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So let me get this straight… 

When Wei Wuxian intimidates a produce seller for a cheaper price is playful banter, but when Xue Yang does it is reprehensible threats to a honest merchant.

When Hua Cheng conceals his identity and helps his daozhang repair his roof is sweet attempt to get on his good graces, but when Xue Yang does it it’s predatory behaviour.

When Luo Binghe keeps his (as of then unrequited) crush’s body preserved to cuddle with while frantically searching for a way to revive him is a sign of devotion (if only a bit unhinged), but when Xue Yang does it is downright creepy. 

What am I missing.

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What do you mean killing isn't an act of devotion

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i love codependent relationships in fiction i love watching two messy people unforgivably in love with each other shatter the world around them i love seeing interpretations of love as a cosmic disastrous redemptive force i love watching love consume people whole i love looking at romantic relationships and going "oh that is so fucked up! good for them"

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memes

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sometimes its just like. wow. yi city really happened huh. aqing and xiao xingchen were just – and then xue yang — HEALING — and then they all – and then xuexiao – THREE YEARS – and then song lan just. damn. and then xue yang just. and then xiao xingchen and xue yang really. and then ten years. and then candy. CANDY.  phew. all that happened. like actually happened. in the span of three (3) episodes. time go to. scream.

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other thought brought on by rereading yi city: so the narrative indicates that song lan specifically makes the choice to go and confront xue yang so that xiao xingchen doesn’t find out who he’s been living with. it’s not a matter of killing xue yang first and then telling xiao xingchen - the line specifically is that “He absolutely could not allow Xiao Xingchen to find out what had happened.”

two things about this:

1. there’s a beautiful symmetry in xue yang’s hiding his identity from xiao xingchen, and song lan deciding to continue that deception himself.

2. just thinking about a universe in which song lan did manage to kill xue yang and then go to xiao xingchen - if he’s not going to tell xiao xingchen that his friend was xue yang, and definitely not going to tell xiao xingchen that his friend died, how is he planning on dealing with the thing where xiao xingchen’s living companion just…disappears? is he going to come up with some other lie about him being dead and deal with xiao xingchen’s grief over it? is he going to just say nothing and let xiao xingchen wonder and worry without knowing what happened? 

would a-qing ever tell him?

there’s a very painful au in here that i personally could not write where things go as it seems song lan planned, xue yang dies, and xiao xingchen never knows - not that his friend was xue yang, and not that his friend is dead, and not that song lan killed him.

and I wonder if xiao xingchen, in that situation, wouldn’t want to believe that his friend just abandoned him, because however much that hurts, it’d be better than the alternative. at some point maybe he expresses this to song lan. if he didn’t walk away of his own accord, then he has to think that maybe chengmei’s shady past caught up to him, this time fatally.

like I said, I couldn’t write it. but ouch.

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I find it very funny that modern songxuexiao almost always has songxiao as Xue Yang’s de facto sugar daddies when in canon songxiao have NO fucking money because they just wander the land doing pro bono exorcisms and Xue Yang is the one who is, one has to imagine, making an ungodly amount of money doing hit man/mad scientist things, and also the only one out of the three of them who has any stated interest in getting rich or being rich

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call me a freak but i think romanticised cannibalism is so fucking cool. art peaked when we started using eating each other as a metaphor for love. anyway don’t kill people

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must a villain be redeemed? isn't it enough that they're bitter, evil, and most importantly, hot?

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Idk why i decided to make this.

AU where A-Qing lives and she be around the same age as the juniors and they be scamming people together

Audio is from Avatar: The Last Airbender

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As much as I love ‘I would kill for you’, it kinda really loses its impact if the person saying it is a villain who already kills at the slightest provocation

’I would refrain from killing for you, I would spare them all if you asked me’ is a very sexy alternative, and a much more powerful declaration of love coming from a character prone to violence

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other thought brought on by rereading yi city: so the narrative indicates that song lan specifically makes the choice to go and confront xue yang so that xiao xingchen doesn’t find out who he’s been living with. it’s not a matter of killing xue yang first and then telling xiao xingchen - the line specifically is that “He absolutely could not allow Xiao Xingchen to find out what had happened.”

two things about this:

1. there’s a beautiful symmetry in xue yang’s hiding his identity from xiao xingchen, and song lan deciding to continue that deception himself.

2. just thinking about a universe in which song lan did manage to kill xue yang and then go to xiao xingchen - if he’s not going to tell xiao xingchen that his friend was xue yang, and definitely not going to tell xiao xingchen that his friend died, how is he planning on dealing with the thing where xiao xingchen’s living companion just…disappears? is he going to come up with some other lie about him being dead and deal with xiao xingchen’s grief over it? is he going to just say nothing and let xiao xingchen wonder and worry without knowing what happened? 

would a-qing ever tell him?

there’s a very painful au in here that i personally could not write where things go as it seems song lan planned, xue yang dies, and xiao xingchen never knows - not that his friend was xue yang, and not that his friend is dead, and not that song lan killed him.

and I wonder if xiao xingchen, in that situation, wouldn’t want to believe that his friend just abandoned him, because however much that hurts, it’d be better than the alternative. at some point maybe he expresses this to song lan. if he didn’t walk away of his own accord, then he has to think that maybe chengmei’s shady past caught up to him, this time fatally.

like I said, I couldn’t write it. but ouch.

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The inherent homoeroticism of killing your enemy and immediately regretting it

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A Gremlin ~~

(finished an old Untamed Xue Yang sketch from way back in 2019 lmao)

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are you ready for another post that’s just me straight up losing my mind about Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen’s interaction here? because that’s what you’re getting!

like, there’s a lot going on here for Xue Yang, and I don’t think all of it is “haha sucker this is amazing” (though I do think that’s part of it). but I think that while that might be side by side with sheer relief that he’s at least sort of safe/not in imminent danger of death when he first realizes Xiao Xingchen doesn’t know who he is…I think this is the point where it shifts a little.

when he asks the question about why Xiao Xingchen isn’t asking who he is, he’s very blatantly inviting him to do just that and ask, and I don’t doubt he has a lie ready for it (just as I don’t doubt he’s also ready for that lie to fail). but that’s not what Xiao Xingchen does: instead, he not only offers this easy acceptance of his silence (”since you’re not talking about it, why should I ask?”) he also does two other things that I think contribute to Xue Yang’s “are you for real” face in those last two screencaps.

the first is his easy dismissal of what he’s doing as anything much: “I’m just helping a stranger I met by chance. It’s not a big deal.” for Xue Yang, for whom help has never been something that he just got, and when he did it has strings…that’s got to be both a little infuriating (”actually that is a big deal what the fuck”) and also sort of breathtaking in its sheer…openness. like, yes, Xiao Xingchen doesn’t know who he is (and wouldn’t be doing this if he did), but even so he’s still reaching out and offering this kindness and help to a complete stranger, no questions asked.

that’s just…not something that happens, in Xue Yang’s world - but here it is.

and second: “if we were to swap places.” the thing here, I think, is the idea of someone thinking of that possibility - of believing that there is a point of view in there that’s understandable and could belong to Xiao Xingchen. I’m having a harder time expressing this, but it’s something about…you don’t swap places with an animal. you don’t “if I were you” someone without having some kind of recognition of them as a person whose perspective has value.

and I think that’s kind of a lot.

hence that sort of smile and laugh that looks, to me, more incredulous than anything else. are you for real, Daozhang? past history and Xue Yang’s own understanding of the world says no, but there he is.