Wei Wuxian and Orientation

[x_los]

This is going to be a lit crit conversation about orientation. If this topic is very loaded for you or you're very personally invested in a given reading, you might want to skip this one. 

Why does almost all fic that mentions sexuality qua orientation read Wei Wuxian as bi? Is it just a ‘get the full queer spectrum in the modern AU’ affair?* Authorial extensions of empathy? To me, ‘gay’ seems more likely as a reading for the character. I feel like if Wei Wuxian had a fully developed sense of normative attraction in a comp-het environment (which CQL and MDZS seem to be, even if queer marriages are relatively common), he wouldn’t simultaneously be in such weird denial about what he was feeling for and doing with Lan Wangji. To me, the nature and degree of his drive and confusion on the subject aren’t very compatible with an entirely discrete, psychologically reconciled heterosexual system of attraction. Wei Wuxian is never very comfortable with his own desires, or with envisioning futurity (and per MDZS, hasn’t had sexual experience pre Phoenix Mountain). I suppose he could be fairly divorced from any relationship with his sexuality outside of the realisations canon guides him through, but nonetheless have ‘bi potential’. 

 

I think a lot of people are reading the fact that Wei Wuxian ‘flirts with women’, i.e. is conversationally charming, as a sure-fire indication of sexual attraction to the women he speaks to. This, to me, indicates those people have forgotten their last several conversations with gay men of a certain age. More generally, people flirt for a lot of reasons: validation, for fun, to disarm people, to ease tension and to build friendships. As a delivery girl, when I needed money I wore a very low-cut top because I wanted tips. This was not an act of attraction or any form of evident interest on my part. We all move through a society comprised of people by asking for their good will; we are all of us dependent on the kindness of strangers. Though their core Freudian mechanisms might be predicated on sexual logics, amae and sa jiao are not always sexual. Wei Wuxian has command of a lot of verbal and behavioural registers and moves through them with calculation, as benefits him. He plays with formality and class to similar ends. 

 

More generally, ‘to flirt is to fuck’ is not quite how ‘charm’ as a tool plays out in the world. It’s more complicated than that. Charm is a system people without power, or who perceive themselves as being without it, can use to ask for what they need but can’t claim by entitlement or take. Charm turns begging into seduction. It is a method of winning what you want which Wei Wuxian, a former street child who then lands in a somewhat-insecure home in his new sect, would have learned to survive, and then kept up to negotiate the threat level he presents to the world. He must perform sufficient bravado macho-posturing to ensure he has a place, is not able to be walked over and represents the interests of his masters, but must cut this with strategic, constant emotional labour to support Jiang Wanyin’s power and soothe hostilities. Wei Wuxian regularly adjusts the burner knob to keep the gas level right, the flame under control and the simmer constant.

 

I don’t have anything against a Bi Wei Wuxian reading. I’d certainly see attraction as possible and compelling between a male Wei Wuxian and female Lan Wangji, because core elements of their personalities would still interact in compelling ways. But while CQL eases up enormously on this theme, I think, almost as much as Scum Villain, MDZS is supposed to be about sexual repression, specifically related to queerness (and it’s weird to see such full-bore ‘and Lan Wangji is absolutely gay’ from the same people bringing ‘and Wei Wuxian must of course be bi’: as far as I know, Lan Wangji is Wei Wuxian sexual). It’s particularly interesting because in the 90s, Western mlm Fandom was churning out so many stories About Gayness. Blake’s 7 and Star Trek zinefic examples come readily to mind. It sort of feels like danmei is in that work space now, while also having very familiar conversations about consent (via fictional praxis, more than as surface-level content). 

 

* Though the same circle of fics is often, though not always, keen to read him as A Bottom rather than engaging with versatility. While you can be a Pure Bottom man in an m/f relationship, it’s not socially expected. But perhaps, actually, I’m conflating two quite big, sometimes overlapping but not connected fic trends: the No Vers Curse and Baby Bi Bi Bi.

