Wei had his mother's words echoing in his mind to keep him sane. I don't think Xue Yang had anything left from his parents or anybody really he could consider important in his life. That one act by the Chang leader was all it took for him to sell his soul to whatever devil God there is in ancient China. If it only he had met XingChen a bit earlier...
Umm... I can't open it... I think it's my internet's fault, I'm sorry, but could you, copy-paste it? If you can't then that okay though...
LWJ believes WWX deeply cos he understands despite his demonic way of handling things, he still fight for the right and the underdogs, he still had integrity (just like what he said in ep 2, tho it is directed to MXY, but similar case).Maybe this is another reason which made him love wwx so much, he protected him with all his might. Lwj's standing on wwx will be clearer in latter chapter, when wwx tried to protect the good-Wen survivors while everyone else opposed him. Yet lwj did not do anything wwx said or justify all his conducts, hence why he desperately tried to bring him back to good side, even to the point of fighting him to hinder his movements (during sunshot campaign). But if wwx killed ppl willy nilly or out of his own desire or objective, not because he was cornered or for wen sect, revenge ...maybe lwj wouldn't like him anymore..I see him as a graceful version of NMJ lol I feel like I completely missed this part even after reading this arc thoroughly...Didn't XY stay with XXC as part of his revenge? At first he stayed because he was wounded and lived there would be better since he was a fugitive and cause XXC provided shelter, food, and attended to his injuries..while planning and executing his revenge along the way..it's true there was some domestic moments between them but that happened while he manipulated XXC to kill innocent lives..so I always thought that he was taking his time with his cruel act and enjoying every minute of fooling xxc? This part still confuses me. Suibian has spirit and it recognises wwx's soul in another body, but did it also recognise wwx's golden core in jc's body? Then after the sword sealed itself, during those 13 years of hunting ppl down, jc never tried to unsheath it even once? EDIT--- If there was a vote for the most hateful character in GDC who done nothing but bad things from start to finish, i would, with no doubt, pick Jin GuangShan . Since many terrible things from the past seem to root from his horny balls and his quest for power! Lmao~ And there's too little of his background story to dig any good thing from him
If Im not mistaken, its because Suibian was kept by JGY while JC only kept Chenqing, thats why he never try to unsheath it.
That's actually quite a good comparison! I've never placed Mingjue and Wangji together before! And yes very true, Wangji would've definitely not have felt strongly about Wei if he had been slaughtering ppl left & right, it was Wei's heroic traits like his self-sacrifice attitude (even though that's bad) might be one of the many reasons which Wangji liked about Wei possibly? Like @Scalysharc said Suibian was with JGY, and to add on to that Cheng believed that when Wei does come back to life he wouldn't look for Suibian but Chenqing instead. Cheng knew or perhaps realized Wei in his previous life had stopped using Suibian and so Cheng had no need for the sword just the flute.
IMHO XY originally wanted to fool and use XXC but during the years living together with him he grew ‘fond’ of him. Not necessarily romantic I feel like it was platonic but he didn’t understand that feeling. Still, he used him for his own evil plan but he wanted to be with XXC more than just using him. I hope that makes sense lol. I remember after LWJ cut his arm, WWX saw the arm on the ground, the hand was still holding a candy that looked already inedible. It was a candy from XXC.
Sooo... I vaguely know there is a danmei Discord server (who do I have to bother for an invite again) but is there one for FoD in particular?
Well considering nie mingjue's personality he must have been hell frustrated and face-palmed all the way to death like "xichen! There is a limit of being blind, gullible and ignorant man! Why are they infinite in your case?!" lol tbh lan xichen's benevolence was rather cruel sheltering jin guangyao costed a lot of people a lot of things....
