#and i ask myself
unprompted salt: lan xichen is not impartial when it comes to jin guangyao
everyone’s all like “oh lxc, so unbiased, so open” no he is not! he has to be dragged kicking and screaming to the conclusion that jgy is a bad, bad dude. the fact that he’s willing to be dragged at all puts him head and shoulders above almost every other character but my god that is a low bar
allow me to present my case below the cut. this is long and stupid and largely an excuse to watch all the parts where zewu-jun has a super-bad day.
now, lan xichen perceives himself as a logical, unbiased, fair person. his own code of morals forces him to at least consider evidence that’s shoved directly in front of his face. (good job at having principles, lxc!) his morals don’t preclude being super stubborn and coming up with alternate explanations for everything
(just because lan xichen thinks he’s impartial doesn’t mean that we, the viewer, need to believe him. learning how to avoid getting snared by a person’s narrative of their own life is an important life skill)
he admits that he knew about some of jgy’s crimes:
oh lan xichen, you poor bastard
it’s not quite clear how long he knew but i’m assuming it’s been a long time. he’s not stupid; he knows jgy has killed people and he looked the other way. and honestly, within the context of the show, i’m not mad at lxc for that! wwx’s killed loads of people, and lz isn’t going to litigate every single death either. however…i wouldn’t call that an unbiased viewpoint. and when evidence started piling up that jgy was really, really likely to be a baby-killer etc, idk, maybe it could have factored in
let’s move on to the kicking and the screaming:
our heroes show lxc glowy-baxia and present the case for jgy being involved. lxc is not having it.
“weird how all signs point to jgy pulling some shady shit,” says wwx “like, all of them”
lxc shoots back “actually i have been spending every single night together for a month with jgy and he has DEFINITELY not done any shady shit, also i’m not saying out loud i’ve been getting comprehensively laid lately but i am saying it silently”
“maybe he teleported?”
“no” says lxc.
“but – “
“no. conversation over. also i know you’re wei wuxian; don’t take it personally but you could call this a polite threat”
our heroes present that no really nmj’s head was really definitely for sure in jgy’s pier 1 torture room, he just moved it. lxc is not having it.
“did you see it with your eyes, wangji? not your probably-not-evil husband’s eyes, your personal eyes in your personal head” lxc would like to know
lan zhan would like his esteemed brother to know that his trust in wwx is absolute and his trust in jgy is 0
lxc is MIFFED by this response
our heroes demonstrate that wwx heard the song of clarity while taking a spa day inside nmj’s head
lxc is very pleased to point out that wwx has made an error in his playing. wwx says “hey! no! i’m great at the flute! i played it exactly as jgy did, so the one who fucked up is him”
“you know that i, incredibly powerful clan leader lan who controls your rather perilous not-getting-executed position, am the one who taught jgy the song, right? maybe you should be slightly more careful about insulting my boyfriend, who is very clever”
“okay good point,” says wwx “counterpoint: he is so clever that he definitely fucked up on purpose. kinda shady, eh?”
lxc is starting to get increasingly worried that his kicking and screaming and defense-lawyering is not going to make wwx stop coming up with uncomfortable conjectures
our heroes go to the library and point out that what jgy played sounds a lot like the evil music in the evil book that happens to have a few critical pages torn out of it
“this is the Restricted Section of the library,” says lxc. “no jgy allowed, can’t have been him”
wwx is not impressed and notes that jgy is great at showing up in extremely inconvenient places, feat: all of jgy’s spying in the past
lxc’s strident defense is falling apart! fuck!
“i need to test this evil magic on myself,” says lxc, somehow still not convinced.
“BRO SERIOUSLY” says lan zhan with his entire face, which is very frowny.
yes seriously. more consideration is required.
xichen, i get it. you are being so good and so patient and only a little bit tetchy that these two punks are trying to break up a decade and a half-long loving gay relationship. you are considering both sides. you aren’t going to let jgy arrest wwx and hammer mind-control nails into his head. but we gotta admit that maybe you have an extremely strong preference for “not guilty” in this case.
it’s okay. a man’s allowed to be gay about things.
even when those things are murder.