Comments

[momijizukamori]

I suspect with LWJ, it's a combo of wanting gay rep and the fact that because he only shows interest in a man, the label fits, even if I agree that he's more just WWX-sexual (and that a sample size of 1 is not a very good sample, lol).

I haven't read the novel yet (though I am aware, generally, of the points of difference), and I am coming at this thinking from the POV of having done a bit of research and reading on homosexuality in pre-modern east Asia (more focused on Japan, but many of the sources cover both). In a historical context (for the large period of history wuxia/xianxia draws from), yeah, it'd be comp het in the sense that while nobody really cared if you had a male lover, you would still be expected to marry and have children and continue the family, and that even in modern east Asia, a lot of the sentiments against homosexuality have elements of 'you aren't doing your filial duty'/'you are being different/standing out' as opposed to the stronger sentiment in the west of 'there is something inherently immoral about homosexuality' (not that the ideas are mutually exclusive, of course, just shifted in importance).

So less concerns about liking men, and more concerns about throwing away what's expected of him by society - and WWX definitely has a complicated relationship with societal expectations of him.

(and honestly, this is part of why I actually like a/b/o - more options for playing around with those societal expectations and fulfillment of them)

[x_los]

Yeah, it's the Sample Size of One where I'm like... I can conclude nothing more than that he likes Wei Wuxian, so idk why EVERY modern au goes the Absolutely Gay route, but whatevs.

And whether or not gay marriages like the LWJ/WWX one are things that happen in the MDZS universe (and barring the unusual incestuous circumstances), the aspersions cast on Mo Xuanyu defining him as unreliable, not to be trusted, etc. are super based on his not being able to control himself sexually, not playing his primary role as an upright man. So clearly there's some ambient hostility in the fantasy world. And Wei Wuxian's book-canon resistance to self-defining as queer, and JWY's comments, are also like, evidence of at least some perhaps modern-retconned forms of hostility.

[momijizukamori]

Honestly I feel like demisexual/grey-A is a better fit for LWJ, label-wise, but fandom's current relationship with ace identities is... not great........

And yeah, not surprised some modern sentiments crept in there. Interestingly TGCF doesn't really have that - while Xie Lian has some confusion about his feelings, they read way more as a combo of his absolutely garbage self-esteem and confusion around romantic/sexual attraction at all (which, 800 years of a cultivation path requiring celibacy, not surprising lol)

[libitina]

Demisexual?

[ehyde]

This is maybe only a little bit related, but I'm also seeing, in trans headcanons/aus, they're almost always written as the character has known they were trans since they were a child. Which is of course a real and common experience but it's not the only experience, and I would assume it would be somewhat less common of an experience in canon-era MDZS.

In a lot of cases I think writers are assuming a modern, Western level of available resources to figure out sexuality/gender, and if that's the case, "why doesn't he know he likes men?" is a question that needs an answer rather than just, a kind of normal position to be in, and "he likes women, as society expects of him, so he never needed to delve further into it" answers it.

[x_los]

Yeah, I wonder if that's--people who came to such an accommodation with themselves later in life wanting and giving their characters an 'always knew' experience, in hopes of a gender-affirming youth?

[momijizukamori]

Honestly I think this is a larger trend beyond just fanfic - I've definitely seen it in conversations about more mainstream media. I think it's one of those things that started because it was a very strong narrative to push back against transphobic sentiments like 'you're just confused', but it's ended up dominating so much that it's overridden a lot of the more nuanced/complicated experiences people have.

[x_los]

see also, Born This Way genetic gayness, the PR campaign.

[momijizukamori]

Yuuuuuup. And I get that simple, concrete narratives like that are great for PR purposes, but when queer people are giving other queer people flack for not having the 'right' queer experience, it is time for a new narrative.

(and don't get me started on the 'queer is a slur' BS, I will breathe actual fire)

[solo]

I think the bi reading in CQL is based on Jiang Wanyin's speculation that as Wei Wuxian goes back to Caiyi for their invitations, he might be distracted by having an affair with some 'Mianmian or Guandao', and Jiang Yanli only pointing out that he wouldn't do that when something important is at stake, hence implying that otherwise this would be entirely imaginable.