About a month ago my eyes have been revived because of incense burner arts .... now my soul has blessed with all the details of incense burner in the extra *ascend to heaven* THANK YOU! This thread is so lively^^ .... keep them coming, pls xD.... I amma heading there shortly hehe~ thank you BOTH^^ === PS: Saturday is coming gals
I just wanted to add, JGY does seem sorrowful/ feeling loss, but it reads like 'why didn't you side with me', 'why did you make me kill you' etc etc.. NHS is my favorite mastermind. If my sibling was framed and killed like that, I'd want the culprit to burn to crisp. His way of revenge was much more elegant (to catch a fox, you have to be tiger), I don't want to say killing those young disciples/strangers is Good, they're innocent! But left unexposed, JGY will kill many more! He was on his way to be this big leader of all other sects, though unlike Wen, no one can pick his fault Lan brothers are weak to people they care about, once they believe in them they want to keep that faith
I definitely do agree with you. I remember reading a psychology theory that both nature and nurture play a large part in shaping serial killers/psychopaths/etc. Xue Yang probably inherently lacked empathy, and this was exacerbated by “growing up beaten by others” until he became the monster he is today. Compare that to Wei Wuxian. WWX’s life was not kind, even after being taken in by Jiang FengMian. Madam Yu did not like him at all, and the Jiang family dynamic was pretty screwed up. Yet Wei Wuxian inherently had personality traits leaning towards kindness, gratitude, and righteousness. Following his mother's advice, his primary motivation has always been to make other people smile and protect those weaker than himself. He does not hold grudges towards other people, which is the exact opposite of Xue Yang. If it had been Xue Yang taken in by the Jiang family, XY would probably hate Madam Yu and Jiang Cheng, and never develop that strong bond with Jiang YanLi. EDIT: I do agree though that Xue Yang and Jin GuangYao were designed to be foils to Wei Wuxian. It's just that XY and JGY let themselves be defined by their horrible backstories, while WWX rose above his past. I really love this comparison! Lan WangJi shares the same drive for righteousness as Nie Mingjue, as well as a similar level of stubbornness. And I think we can tell from the Xuanwu flashback that he fell in love with Wei Wuxian because of Wei Wuxian’s kindness and sense of justice. He tried to stop Wei Wuxian from being consumed by revenge during the Sunshot Campaign, but he supports Wei Wuxian defending innocents afterwards. LWJ is a little bit like a hybrid between LXC's devotion and trust, and NMJ's morals and principles. I completely agree that Xue Yang is a cruel and manipulative bastard. His initial motivation to tag alongside Xiao Xingchen was 100% to manipulate XXC into killing innocents and “dirty” him. However, if Xue Yang was motivated by hatred and revenge alone, some of his actions really don’t add up. Wei Wuxian even points out the inconsistencies during the final fight. 1) After Xiao Xingchen committed suicide, why was Xue Yang upset to that extent? At that moment, WWX could see the “lost and crying child” he once was. That’s not a normal reaction to driving your hated nemesis to despair. You could say Xue Yang is upset he couldn’t make a fierce corpse out of XXC, but I feel like if that was the case he’d feel more disappointment/anger, as opposed to basically begging XXC to get up. Xue Yang had already won completely and utterly, so why wasn’t he celebrating? 2) Why did Xue Yang disguise himself as XXC and perform Lingchi on Chang Ping? WWX deduces that doing so was very uncharacteristic for XY’s style of revenge, and looked more like XY getting revenge for XXC being abandoned by Chang Ping. 3) On that subject, why did he continually dress himself up and keep disguising as XXC? On one hand, it’s obvious that XXC has a better reputation that Xue Yang could take advantage of, like he did to the kids and WWX in Yi City. But if he really hated XXC that much, why didn’t Xue Yang just run around committing atrocities everywhere disguised as XXC, to sully his name forever? Why limit it to only the vaguely “justified” revenge on Chang Ping? And why the obsession with holding onto Shuanghua, to the point where Xue Yang appeared to treasure it even more than Jiangzai? 4) Then back to when XXC was alive in Yi City... why didn’t Xue Yang continually do his usual necromantic experimentation while they were living together? Why did he start using the Stygian Tiger Seal to turn Yi City into a wasteland only AFTER XXC’s death? You could say "oh he was being cautious so XXC wouldn't find out", but if that was the case, why even bother staying with Xiao Xingchen FOR YEARS? Why not expose the truth about XXC killing innocents earlier, and then move on with his life (AKA return to wreaking his usual havoc)? 5) During Song Lan’s death scene ;___;, Xiao Xingchen mentions something strange. He says something like “I haven’t seen walking corpses for many years now, why is there one appearing again?” The implication is that a few years back, Xue Yang had already stopped tricking XXC into killing innocents. Perhaps he grew bored of it and no longer found any joy from doing so. 6) When Song Lan confronts Xue Yang, it’s implied that Xue Yang was upset partially because Song Lan was destroying the peaceful lie they had been living. If Song Lan had never arrived, if A-Qing hadn’t told XXC, if XXC hadn’t attacked XY... would Xue Yang ever have voluntarily revealed the truth knowing it would break XXC? 7) Why the obsession with restoring XXC’s soul? As Wei Wuxian points out, hatred isn’t a strong enough motivation to explain why Xue Yang basically kneeled and begged WWX to fix it. I mentioned earlier in #4 that Xue Yang could have walked away at any time since he had already won. Why go so far to essentially resurrect your nemesis? 