I think my main problem with the main romance was that I waded into the fandom and read the fics. It was a very ... interesting ... experience, in that seemingly every. single. fic either made me discover an all-new squick, or was untagged noncon. To make matters worse, the squicks (frex possessiveness) were present in the source material, but just played up to 11, so it retroactively kind of soured me on the canon once I'd seen the core relationship's flaws. (It dances pretty close to some of my DNWs in places anyway, but a lot of the fandom seemed to unwittingly kink on those DNWs. I suspect I draw the boundary between "acceptable heightened reality in fiction" and "epic DNW" in a vastly different place to the average fan, or just have radically different desires for a happy ending for Wei Wuxian. (I admit to being super charmed by his banter with Jiang Cheng, and I'd like someone he can have that easy camaraderie to be the love interest. Or just someone who's capable of communicating, and doesn't want to lock him up at all, and will let him run around inventing stuff.)
I would count myself as a fan of the novel, too, even if only due to absolutely loving Wei Wuxian! I think that of the characters I've encountered, Miles Vorkosigan (from the Vorkosigan saga) counts as being the same archetype of "shameless kind smart adrenaline junkie who's very good at scheming himself (herself?) into even further troubles". I don't think I've encountered anyone else of the same archetype, and I prefer Wei Wuxian's iteration to Miles Vorkosigan's. Shuos Jedao (of Machineries of Empire) and Ilia Volyova (of Revelation Space) are a few steps removed, though there's that similar core of maybe-scheming. On the other hand, Wei Wuxian is also an excellent teacher and mentor and cares for the duckling collection he's acquired, in which he resembles (my take on) Lan Qiren and dramaverse Shen Wei, in addition to others. (As a side note, if Wei Wuxian is my novel protagonist preferences made flesh, Shen Wei is my id made flesh. It's interesting how those two need not necessarily intersect.)
Though as much as I'm apathetic to the main ship and find Lan Wangji unappealing to uninteresting as a love interest archetype, at least he isn't as colossally punchable as Craig Ryder. There, I can only boggle at how anyone could think he's an appealing love interest.
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I would count myself as a fan of the novel, too, even if only due to absolutely loving Wei Wuxian! I think that of the characters I've encountered, Miles Vorkosigan (from the Vorkosigan saga) counts as being the same archetype of "shameless kind smart adrenaline junkie who's very good at scheming himself (herself?) into even further troubles". I don't think I've encountered anyone else of the same archetype, and I prefer Wei Wuxian's iteration to Miles Vorkosigan's. Shuos Jedao (of Machineries of Empire) and Ilia Volyova (of Revelation Space) are a few steps removed, though there's that similar core of maybe-scheming. On the other hand, Wei Wuxian is also an excellent teacher and mentor and cares for the duckling collection he's acquired, in which he resembles (my take on) Lan Qiren and dramaverse Shen Wei, in addition to others. (As a side note, if Wei Wuxian is my novel protagonist preferences made flesh, Shen Wei is my id made flesh. It's interesting how those two need not necessarily intersect.)
Though as much as I'm apathetic to the main ship and find Lan Wangji unappealing to uninteresting as a love interest archetype, at least he isn't as colossally punchable as Craig Ryder. There, I can only boggle at how anyone could think he's an appealing love interest.