I personally don't read him as very sexual at all, until he and Lan Zhan get it together. But IDEK what that read is based on, it's jsut some kind of gut feeling. Maybe his apparently inability to realize just what he might want from Lan Zhan. IDK.

The Lan Zhan is gay reading is strong with me because of how he reacts to the gay porn Wei Wuxian smuggled into his book. To me, that looks not like disgust but like terror -- terror of the 'how on earth did he know' kind.

[x_los]

Yeah, honestly I feel like WWX flirts and talks big but if any girl said 'yeah, all right, let's do something about all the shit you talk' he'd be fairly at sea.

[solo]

He'd be like, what do you mean? I was just passing the time. Good times had by all y/y?

[kiezh]

I tend to read both of them as demi or grey-ace, with Lan Wangji having both a single-target sexuality and a much higher sex drive than Wei Wuxian. This impression comes partly from the novel, which I read first, and the contrast between their fantasies - WWX's "wouldn't it be nice to live together in a cottage in harmonious domesticity" vs. LWJ going from 0 to "I want to ravish him in the library" as a teenager. I'm generally open to fic authors' interpretations, though it's hard to really sell me on either of them being into casual sex with no emotional connection.

I'm not sure where the perception of LWJ as Definitely Gay comes from, except maybe people mapping his experiences with the restrictions of Cloud Recesses to "repressed gay from a homophobic religious upbringing" tropes? That parallel does seem to show up a lot in Modern AUs, e.g. Lan Qiren trying to get LWJ to date/marry women and objecting to WWX on gender grounds, as opposed to WWX-specific grounds.

I do think of WWX as bi/queer, and never really questioned that fanon, even though I don't think he's actually sexually attracted to almost anyone he flirts with (I agree that that's a performative social game). I think the reason I instinctively resist gay WWX (and would also resist straight WWX, even if paired with f!LWJ) is that WWX is All About Complicating Binaries, thematically, and it feels wrong for him to be firmly on one side of one. He is and isn't gentry, he is and isn't respectable, he's both a child of economic privilege and a starving street kid, he's both a hero and a villain and the public keeps changing their minds on the matter, he blurs and complicates the line between life and death... it goes on and on. Wei Wuxian Rejects Your Binary Categories.

I also kind of automatically think of him as some variety of genderqueer, probably for similar reasons? Like, he's wearing a male role and doesn't seem to have a problem with that, but I don't think he identifies with it particularly. Possibly this is projection on my part, as a queer and genderqueer person who also does not do well with binary identity categories!

I completely agree with your paragraph about WWX's charm being social engineering based on a deep awareness of his security and safety depending on how people see him and whether or not they like him. I think WWX has been pretty dissociated from his own desires for most of his life, and only allows himself to actively feel things he subconsciously thinks are "acceptable" - so I see his inability to recognize his desire for LWJ in the novel (in CQL I think he's more aware, just thinks it's impossible) as trauma-based repression. It's not just that it's queer desire, it's that it's desire for something for himself, something selfish and not focused on his service to the Jiangs and his debt to them. I don't think WWX (in either show or novel) is willing to allow himself to think about a future for *himself*.

One of the things that indicates security and trust and allows for possible attraction, to me, is when WWX stops carefully managing someone's response to him - which is why, though I ship him ardently with LWJ as an OTP, I can imagine Wen Qing/Wei Wuxian and find it plausible. (It's D/s and she tops the hell out of him, regardless of who penetrates what. I think they both get a kick out of her threatening him with the needles, okay.)

(Also this is why I am not a big believer in WWX and JC reconciliation, or a supporter of their earlier relationship. BOTH OF THEM think it is WWX's job to manage, soothe, and absorb JC's negative emotions, and that holds true right to the end of the story. There is never a single moment when WWX is safe enough with JC to be emotionally honest or put his own feelings first, and never a moment when JC says "my feelings are not your job and you should not be punished for the fact that I feel bad" - in fact he says the opposite, over and over again.)

