Ouch. If they don't like the character, why read the story?
I know, right! And it's especially bizarre because I thought nobody could possibly hate Xichen, who is a genuinely kind man trying his best to understand and help everyone. (Sometimes he fails but that's because the world of the narrative is against him.)
Xichen's soulmate is the final villain of the fandom, Jin Guangyao, who I also write, and I was 100% prepared for pushback on my JGY stuff, because it makes sense for him to have haters. But poor Xichen whose only crime was being deceived? It's very strange.
(To be fair, if you're reading the book entirely with the POV that the heroes are infallible and anyone who disapproves of them must be evil, then you can get to a position in which Xichen is either stupid or bad.
He doesn't want his younger brother (one of the heroes) to throw his lot in with a necromancer who uses ghosts to kill people and who is rapidly becoming public enemy number one.
When his brother does publicly fight against his own elders in defense of the necromancer, Xichen allows him to be punished for this. (Because the punishment keeps him safe from the judgement of the world and allows him to re-enter the world later with his reputation unblemished.)
Xichen is in love with a guy who turns out to have murdered his way to the top of the cultivation world, who becomes the final villain of the piece, and he asks his brother (and the necromancer, now hero) to show him proof before he will believe their words about it.
So, you know, he's never really much more than lukewarm about the novel's main romance, and for a long time he's the villain's biggest fan. Which when I put it like that is probably enough to make people hate him. But they're wrong! He's just trying to do his best in a very flawed and horrific system.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2024-07-08 04:11 pm (UTC)From:I know, right! And it's especially bizarre because I thought nobody could possibly hate Xichen, who is a genuinely kind man trying his best to understand and help everyone. (Sometimes he fails but that's because the world of the narrative is against him.)
Xichen's soulmate is the final villain of the fandom, Jin Guangyao, who I also write, and I was 100% prepared for pushback on my JGY stuff, because it makes sense for him to have haters. But poor Xichen whose only crime was being deceived? It's very strange.
(To be fair, if you're reading the book entirely with the POV that the heroes are infallible and anyone who disapproves of them must be evil, then you can get to a position in which Xichen is either stupid or bad.
So, you know, he's never really much more than lukewarm about the novel's main romance, and for a long time he's the villain's biggest fan. Which when I put it like that is probably enough to make people hate him. But they're wrong! He's just trying to do his best in a very flawed and horrific system.