In order: asdfhakjfh, Wei Wuxian, and Yuletide

[extrapenguin]

I had an idea about what I wanted to post, but then I received an e-mail with a job offer, and my brain was taken over by AHHHH. Details of starting date up in the air, but I'll have to move city next year. I'll generate the space_swap schedule once I'm clearer on mine.

Oh, now I remember what I wanted to say originally! I am apparently very super blunt or something. On a MDZS Discord server, in response to another person saying something offhand, I posted my opinions on Wei Wuxian being called dense. (He ... isn't.) Lightly edited, mostly in punctuation and replacing potentially-vague pronouns with phrases:

Unpopular opinion, but I wouldn't call Shen Qingqiu or Wei Wuxian "dense" – they're both quick on the uptake and smart, but they're both limited by the fact that they never reassessed their starting assumptions of the love interest. They both thought "ok love interest is Like That and hates me" and it might've been valid at the start, even if not now, so they try to fit all the love interest's behavior into the "love interest hates me" mental model they have of him. They're oblivious to the love interest's advances because of that, but they're not dumb, and they have reasons for being oblivious. Basically people going "aww wifi so dense" makes me go "??? are you skipping all the scenes that aren't about the main couple being cute at each other?" since no, he's not dense about human interaction or power dynamics or whatnot at all, unlike how a bunch of people characterize him.

Alas, I can't ignore it, due to the above showing up in eg fics as an opinion the author genuinely holds, and people really widening it so that Fanon Wei Wuxian is kinda dense and dumb, whereas Canon Wei Wuxian isn't really dense: he just doesn't see himself as a valid life partner to Lan Wangji due to eg class stuff and genders, so he can't even begin to consider Lan Wangji's actions from a potentially romantic perspective. Ergo, I try to push back against it, since the "wifi so dense" thing isn't the most accurate way to phrase it, doesn't imo capture the background, and tends to engulf actual canon characterization and make for OOC fic.

(A mod thought the above was super impolite and unfriendly, and threatened modly action should any more "negative conversation" take place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I stand by my words, and while I may have been blunt, me being rude doesn't look like that. Mostly sharing it here for the content.)

I am also going to humblebrag about my Yuletide wordcount: it is Lots! It is more than last year! I might even add to it still, with another treat! :P I have also shaken my gift, and it looks appealing.

Comments

[chromemuffin]

Even though I know why most readers find these characters dense, I still don't understand how you can put the blinders on yourself so thoroughly as to not see how both Wei Wuxian and Shen Qingqiu are self-aware characters acknowledged in-story as decently intelligent and and perceptive. It would be weirder if they didn't have the misconceptions they did for their MLs (Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu especially...Shen Qingqiu would edge on the border of jackass if he didn't assume the poor kid would be hurt, betrayed, and angry that the teacher he trusted stabbed him and shoved him into hell). And I wouldn't have devoted so much time to the MDZS fandom if Wei Wuxian really was as dense as BL protags tend to be. In fact, I liked how the misconceptions in this case weren't overblown drama, but quite reasonable given each character's personality and their past with the other party.

(And I am just going to state for the record that if they think your comment was impolite, then they will find the passive aggressiveness that I am capable of absolutely repulsive, lol. I don't like conflict, but when I get annoyed enough, it happens. You were very reasonable, on the other hand.)

[extrapenguin]

I was going to copypaste your first paragraph sentence by sentence and +1 it all, but I should probably condense it into one +4.

LOL, please shower them with passive aggression! When it came to the Great Ping Debacle, where I pinged one person with relevant information, then got told off twice, I considered simply pinging myself with every message of mine just as protest. (I will do it if I get told off for pinging people again. Watch me get kicked off the server, lol.)