#codes by xue

[xuethms]

◍ sodium theme.

Links: previews [ sdm / soi ] | install | features

Sodium is a fansite-like theme with extra sections for your description, featured blogs/tags, progress trackers for projects and media, and updates. Alternate header and permalink styles help to change the entire vibe of your blog.

Features: header theme, floaty elements, sidebar sections (description + featured + progress bars + updates + navigation), searchbar, 250/400/500px posts, styled search & tag pages

Credits: cappuccicons, feather icons, iconsax icons, NPF images fix v3.0,   Griddery v2.0, photosets.css, customaudio.js, Style-my-Tooltips, Truncate note counts

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm sorry I let down my guard.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[thatswhatsushesaid]

[toxic-yaoi-tournament]

Toxic Yaoi Tournament Round 1: Kururugi Suzaku/Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass) vs. Xiao Xingchen/Xue Yang (Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed)

[twistedappletree]

Jin Zihao 🌻

[winepresswrath]

MXTX MC conflicts go:

Yi City: my boyfriend thinks I am a prolific murderer and specifically murdered a bunch of people his bff loves to get back at him. also that I tricked him into doing murders with me, for enrichment. I did all those things but did not anticipate having a feeling about his feelings.

Scum Villain: my boyfriend thinks I want to kill him but I don't.

MDZS: my boyfriend thinks I hate him but I don't.

TGCF: my boyfriend doesn't know I exist but I'm worried that once he finds out he's going to find my eyepatch ugly and my cavern of effigies offputting.

[moondal514]

Hua Po’an sitting there wondering why the thought of locking up his shizun excites him…I know what you are

[malewifingonside]

Adding thoughts to Wu Qianyue, his life before this one is shitty. Sure he managed to get to the top, but it was a lonely place to be. His family is gone, leaving him on top of the mountain. When he came to this world, he resolved to protect his family. Every means was used.

He tried to help who he can. His father, second mother, Jianzhi, Qingsu and Qingxu. He knows why their father did what he did, and tried his best to break his family out if the cycles of trauma. Even if he knowingly trapped himself in it.

Enduring, enduring, knowing why they did it and wanted to help them, forgiving, forging, knowing why that did it. Smiling to elevate the pain, to soothe the other, to be the pillar where everyone can rely on. But even mountains can collapse after decades of abuse.

The day Xue Jianrong's crime was announced was the day Xue Jianrong died, sacrificing himself to kill Demon Lord Qin.

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I sometimes see the opinion that MXTX took the clichéd tropes she'd critiqued in Scum Villain, and played them straight in MDZS. But though a lot of them appear in MDZS, I'd argue that none are actually played straight at all!

The main point of MDZS's tropes is subversion. Yes, WWX has a 'tragic backstory', even an arguably overused one (orphaned by his parents at a young age, forced to live on the streets with nobody to rely on, etc) – but how things differ in how it's used. Tragic backstories are normally used to build sympathy for a character, to make us care and get invested in them. But... we're never actually shown any of those street days, we're never shown and never dwell upon how much he suffered during them. They're only really mentioned in passing and whenever dogs come up! If the goal was to make us feel bad for WWX, this would be very ineffective writing. But what's actually important here isn't that WWX went through tragedies – it's how he doesn't let the tragedies he went through define him. He doesn't dwell on them, the narrative doesn't dwell on them, it's never used to earn sympathy points... because what defines WWX is his choices and how he chooses to act, not a backstory completely out of his control. What gets us invested in him is his personality and the character writing of MXTX, not tragic events used as a substitute for identity.

And this trope treatment fits extremely well with WWX's personality itself – he's someone who 'forgets the pain as soon as the wound has healed'*, but also who actively chooses to focus on the present because you can't change the past; someone who holds the belief that 'gains and losses [should] remain uncommented on' when choosing what to do.

