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An opinion that I might get into hot water for from other people--even from other jgy apologists--is that I don& #39;t think he wanted power; at the very most, he maybe wanted things that required power, which in his case was SAFETY. (Bear with me, thoughts still loading).
I remember having as recently as a few weeks ago was the apparent contrast between jgy and nhs. JGY wanted notoriety: NHS wanted to be invisible. The more I& #39;ve thought about it, though, the more I think JGY wanted to be invisible, too.
The first major thing we know of him doing is going to seek acknowledgement by JGS. Of course, WE know that& #39;s huge--but to MY, who has been raised by his mother, he only knows it as his mother& #39;s dream for him and doesn& #39;t realise how Not Done that is.
**quick commercial break to specify that I& #39;m talking about CQL MY/JGY here, not MDZS JGY, bc that inflects his experience w/ the Nies
When he is rejected (VERY PUBLICLY) by JGS and physically injured in the process, he hunkers down and eventually finds employment with the Nie sect. He still tries to excel in work, but we& #39;re never explicitly given evidence that he& #39;s doing this to & #39;make a name& #39; for himself.
Moreover, when he& #39;s at CR, you can see how he shrinks into himself. Ppl talking about him is the WORST THING that can happen, and it does, which is why it& #39;s so significant that LXC saves the day. He just wants to get through this big event w/o humiliation. Just this once.
You can see it in his later talk with LXC, too. He basically RUNS away after the end of the convo, afraid he has revealed too much of himself (and not realising LXC is smitten), & when those people walk by him and cut him off he startles as if he& #39;s been burned.
I know some of this is me projecting my own experiences with Abuse
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="™️" title="Registered-Trade-Mark-Symbol" aria-label="Emoji: Registered-Trade-Mark-Symbol">, but I still think it& #39;s fair to say that that is the body language of someone who thinks his ability to survive depends on making himself as small as possible.
Think, too, of his experiences with the Nies. That day that he hears the cave gossip? He doesn& #39;t confront them, he hides. And then NMJ finds him, and MY has this look of dread and fear on his face (just let the poor boy eat his bread!)
And although it& #39;s super sexy to see NMJ tell off the disciples for gossiping, the part where he promotes MY on the spot is, like, the worst possible thing that could happen. It& #39;s clear MY is uncomfortable about it, and we can see from his interactions w/the guards later...
That they have not taken kindly to it (as someone--apologies for forgetting exactly who!--on here mentioned, there are possible implications of physical and sexual abuse during MY& #39;s time at Qinghe. Then, when he gets kicked out, where does he go? QISHAN WEN.
Qishan Wen is not a place you go, esp as a non-Wen or w/o some sort of leverage (ahem XY Yin Iron), if you have any other options. But here, MY uses his smallness to his advantage so he can still help Xichen & co, basically acting as a sleeper agent.
Of course, when MY makes the decision to kill Wen Ruohan to protect his friends, that obviously takes out his employment prospects yet again. Fortunately, at this point JGS in his infinite generosity (VOMIT ON A STICK YOU OLD GOAT) has decided to acknowledge MY as JGY
But even--no, especially--when he& #39;s serving the Jins, JGY continues to make himself small. He acts by way of suggestion, the voice in the ear of more powerful men, and relies on their selfishness to complete the job. And they are just corrupt enough that it works.
So is it any surprise that JGY ended up with so many secrets? I don& #39;t think he saw his omissions as & #39;lies& #39; in the traditional sense (whether they actually WERE is another issue). But keeping things from LXC? from Qin Su?
He did that because he thought the only way to solve the problem was once again to reduce himself as much as possible, and that included doing things that made him very unhappy and keeping quiet about it to protect LXC and QS
Are these the moves of a power-hungry, bitter, overlooked bastard son? No, these are the choices of someone who, like WWX, has to balance his own survival instinct w/the world telling him (and him internalising) that the less of him there is, the better.
The space that he even CAN carve for himself to stay alive becomes smaller and smaller over time, and, at least, under NHS& #39;s threat of revelation and the events of Guanyin Temple, collapses altogether. END RANT
