Ty for the ask!! 💖💖 I'm having a lot of fun doing these
off the top of your head: notes for characterization? what are the most essential traits of this character to you (personality traits, important connections/dynamics, voice)?
Warped savior complex, apathetic, judgemental, cruel and sadistic, makes snap judgements on people and is slow to reconsider them, thick-skinned and proud of it, unconcerned with being polite, uninterested in conforming to social norms, bad at detecting danger, the interesting combination of superiority complex + poor self esteem, loses all his braincells around hot men
adjacently—do you think fandom does the above traits justice? why or why not?
The fandom has a completely different understanding of Xie Lian than I do so I'm not really sure how to answer this. Almost none of the above traits appear at all in anyone else's portrayals of him that I've ever seen
throw this character at any other character of your choice to bounce off each other as outsider pov to each other— regardless of timeline or logistics (crossovers allowed if you're interesting about it). why this combination? what insights would they have on each other?
He's the main character so we know what he thinks of everyone in the novel, and I'm having trouble coming up with interesting crossover options, soooo I think I'll look at what a character who doesn't know him super well thinks of him. How about Pei Ming... Pei Ming sees Xie Lian as a weird shameless meddling troublemaker and dislikes him, which Xie Lian doesn't seem to pick up on because Pei Ming is polite about it (or maybe he picks up on it and just doesn't care). From Pei Ming's perspective, Xie Lian showed up and immediately started causing problems for him by getting his deputy banished, and then was involved in his best friend's death and the disappearance of his best friend's sibling, and then forced his other best friend to become a fugitive... Pei Ming is also unhappy that Xie Lian won't use his relationship with Hua Cheng to get Hua Cheng to be helpful. As far as Pei Ming knows, since Hua Cheng and He Xuan are clearly associates who are working together, and since Xie Lian and Hua Cheng are friends/dating, and Xie Lian isn't holding Hua Cheng accountable for anything or helping them in trying to find Shi Qingxuan, then Xie Lian very likely was also in on He Xuan's plans. Which of course he wasn't, but it makes sense for Pei Ming to think he was and to dislike him as a result, on top of all the other reasons he has to dislike him
how do you think you would react to this character in real life and vice versa? would you prefer be a million miles out of range, be amicable classmates, or fall desperately in love?
I don't want to be anywhere near him and his poisonous food. Far far away please!
ideal flavor of rotating for this character? crack them open and dissect them— do you want them tormented, pining, or being loved + comforted? do you have any specific scenarios you like to think about?
I used to rotate him but I don't really anymore. He can be fun for porn though
weave a web of dynamics through the cast for this character: which dynamics are you most interested in? both canonically and through extrapolation/speculation— which dynamics are the richest to you, and why?
His dynamic with Jun Wu is very fun to me. Jun Wu has a paternalistic attitude towards Xie Lian and sees himself as something akin to Xie Lian's parental figure, whose role and duty it is to guide and shape Xie Lian. He's reenacting his own trauma on Xie Lian, and his attitude is also reminiscent of a parent trying to mold their child into their own idealized self that they never were, in an attempt to achieve their dreams by proxy through their child. There's also a sexual element to Jun Wu's obsession with Xie Lian; he checks if Xie Lian is a virgin, and there's the hundred swords scene with its phallic symbolism, and probably more scenes I'm forgetting about. idk man the vibes are just incestuous
do you have particular niche takes on this character? defend those takes. (openly controversial takes are permitted, but also: hyper-specific headcanons which you believe in and no one else has considered enough to disagree with yet. pick a hill to die on.)
He gets gender euphoria from talking about how his dick doesn't work. No but seriously, he does seem to get something out of feeling like he's not very masculine/doesn't fit the ideal of a Man? He has stereotypically masculine interests (fighting, swords) that he's super passionate about, but he doesn't seem to relate them to his gender at all either. I don't see him as a trans woman however; he will crossdress when necessary but doesn't seem interested in transforming into a female form. I think his felt sense of gender is something along the lines of "guy who is not very masculine" in a positive way
He's a bully. He thinks it's funny to poison people on purpose and he is really sadistic towards Qi Rong in particular (he straight up tortures him in cold blood)
Hua Cheng enables Xie Lian's worst tendencies. Hua Cheng's attitude of "everyone is beneath you and deserves nothing from you" is refreshing to Xie Lian and makes him feel better about not caring about people
He has little empathy or sympathy for others. Even when he was young and wanted to save the common people, he didn't have much empathy for them or even really see them as people equal to himself. He felt it was his moral duty as a prince and god to save the commoners, and he had a strong conviction about that, but it wasn't real empathy or sympathy for their suffering that motivated him
He doesn't care about Shi Qingxuan and has no interest in helping him postcanon. If he cared then he would already have tried to help him, would have been concerned about what happened to him, would have been upset with Hua Cheng for being involved in He Xuan's plan, literally anything. He doesn't even particularly like Shi Qingxuan and finds him kind of annoying, I think
