#jiang yexue

[pechheneg]

[xmitchxx]

Xiaojiu mad😭

[baiwu-jinji]

Thoughts on Yuwu and Update

Long time no see dear friends! :) I just finished a big work project and, more importantly, I finished reading Yuwu :P I’m acutely aware that there’re TGCF asks in my inbox I still haven’t answered, I need to re-familiarise myself with the books and I promise to answer them in the coming weeks. For now I want to share some quick thoughts on Yuwu.

1. I’ve seen people pointing out Yuwu’s problems with structures and plot holes, then again these are never Meatbun’s strong suits. Meatbun has always been best at flooding her readers with intense emotions and making us sympathise with even the worst of her characters. I think the best-written character in Yuwu is Jiang Yexue. While Mo Xi and Gu Mang are so strong-willed and incorruptible as to be almost inhuman, Jing Yexue shows how terrible it is to be truly alone in the world and the despair of emotional isolation, and how the best of intentions will turn to bottomless hatred and bile if they’re never repaid with recognition and kindness. The tragedy of Jiang Yexue is that everything and everyone he cares about has only brought him more misery and isolation. If he hadn’t cared about his mother so much, he wouldn’t have to put up with her insults and denigrations that trampled over his good will and planted the seed of bitterness that skewed his perception of the world. He wouldn’t have to be pained by his mother’s abandonment, yet still kept her murderous plots against Yue Chenqing a secret – if he had been more unfeeling and exposed her crime and his role in stopping it, he would’ve won the favour of his family and improved his personal standing. If he hadn’t cared about Yue Chenqing so much, he wouldn’t have to silently suffer the deprivation of his own resources for the sake of benefiting Chenqing, and to save Chenqing at the expanse of his own agony due to poisoning by demonic energy. If he hadn’t loved Murong Chuyi so much, he wouldn’t have looked to him as the only source of solace and salvation and bared his feelings in a moment of vulnerability, and then be completely abandoned and left terribly, terribly alone when Chuyi rejected his feelings.

However I have reasons to believe that Jiang Yexue is the author’s personal fav, because she uses the most beautiful imageries to describe him – not even Mo Xi and Gu Mang get this treatment: his eyes are like gardenia flowers in clear pools, his smile is soft like dew and breeze over flowers, his skin is like fresh snow and immaculate jade. Even his name paints the most poetic imagery: 江夜雪, which means “snow falling on river in the night” –  there is purity in darkness, gentleness in the bitter cold.

2. About Mo Xi and Gu Mang. There’s something so tragic about choosing the weight of the entire world over the love of your own heart, and choosing to be true to yourself but failing the one you love the most. Mo Xi and Gu Mang are made for each other if only for their boundless energy, determination, endurance, and capacity for pain. Anyone more faint-hearted than Mo Xi wouldn’t have been able to hold on to Gu Mang. Still, I don’t think Meatbun provided a satisfactory answer as to why Mo Xi is so unwavering in his attachment to Gu Mang, despite all appearances of Gu Mang neglecting, abandoning, betraying, and mortally wounding him. Li Qingqian is given as a counterexample of persistence in love not ending well, so what gives Mo Xi the strength to persist beyond what normal people can bear? Meatbun seems to give an answer in this paragraph: “in this world, to love or not to love is something that can always be changed, but only the heart forever remains as itself. Mo Xi has never been one to make commitments lightly, the day he determined to confess his love to Gu Mang, what he gave Gu Mang wasn’t his love. It was his heart.” So what is the difference between heart and love? What does it mean that love changes but the heart doesn’t?... Despite the obligatory happy ending, Ximang has always had a tragic undertone; Mo Ran and Chu Wanning can only hope to be as star-crossed as Ximang. Mo Xi’s name, 熄 (xi), means to extinguish a light or fire, and this word 熄 is repeated used in allegorical expressions of how Mo Xi’s hope for Gu Mang to recover or return his feelings is extinguished. Mo Xi’s own name is a testament to the hopeless love between Ximang.

3. I think the stories of almost every major character in Yuwu points to one line Mo Xi said to the emperor – 人贵有情, which means “emotions/feelings/attachments are that most precious human thing”. It doesn’t mean that feelings will always lead characters to make the right decisions or make them better people, but that feelings are the most unignorable and persistent drive behind the characters’ actions – even when you’ve lost everything and discarded your humanity, your feelings for those you love will still be there, shaping your destiny, tormenting your heart, making you care. The Three Gentlemen of Chonghua are defined by the Buddhist virtue of self-control, but eventually we see the love or hate that drives them, and their virtuous self-restraint is just a façade.

4. It is very apropos to Chinese history (and modernity) that the nation is ultimately destroyed not by an evil outsider, but by infighting and the ruler’s mistrust towards his own people and his ill-will to dominate.

5. When Meatbun wrote that Gu Mang was confused by the emperor’s carrot and stick strategy, Meatbun actually used the phrase “carrot and stick” in Chinese, which is amusing given that it’s an English expression used in ancient Chinese context. Talking about writing fantasy ancient China in the age of globalisation.

[astrolabenoir]

wip

[shinia]

YUWU VOLUME 6 COVER REVEAL OMG ???

The flowers ???? Murong Chuyi, Jiang Yexue and Yue Chenqing ? THE BOAT ??? DO YOU WANT TO MAKE ME CRY ?

