#also tangentially i think you could definitely argue the slaughter for nmj as well rather than the hunt

[prince-liest]

@dillislazii  #op what do you think abt#xue yang#like. would he also be hunt or the web? 👁️

I Love Xue Yang Immensely So Thank You For Asking

(Also while I have you, consider checking out the longer response I gave to the Eye/Hunt reblog of my original post that’s going around cos I actually still think Jin Guangyao and Nie Huaisang are of the Web and it gives some insight into how I assigned them!)

I actually think Xue Yang would be a really clear-cut example of a follower of the Desolation!

I get the impression that in meta the Hunt is sometimes assigned to people who just, like. Have goals, especially goals they’re extremely determined to achieve (especially if that involves killing someone), but I think the Hunt is more specific than that. It’s stated in canon that not many humans are of the Hunt because it’s particularly a fear about becoming prey in a very literally animalistic way. It’s about the physical chase and about predation. It’s one of the fears that is considered most “primal” - Daisy Tonner hunts people, often in ways that result in police brutality, because she is a cop and it’s her job to chase them down. Nie Mingjue hunts and slaughters his enemies, and typically does so in a straightforward fashion because he believes in chasing down those who have done wrong - just like he sank his teeth into his perception of Jin Guangyao’s flaws and would not let go or let up about them. Jiang Cheng during Wei Wuxian’s dead era actively, publicly, and doggedly pursued and hunted anybody who practiced demon cultivation. Etc.

Xue Yang is a violent murderer! But his whole thing isn’t chasing, it’s causing suffering. His life has been characterized by pain and loss, and he places what happened to him on such a pedestal that nobody else’s pain matters unless it’s a source of catharsis for him. If he was of the Hunt, he would have hunted down Chang C’ian alone (or as it were his heir) and killed that person. Instead, he chooses to enact as much destruction and suffering as he possibly can and slaughters the entire clan. He relishes in the pain he has paid forward unto the world. Then he does the same to Baixue Temple.

Perhaps that indicates that he is of the Slaughter, then. But he didn’t massacre Baixue Temple because he loves randomly-directed murder or because he thinks they deserved it. He did it specifically to hurt Song Lan. And murder is not what he does to Xiao Xingchen.

Instead, Xue Yang spends years systematically planning to destroy Xiao Xingchen’s will to live in the most painful way possible. He targets Xiao Xingchen’s desire to help people, his belief in justice, and forces him to commit acts specifically because those acts would viscerally horrify Xiao Xingchen if he knew he was committing them. This backfires! He falls in love and regrets what he’s done - but it’s not entirely because he hurt Xiao Xingchen, but because he has to face the consequences of his own feelings! Xiao Xingchen kills himself, and Xue Yang wants him back! And before he trips down that particular rabbit hole, the things he tricks Xiao Xingchen are cruel, creative, and specifically designed to hurt Xiao Xingchen as much as possible. Expecially when Song Lan finally finds them.

He was hurt, brutally and permanently, when he was little. And he turned that around and decided to hurt everyone else he thought deserved it - or sometimes even for fun - even more brutally and even more permanently, for as long as he could, because he thinks that the world deserves to suffer. He is, as Jude Perry says, “A reckoning; a surging tide of destruction and pain.”