Given my post just a few days ago, I'm sure today's post subject comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with Mo Dao Zu Shi. For those not familiar, a crash course in the character in the original work before I start talking about how I've handled him in my fanfic. (Oh, and there is now a glossary page on the side bar if any of the terms in this post need explaining! 😁)
Lan Wangji, birth name Lan Zhan, sobriquet Hanguang-jun, also known as the Second Jade of Gusu (with his elder brother Lan Xichen collectively referred to as the Twin Jades), heir to the repressively strict Lan Clan cultivation sect based in the isolated Cloud Recesses, twenty li from the city of Gusu. (A li is a distance of measure which I believe I read somewhere is about equivalent to a kilometer.) As the love interest of MDZS, Lan Wangji is over-powered, being good at absolutely everything, and his character flaws are somewhat hidden. The only strictly obvious flaw in him--the only reason he ranked second on the eligible bachelors list rather than first--is that he's very serious, almost incapable of having facial expressions, and that he doesn't talk much, so he has an icy air to him, unlike his brother, who projects a friendly warmth. His hidden character flaws include massive jealousy issues, and being surprisingly horny.
As a character, he's something of a mystery. The author of Mo Dao Zu Shi, Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, writes in a style that feels very unusual to me, though it may not be unusual for her genre. (I haven't read enough danmei other than hers to be sure one way or the other.) What strikes me as odd is that the narrator is omniscient except having little to no knowledge of what the love interest is thinking; this has been the case in all three of her novels. (Maybe it's not that the narrator's omniscience fails there so much as that the narrator peevishly refuses to tell us.) Combined with the fact that Lan Wangji does as little talking as he can and even when he has to speak he uses as few words as possible, it's sometimes hard to get a read on his personality beyond a few key aspects. (It's slightly easier in the live-action drama, since the actor can't have a genuinely immobile face the way the character tends to be described in the novel, so he does have some expressions to read...also he manages to emote surprisingly well even without the broader expression changes available to his co-stars.)
Anyway, although we're never told directly what he's thinking the way we are with Wei Wuxian, the object of his affections, we do pretty quickly catch on to just how massively in love he is. (Far more quickly than Wei Wuxian does, that's for sure!!) And yet, we don't know quite when he fell in love, exactly, and since his love for Wei Wuxian seems to be his motivation for about half of what he does in the novel, it's sort of frustrating how hard it is to pin down exactly when and why he fell in love. Was it a crazy-shallow "love at first sight?" Did he not realize how he felt until Wei Wuxian was leaving Cloud Recesses again, or even later than that? Did he have "lust at first sight" followed by months or even years of trying to deny his desires and the genuine feelings they were growing into? There's really no way to be positive, and the few details we have that give us any insight into his thought processes are still vague up until a certain point in the story, by which time they had known each other for about three years in the novel. (Only about 7-9 months in the live-action version, because it compressed time a lot, partially because no way could those actors pass for being only 15 years old. Even claiming they're 18/19 at the earliest point of the story is pushing it.)
So, all that being the case, I have to admit that I don't feel like I have a very good grasp on the character so far as I've worked on my MDZS fanfic. (Although possibly the biggest problem I have writing for him is that when there are large scenes of people talking, he tends to fade into the background and go unnoticed unless it's a rare case where he actually has something he wants to say. Or unless someone seems like they might threaten and/or make advances on Wei Wuxian. Then he leaps to life to intervene. 🤣)