The use of the tragic backstory isn't the only thing that's subverted, either – the other main thing is the 'blackening' of the protagonist, and its impact on the protagonist's fall. After being thrown into the Burial Mounds, on a surface level it does seem like this blackening has occurred: the first thing we see when he returns is his gruesome torture of the Wen cultivators; he's 'forsaken' traditional cultivation in favour of an 'evil but more powerful' path; and frankly, Sunshot-era WWX is terrifying. But MDZS is not a blackening story, and so the events of the Burial Mounds aren't used as a catalyst for that purpose. Though it's true that WWX's not entirely the same person he was before (because how could be be?), underneath it all, his morals, worldview and core** stay the same. Though gruesome, his revenge is directed towards the ones who wronged him, not those past that and certainly not the entire world. His experience in the Burial Mounds doesn't lead to him being some evil, blackened overlord... like everyone says he is at the start! That's subverted, because again, WWX's values and choices are more important to the story than genre conventions.

But the most crucial thing? What leads to WWX's downfall isn't any blackening! It isn't any vengeance or morally dubious actions***– he was praised for those things during the Sunshot Campaign! No, what leads to his downfall is something completely unrelated to that, something which would've disappeared had the trope been played straight. It's him doing what's right by defending the Wens, it's him following his moral code when it opposes the world's, it's him standing up to the injustice of others – not others standing up to the injustice of him. That's the subversion here.

(Also, once again, the fall of Lotus Pier, the Burial Mound, etc, aren't used for sympathy points – and if it was relevant, they wouldn't have been used to excuse any actions, either. Using tragic events as an excuse for doing bad things is critiqued many times in MDZS, through characters like Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao. And that's not exactly a trope subversion, but it is a critique of badly handled 'excuses'.)

These are by no means all the tropes MDZS subverts – the nature of guidao vs the usual nature of modao being another very major one – but they're the main ones that feature in Scum Villain.

So, though at first glance MDZS seems to play the tropes MXTX critiqued there straighter, it's not a simple case of using them as cliches, and we see that by how they're used to impact the narrative, and how that differs from what they're traditionally used for. MDZS doesn't fall back into clichés Scum Villain satirised – it's the subversion to Scum Villain's exploration and critique.

--

*Which I know is generally used negatively, to describe someone not learning a lesson from a punishment, but it really describes WWX in general, too. He doesn't dwell on that pain, he does his best to move on from it.

**...heh

***And, because it's often debated – whatever the morality/culpability of Nightless City is doesn't even matter! The events happened at a pledge conference against him that was already taking place. WWX's actions there didn't make people want to kill him because that was explicitly happening beforehand.

[sueeeeesworld]

Hello,

My name is Xue Yan. I am a Ph.D. student in Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My academic advisor, Dr. Liza Berdychevsky, and I conduct a study titled “Sex Views and Sexual Self-concept”.

If you are currently 18 years old or older and willing to share your opinions about sexual-related topics, please allow me to invite you to participate in this study.

If you agree to participate, you will take part in a survey, taking approximately 20 minutes. All information collected from this survey is anonymous and will be treated as strictly confidential. Your name will not appear on this survey and the information you provided will be grouped with other participants’ information to protect your identity. Please click on the link below or scan the QR code to participate:

Your participation would be much appreciated and extremely important, as it would provide valuable insights to contribute to people’s sexual justice and effective sexual health education.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration!

Xue Yan

Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism Management

College of Applied Health Sciences University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

xueyan3@illinois.edu

[xuethms]

◍ magnesium theme.

Links: preview | install | features

Magnesium is a theme for the lovers of angled corners, blocky styles, and neatly constructed layouts; plus a flashy sidebar design.

Features: header theme, floaty elements, sidebar sections (description + featured + progress bars + updates + navigation), searchbar, 250/400/500px posts, styled search & tag pages

Credits: cappuccicons, feather icons, NPF images fix v3.0, NPF audio player, photosets.css, customaudio.js, Style-my-Tooltips, Truncate note counts

[pi-ying-xi]

Been reading The Marriage of the Di Daughter (because I still have The Double brainrot) and!

