response to the essay question, “is lan xichen a good man?” submitted to the consideration of the judges in hopes of winning the essay prize of $0,000:
there are many ways one could define a good man. i’m going to dispense with all of them except two: 1) does lxc achieve being “a good man” within his own cultural context, and 2) is lan xichen in alignment with the moral values of mdzs. my answers to these questions are 1) Yes and 2) Kind Of. furthermore i think that there is something at stake in this interpretation, as it elucidates the cultural critique mdzs is attempting. lxc’s achievement of being a good man in the first category precludes his being fully in alignment with the moral values the text argues for. i also think that him being mostly in alignment with the moral values of mdzs except in a few disastrous cases in which he is not drives the Point home better than if he is completely failing–we already have plenty of characters like that! we don’t need him to be socially acceptable but bad, because we already have people like jin guangshan. we don’t need him to be a good man who’s radically wrong about the kind of moral universe he lives in, because we already have nie mingjue. he just needs to be a good man who’s a little bit wrong. who’s not right enough. and i know that saying “this would be a good writing decision” isn’t evidence that it’s true, but BEAR WITH ME.
something i want in iwtv is for daniel to stay in the public eye just a little too long. like i want the in universe internet to be like “oh what an idiot🙄 he’s really trying to make us believe that vampires are real🥱🥱 that’s so cringe” and then 5 years pass and daniel still looks the same. and then 10 years. and then 15 years. and people start to go “….. hey man. this guy doesn’t seem to be aging. isn’t he like 85? and he’s completely fine…?…… maybe he IS a vampire…??!??!” i think daniel would find that very funny. then he’d just disappear at his very public 96th birthday party like bilbo baggins and the internet would have a field day
