#it smells

Anyway I was playing with the little jingly balls of bad JGY opinions people are kind enough to provide for me on Reddit, and it's all about rumors in MZDS, and someone says this:

and I'm like, okay, am I going to respond to that? but then the OP comes in from stage left with the steel chair of

I mean, there's more to that comment but I'm only replying to this one, and I'm like 👀 and respond with

which I think was a very sensible and reasonable response. I even gave page numbers, although it would have been better and more pedantic if I had also provided which version and format it is. I would have sounded so fancy. sighs for lost opportunities.

And then the OP comes back with this! I'm going to split it up into bits because I want to respond to every part of it individually.

That is literally the opposite of what you said in the comment I replied to but go off I guess.

Okay but his precise wording isn't relevant? Because like, the question isn't what specific word he used, but whether the rumor that he harassed JGY is made up or not. And fair enough, the page I cited does not prove definitively that he harassed JGY.

However, it does pretty definitely prove that he harassed someone - a disciple of the sect he was in, who was in a position to get him thrown out. (and honestly? The list of people whom MXY, an acknowledged son of the previous Sect Leader, would automatically be thrown out for harassing is...it's one person. Well, maybe two. Like, if he was creeping on Jin Ling he would have been executed, not exiled - and even if he was exiled, if Jiang Cheng ever heard of it he'd have wished the Jins had just quietly chopped his head off. But realistically the people MXY could have harassed and been kicked out because of, given the way the jianghu works, is basically Jin Guangyao and nobody else. Anyone else, it would have been hushed up or they would have been banished. The list of potential targets is one person long)

She's not 'keeping us in the dark for suspense' she is playing mind games. Everything in an mxtx book is a mind game. the reason her books are so good is because they don't just pull you into the world, they make you think like the people in that world.

Also, it was at this point that I decided I wasn't going to respond to this person, and was instead going to rant about it on Tumblr. Because this poster has called the Qin Su Situation 'disgusting' twice in two comments, and like, I'm not sure they realise that they are referring to an act of sexual assault perpetrated against both Qin Su and Jin Guangyao as 'his tragic and disgusting secret'. Because something that I haven't seen addressed a lot in fandom is the fact that the consent situation wrt the sex Qin Su and JGY had before he knew is extremely wonky.

It's generally acknowledged that if you later find out information that, had you been in possession of it, you would have not consented to sex, is fucked up, and deliberately withholding that kind of information is a form of sexual assault (ie, not disclosing that you have an STD before having unprotected sex and things of that nature) that can even be legally prosecuted in some places.

But who is the perpetrator here? It's not Qin Su, who didn't know. It's not Jin Guangyao, who never had sex with her again after he found out.

I don't even know why I immediately noped out when I read that, but it rubbed me completely the wrong way.

(also can we take a moment to appreciate OP saying that Wei 'you like Mianmian' Wuxian, who died convinced that Lan Wangji hated him, is incredibly astute and tends to make correct guesses about people and situations)

BUT!

THE OP IS NOT YET FINISHED!

HERE COMES THE KICKER

I mean, has this person read the same book I read? There are no innocent victims in an mxtx novel. Every single person in the entire cast of all of her novels (with the exception of the Juniors in mdzs) is fucked up in some way, and has fucked up in a way that contributed to whatever Situation unfolded in their book. Even Xie LIan! EVEN FUCKING XIE LIAN has fucked up.

And you're telling me Mo 'let me summon Satan Himself to murder my family' Xuanyu is an innocent victim? The man unleashed the Yling Patriarch on the world. Frankly he's lucky about 80% of what they said about WWX was utter bullshit because otherwise he'd have been responsible for wiping out the world.

And here's a point - while the stories about WWX are not all true, they're not all lies either. He didn't kill the guards at the prison camp for no reason, but he did kill them. He didn't kill Jin Zixuan deliberately, but he did kill him. He wasn't building a sect and plotting to take over the world, but he was experimenting with necromancy and raising fierce corpses - including Wen Ning! A sentient fierce corpse!

The point of mdzs is not that all rumors are lies. The point is that rumor and innuendo twist the truth. Most of the rumors in mzds have at least some basis in truth, but are distorted to serve the needs of the moment.

That's the point.

So the rumor might have exaggerated what actually happened. But we know from MXY's own writings - the only time we hear directly from him, even if it is filtered through WWX's reading of his papers - that he harassed someone, and was thrown out of the clan for it.