Xue Yang for the ask meme
thank you for playing hehe >:3
How I feel about this character
knifecat personified. evil murdery boi who i want to pat on the head.
no but really, at the end of the day he's a metaphor for much bigger, systemic problems right! like when we find out why his fingers are broken and what happened to him as a kid that made him go off the rails (spoilers: rich assholes), it's like... okay that doesn't excuse anything, but i'm always fascinated by characters like him.
also fascinated bcs i read this meta about him that was talking about how he feels everything at 100%, both love and hate and everything else, and man!!! i love that in a character. he loves so much it's destructive. he feels so much he'll committ mass murder over and over again. that drives me insane lads.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
no one. genuinely, no one. he's so fucked up y'all.
My non-romantic OTP for this character
him and a-qing have an incredibly wonderful messed up "handshake meme but it says 'lying to xiao xingchen so he'll keep loving us'" dynamic. they are so similar and i wish that would be explored more often, both in canon and by fans, because like what the fuck.
My unpopular opinion about this character
idk if this is unpopular but like... i feel like a lot of people forget/ignore/don't acknowledge just how fucked up the whole yi city family is. i always refer to it as "nonconsensual found family" and that's what it is!! we've got two people who see xiao xingchen and how kind he is and are like yk what i will keep lying to this man so he keeps loving me and like... what the fuck mksdjfhgskjdfgh i get why people love it and i love it too, it's such a fucked up dynamic and i'm obsessed, but.
but. i know that people like. write smut and romantic fics for him and xiao xingchen set during the time where xiao xingchen thinks he's someone else and is blind so he can't know that the guy he's making out with or w/e is xue yang, the man he has vowed to kill, the man he hates. besties that's sexual assault!!!!!!
so yeah unpopular opinion: that's really fucked up and gross actually (and i get that's the point, that dynamic is supposed to be fucked up, but like besties then don't romanticize or sexualize it pleaseeeee)
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
addressing! the! systemic! issues! that! led! to! him! becoming! who! he! is! (an extremely fucked up man)