We were robbed!

(I see why they robbed us. Cdrama, specifically, codes bird owners as sinister in an uncool way, besides being Wrong; and Xiao Heng can be sinister but he's never uncool and cannot be wrong).

But in the book, when everyone is at the Shen Manor at a banquet given to celebrate the sister's marriage (never mind the details), Ji Heng pretends to crush to death the starling (fully black, remember this point) that Xue Fangfei saved way back, and which loudly and vocally recognises Fangfei in Jiang Li.

So he says there can be no witnesses, and she reluctantly agrees. They each go back to wherever.

Back at the Duke's residence, this happens:

He takes out the bird from his sleeve. It's alive. It flies off, sits on a sword in his room. (Lu Ji is present).

And it takes a look at him and loudly calls Ji Heng "Beauty".

🤣🤣

Lu Ji can't believe a birb is flirting with the Duke but instead of being crushed to death for real, Ji Heng not only says it has a sweet tongue, he also names it!

Lu is having a bad day on account of this.

Because Ji Heng names it Little Red.

Lu Ji is like, but it's a bird that's black?

Ji Heng is all, yeah but it's name is Like Red 😋

*

Later, he invites Jiang Li over, and says she can also meet Little Red.

Jiang Li has no idea what he's talking about but she's like, ok whatever you say, Su guogong.

*

What I'm saying is, WE COULD HAVE HAD THIS!

[mxtxfanatic]

Wei Wuxian would’ve never become Xue Yang, Jiang or no Jiang, and you wanna know why? Because Wei Wuxian had a moral code that he stuck to even as a street orphan, while Xue Yang did not and chose to kill innocent people as “repayment” for experiencing cruelty from one particular man in his childhood.

A Xue Yang found by the Jiang would experience one instance of mistreatment under Madam Yu and strive to destroy the entire Jiang and all affiliated in retaliation. A Wei Wuxian who stayed on the street would just be a good person under some other life circumstances (whether he would become a cultivator of another clan, a rogue, or just a businessperson in the civilian world).

[themaymoth]

Xue Yang, the magnus archives au

why pay for therapy when murder exists

*inserts homoerotic subtext*

*G A S P* they were cultmates

i needed the clothing reference now you get to enjoy smol xue yang

[SUPPLEMENTAL]

•Boo hoo i tricked my boyfriend into starting an evil cult and when he found out and broke up with me, i killed him so i could trap him in my creepy book but the ritual was interrupted and now he's dead for real, pooor meeee.

•He's so emo i'm sorry.

•Mary Keay coded, but serves the slaughter.

[twistedappletree]

there’s no man alive that i can’t deceive

so give me a man who’s crueler than me.

[difeisheng]

di feisheng is interesting because he's conventionally a close image of an ideal wuxia hero, as he holds to his own rigid honour over anyone else, prefers to face conflicts head-on with his blade instead of underhanded methods, puts his own martial arts and loyalty to brotherhood above romance, and utterly despises corruption or betrayal. and yet the story situates him as leader of a band of jianghu misfits who do not fight in ways xia are supposed to (poison, fucked up insects, etc.), and none of whom share the same moral codes, with schemes behind his back in jinyuanmeng going back over a decade.

and i wouldn't call di feisheng idealistic or stupid for that, or his fault for jinyuanmeng becoming what it did. he's aware of what the people he governs are capable of, just didn't know they would all team up against him. but the juxtaposition and contrast in goals by the present day is fascinating. given that i'm pretty sure people like xie-po and xue gong were loyal to di feisheng before jiao liqiao bought them over, i wonder how functional jinyuanmeng was under his more integrated leadership in the past, and how exactly he drew these kinds of people to him. did they once truly believe in di feisheng and share his ambition, or did they merely temporarily toss their lot in with him at the time because "an enemy of li xiangyi is my ally"?