8) Why did Xue Yang clean XXC’s corpse, placing it with dignity in the coffin home? (He was the only living member of the Yi City cohort who had the power to arrange XXC’s corpse.) If he really hated XXC that much, why not let it rot and decay, rip it apart, feed it to the dogs, etc.? He was clearly capable of doing those things: just look at poor A-Qing’s and Song Lan’s bodies. So why not Xiao Xingchen’s? And the final piece of candy part has already been mentioned. -------------------------- Now, of course all of these actions can be interpreted any way you'd like. But personally, I suspect that as they spent more time together, Xue Yang grew to admire Xiao Xingchen and yearned to always be by his side (romantically or platonically or just to eat candy every night lol). However, XY did not recognize what he was feeling because: 1) he still hated XXC for catching him and acting all "high-and-mighty" 2) he would never ever admit (even to himself) that he admired XXC, since that'd mean Xue Yang himself really was a monster in comparison 3) he couldn’t recognize "kindness" or "love" or "compassion" or "goodness" even if these things stabbed him in the stomach. When Xiao Xingchen expressed disgust at the revelation of Xue Yang's identity, Xue Yang's complicated and conflicting emotions erupted. He channeled that eruption towards driving XXC into despair, using his typical twisted reasoning “if you make me feel bad, I’ll get revenge by making you feel horrible.” EDIT: after XXC’s death is where Xue Yang’s motivations clearly become confusing even to himself lol. He becomes completely obsessed with trying to “keep XXC alive”, whether it’s impersonating him, “avenging” him against Chang Ping, holding on to that last piece of candy, trying to rebuild his shattered soul, etc. I’m sure he was justifying it to himself with excuses like “I can’t just let him escape that easily, I’m not done playing with him yet.” But does Xue Yang seem like the type of person who keeps playing with the same victim when he has already completely won? (Ex: He exterminated the Chang clan in one night and then never went back.) I don’t think he even dared to consider what he would actually do next if he did succeed in bringing XXC back. My guess is he would probably set up some morbid routine of playing house, in a twisted parody of their daily life. ————————- Please do not get me wrong, literally all the tragedy that happened in Yi City was completely and utterly Xue Yang's fault. Death was too merciful for him. It’s just extra deliciously tragic that he didn't truly want this extremely depressing ending either. Maybe I’m over-optimistic in believing that human nature is intrinsically good. But I think if Xue Yang could have wished for anything in the world, he would wish for that happy lie in Yi City to be real. My theory is that if Xue Yang had met up with Xiao Xingchen at age 7 instead of getting his finger crushed by Chang Ci'An, Xue Yang's baseline cruel and sadistic nature would be (at least somewhat) toned down. He would still probably never develop a strong sense of justice or empathy or charity, given how he seems like an inherently selfish person. In lieu of an actual moral code of his own, he would probably worship XXC and take his word for what's right and wrong. But this is all headcanon.
...As you can probably tell, I adore the Yi City arc because of how many ambiguities and questions it raises. I really like going through these thought experiments and character studies. For example: 1) What would have happened if when XXC and A-Qing first took Xue Yang in, A-Qing mentioned that Xue Yang was missing a finger? 1.5) What would have happened if A-Qing told XXC the whole truth that he had just been tricked into killing Song Lan? Would XXC still have given up in utter despair during that final confrontation with XY, or would spacing out those blows improve XXC's mental state/resolve? 2) What would have happened if by random chance, XXC realized Xue Yang's identity without Song Lan's arrival? What would XXC have done, especially knowing A-Qing is still accompanying them? 2.5) What if Xue Yang voluntarily revealed his identity, confessed that his grievous injury was because of the Jin sect abandoning him, and apologized for his previous actions? (lol yeah this is basically a fever dream, extremely OOC for Xue Yang) How would XXC have reacted? Would XXC still attack him vs. turn him in to the authorities vs. trust he had repented, etc. 3) What would have happened if Song Lan, instead of confronting Xue Yang alone, barged into the coffin home and revealed Xue Yang's identity to XXC directly? 4) Let's say Xue Yang finally found a way to restore Xiao Xingchen's soul, but it would require Xue Yang to suffer/die/pay some other extremely high price. Would he go through with it? 4.5) Let's say Xue Yang found a way to bring Xiao Xingchen back to life, but XXC would retain all his memories and autonomy, and of course hate XY as a result. Would XY go through with it?
I can't like this enough! I absolutely think that XY's life would have gone down a different course if he'd met XXC earlier. He was as happy as I think he could be pretending to have that normal, sweet life in Yi. He wasn't in any hurry to ruin the fantasy.
Thanks for sharing the vid. I love saturday too lol Damm Jiang Fengmian, his character is pretty cool.