This looks ethereal wtf

[talk-danmei-to-me]

Meatbun’s Holy Trinity of Evil:

[zazhah-art]

[Yuwu 2022 - 2023]

[amanitavirosalt]

I'm still so sad that Jiang Yexue was such a terrible person

Like Murong Chuyi deserved the world. He was just such a great guy. And his entire life got fucked over cuz Jiang Yexue is a weirdo. I miss him

[web-novel-polls]

WN Criminal Lower Bracket

Qi Rong from Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF)

Submission: I mean... He dragged a literal child through the city on the back of a carriage. And he kills humans and eats them. He's pathetic. He's basically a cartoon villain, it's pitiful and that's why I love him

Wiki Link

Jiang Yexue from Remnants of Filth / Yuwu

Submission: Incest, kidnapping, mass murder, use of the Zhenlong Chess Formation, curse casting, etc.

Wiki Link

[Please be kind and respectful in the notes. Anti-Propaganda is NOT allowed.]

[potatosaresweet]

ive already read yuwu online and am rereading as the physical copies get released and fuck. im not ready for the plotpoints vol 5 is gonna cover. like i was sobbing last time and now???having all the context???oh its gonna be so much worse isnt it

[bellaroles]

I can't grasp the character that is Jiang Yexue. Will there possibly be at least one scene that show us what he's thinking? The work of his mind and emotion. He's a very interesting side character but I feel I don't know him well enough.

[izartn]

Explicit about sex in Yuwu and Meatbun horniness.

Also Meatbun is unhinged for saying that sometimes Gu Mang would come as he was getting fucked by Mo Xi, by being choked by Murong Lian slave collar, and then had to present himself to Murong Lian as a servant still with come dripping because he didn't have time to wash himself.

That's. Completely uncalled for when there's nothing else going on between them. They're half-brothers???! Meatbun I'm not complaining, that was terrible and very hot at the same time, but godamn. That paragraph hit me on the face with a WHAT.

They end up the series in good terms living together at the academy, as family, what the fuck was that XD

Did Murong Lian really not realise Gu Mang just had sex before going to see him?... Nah he totally knew they were together a some point, the way he knows Mo Xi doesn't really hate Gu Mang since the start of the book and is set on provoking him (to get him custody of GM in purpose perhaps?) shows that so clearly. So the only conclusion is that he was fucking with Gu Mang head on purpose.

I sure hope it wasn't but Murong Lian has always been that bit terrible sooo.

I know it will never come up in conversation in canon but if Gu Mang discovered he had a choking kink because of that I'll die cry-laughing. Poor Gu Mang. Oh Meatbun never change.

[xmitchxx]

Jiang Yexue: Taxian-jun + Chu Wanning’s hobbies

Happy birthday yexue 05.10

[lansplaining]

I see a lot of posts comparing Mu Qing from TGCF to Jiang Cheng since they are both protagonists' prickly former best friend with "complicated" reputations, but I think he is also very similar to Jin Guangyao for being a talented person born into a lower class who is never forgiven for having some ambition and pragmatism. Do you also see themes associated with JC and JGY in Mu Qing?

yes yes yes yes!!!

when I was initially re-reading TGCF, I was like well clearly Mu Qing is a JGY re-write, but now that I'm also re-reading MDZS, I think that Mu Qing is re-hashing separate but related elements of both characters.

I think you've got the JGY part down exactly right: he's the mirror JGY, the one who can't cultivate a polite and appealing exterior and who is simultaneously more disdained because he has ambition with no basis (he isn't the illegitimate son of gentry) and less of a threat (because he doesn't secretly have a point about what he deserves). I don't think JGY could ever have gotten where he did if he acted like Mu Qing does, but that's also because his social milieu is way more complicated, and he doesn't have a Xie Lian who can just crash through it and do whatever he wants. Though now that I say that-- like JGY, Mu Qing bears the consequences of someone else's attempted act of generosity, and exposes the limits of one powerful guy's will to include/elevate someone, just like Meng Yao does when he's Nie Mingjue's deputy.

The resonance with Jiang Cheng that really interests me is less his prickly personality and more the narrative/structural traits I've been obsessing over recently, which is to say the way that they are both completely misunderstood not only by the people around them, but as a consequence are extremely misleadingly presented by the narrative itself. Xie Lian understands Mu Qing much better than he lets on, I think, but much like Wei Wuxian post-resurrection, he has reasons to assume the worst of Mu Qing's intentions during the events of canon in a way that he didn't in the past, and that means we get a deliberately warped view of who he is and what he's trying to do, just like with Jiang Cheng. MXTX actually resolves this tension in TGCF, though, and spells out the misunderstandings and lets Mu Qing show his true colors in a way nobody can misunderstand.

[yiifu]

gu mang seeing the plaque in jiang yexue's home covered with dust: that's kinda sus

me, knowing about xueyi: that's VERY sus

[shinia]

YUWU/REMNANT OF FILTH SPOILERS (INCLUDING THE END)

Very funny to me than the ‘three gentlemen’ ended up being assholes and antagonists (except Chen Tang), and the ‘three poisons’ ended up being good people (Murong Chuyi & Jiang Fuli being influenced in some way by black magic, Murong Lian redeeming himself). Special mention for the poor guy who’s both a poison and a gentlemen 💀

I feel like it really shows how the perception of people and the reality is so different, especially in a series like yuwu who deals with social classes and betrayal a lot