own half-brother.
if MXY - the only non-w/angxian gay character - had actually sexually harassed his half-brother, then that would be a pretty homophobic writing decision.
i don't want MDZS to be a book that has a homophobic writing decision in it.
therefore, MXY did not actually sexually harass his own half-brother.
and like. i can fully buy the theory that MXY did not actually sexually harass JGY. i think this is a fully valid reading of the text, especially given the story's themes surrounding the unreliability of rumors.
however, if you are going to make this argument, then you need to answer some fairly obvious questions. such as: if MXY did not actually sexually harass JGY, then where did this specific accusation come from? was it invented by the lanling public after learning that MXY was gay, due to them putting homosexuality and incest in the same bucket (a reasonable theory imo)? if you want to argue that JGY himself falsely accused MXY to get rid of him, why did JGY choose incest specifically, given that JGY logically would have incredibly negative feelings about the topic himself? if you want to argue that JGY himself sexually harassed MXY and then spread rumors of the converse, then why would JGY do that ("for the evilz" is not a valid answer)?
most writings about MXY i see.....do not address any of these questions. which leads me to conclude that, rather than basing their analyses on the text of the work itself, the fandom is instead basing their analyses on what they wish the work would be.
