Lan Wangji Likes North and South More than is Reasonable

I posted this in the corner of an Ao3 fic just now, but thought I'd also bring it over to meta and say a bit more here about Lan Wangji's North and South fixation.

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MXTX characters by their favourite 19th century Britlit:

Lan Xichen: Something by George Eliot.

Jin Guangyao: Possibly Woman in White, for Count Fosco and bitter illegitimate sibling power imbalances. If not, Jane Eyre.

Xue Yang: Absolutely some Decadents trash.

Jiang Wanyin: If Chengxian, Wuthering Heights. If not, maybe Nicholas Nickleby.

Lan Wangji: North and South.

Wei Wuxian: David Copperfield. (David Copperfield spends the whole novel not realising how deeply ,deeply gay he is, Wei Wuxian is just like ‘god, why is this so relatable?’)

Nie Huaisang: If pre-brother death, Emma. If post-brother death, I kind of want to say Daniel Deronda.

Nie Mingjue: He Knew He Was Right (I'm sorry, I can't not).

Jiang Yanli: Sense and Sensibility.

Wen Qing: I initially thought Carmilla, but then decided this was cheap. Lesbian Vibe is not her whole personality. Mongrelmind suggested she could be into weird fin-de-siècle sexy-scary shit. I got annoyed that I’d said Brit Lit, because I sort of wanted to give her that wild, queer, unfinished Dostoevsky novel that’s from a female point of view.

Madam Lan: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, alas. (She can take it, she's Hardy.)

Lan Sizhui: A Princess and the Goblin or Secret Garden kind of kid (he does keep discovering weird asshole cousins tucked away random places).

Jingyi: Claims every book he ever read either sucks entirely or Changed Him.

Jin Ling, holding up a check-out line best seller: Hey Jingyi, is this the worst literature humans have ever conceived of, just a war crime, or a profoundly beautiful work, which has reshaped my entire—

SVSSS bonus round:

Shen Yuan: hate-reading The Monk

Luo Binghe: Persuasion. (That's Bingmei, for Bingge it's Dorian Grey or Vathek.)

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Modern Lit Major Lan Wangji is the only person born after 1880 to have jacked it to Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. Singeli marked “the inherent horniness of class differences and repression”; this is but the start. 

- ‘She kept the brick from hitting him because it was Right, and made him question his business ethics? She’s just so inherently noble, I would also attempt to marry her at that juncture—’

- ‘He trusted her about the Strange Man AND WAS PROVED CORRECT, amazing. All along, she was saving her brother!’

- The part in the book where Thornton obsesses about Margaret Hale’s tea-serving hands gives Lan Wangji the Horny Kindle Grip.

This is a man who has not only jerked it to the miniseries (perfectly understandable), but also, in a particularly weak moment, to the PDF. He’s gone out in the Halestorm, you know?