this comment hits on something that drives me wild about people who shittalk xichen

people think he's like this because he is naive/stupid?

no, it's more because he has looked closely at every single person he ever had a chance to love and knows how they're all compromised. https://twitter.com/nachtgray/status/1282782433830678528

they're! all! compromised! they're all bad people by the standards of the rules that xichen was raised by! every! single! one!

his mother who was kind to him and his brother when she should've been bitter? murdered a teacher!

his father who he owed the utmost filial duty to?

abused his position as sect leader to shield a murderer, while also dumping the whole mess on his brother and children!

the uncle who raised him and his brother? a man whose pursuit of propriety has caused him to forget that benevolence is the highest of the Five Constant

Virtues, who sometimes forgets even righteousness, as seen in the way he has Wangji beaten for drinking without even bothering to inquire about the nature of the compulsion that he was placed under?

and the little brother that he clearly loves, clearly understands, who he has

watched over since they were children, who he is training up to be his sword hand in the sect and beyond?

seriously wounds, in book canon, 33 elders of the sect! who are likely family members! who survived the burning of cloud recesses and almost certainly fought in sunshot!

how many survived both of those events? how many are even left?

is wangji's crime worse than what their mother did? is it more terrible to murder one elder, or seriously wound 33? when wounding them, how could wangji be sure that none of them would die from complications?

every single person that lan xichen loves is compromised. this is the whole point of what he says to wangji when they're reunited -- those are his words about black and white that wangji screams back at qiren.

and with each person in his life, xichen has made the choice to

love anyways, even knowing what he does and knowing, in the case of his mother and likely jgy, that he does not know everything.

people are not all good. people are not all bad. people do terrible things from love.

xichen knows. and chooses to love anyways.

(belatedly -- i left nmj out above because i was so focused on family, but the same analysis pretty obviously holds. mingjue is not perfect! he gets lots of points for 'righteousness' in the Five Constant Virtues, but not so much on the other legs! xichen sees the way that nmj

treats jgy and is obviously, visibly fucked up by it. we all remember the part where he shouts at mingjue & blocks baxia.

the confrontations between lxc and nmj, and jgy and lxc clearly mirror each other, where xichen the balanced, middle way keeps nmj from striking w/out having

full facts or asking for an explanation, and then executes the slap heard around the temple when jgy offers up some sorry excuses for himself. excessive self-righteousness/excessive self-justification are nmj and jgy's flaws respectively, y'know? lxc knows it! sees it! and is

still utterly WRECKED by both of their deaths.)

anyways, I yell about this topic a lot https://twitter.com/quigonejinn/status/1251930541173202944?s=20