[x_los]

The complicating binaries thing is an interesting reading. Also, in Western Queer media about 30 years ago (Penda's Fen, for example), though you don't see it anymore, there was an artistic contention that to be queer was itself a bigender state: like the model of sexuality was very entwined with gender ambiguity, in a holdover Uranian kind of way. So I wonder whether, in Chinese conversations, there's a commensurate sense of 'slippage' carried just by homosexuality itself? I'd really like to read more in-depth stuff about WWX and sa jiao and gender. It's definitely something he plays with or consciously presents via language, as he plays with/uses class.

Yeah I strongly agree that the Problem of LWJ for WWX isn't purely gender, it's that it's a want that as you say doesn't SEAMLESSLY integrate with Jiang's Interests. And I do think he and Wen Qing are close in a way he can be with few other people, in part because they're Difficult people rendered malleable by circumstances, and part of their very difficulty is itself a product of their resistance to outright self-annihilating protective compliance, their urges to kick against it.

I also would like to read some good meta I trust on like, WWX and JWY's shared idea of the responsibilities owed siblings? Because I do feel like WWX being 'the older brother' is tapping into a whole suite of fully Naturalised expectations I just don't have complete access to.

[stultiloquentia]

In CQL, I think of him as a late-blooming bisexual nerdromantic. What you said about his gas burner knob certainly applies to his practical experience, though. If he were of lower rank, he'd be off behind the boathouse, making out with whomever was pretty and willing, and learning all kinds of fun things about himself, but as Jiang's #1 disciple, he needs to be careful not to leave himself open to scandal or manipulation. He's verbally charming and cheeky, but physically an entire gentleman.

When he tells Jiang Yanli he doesn't intend to marry, I don't hear, "I couldn't do well by a woman," though there's absolutely nothing contraindicating that reading and YMMV. But what I hear is, "I don't want to divide my attention or loyalty between my family and my sect duties," (yup! ironic how that one works out!). More subconsciously but also more crucially, I think part of him knows he would do very badly with a partner who wasn't his equal if not his superior, and so far, he's met exactly one of those, and he is not for Wei Wuxian (ironic how that works out also!).

He's a humongous, yearning romantic, but he yearns for a zhiji, not a spouse. When he meets LWJ, he's so darned excited, he calls him zhiji within, like, ten minutes, even though he is babie who has no clue what having a true zhiji really means. And if you gave him a choice between a lovely spouse who could give him a fantastic sex life, and a celibate life with someone who understood and matched him intellectually, he'd pick the second without blinking.

I also think he spends his youth running around discipling and playing games and inventing things and not thinking about it very hard, certainly not the way modern people navel-gaze about labels, and then the war happens and his sex drive gets wholly obliterated, and then when he wakes up the only person he'll ever need is LOOMING RIGHT THERE.

So yeah, I think bi, in theory. I think he appeals to fandom in general as a bi character because of the way he both sparks with and has intimate friendships with men and women on screen, but I also wonder if others besides me label him that way because they see someone for whom gender is a distant second to connection and belonging.

[x_los]

Yeah and I wonder like--DO cultivators care about a girl's reputation, IS there a risk of pregnancy, because WWX is sometimes careless *with himself*, but rarely so with others. It's hard to imagine him getting a girl pregnant and not caring a lot about what happens to her.

Yeah I think what he's saying in re marriage is absolutely 'especially right now, my focus and loyalty must be entirely with Jiang'. Like it could have been different if he'd grown up in a very different political climate, and come to maturity with his parental-figures still alive and in charge, easing the burden on JWY.

As much as I'd agree re his zhiji obsession, I've wondered, actually:

"Me: A lot of local kids must be just NUTS about wwx, Maybe a good move from JC would have been to clinch a betrothal with some small sect leader’s daughter who really crushed on him, bc he would have responded to that with some flattery and been kind about it, and then that would have hooked wwx more effectively into the structure of the place 
Phnelt: yep i have to think the original plan was basically what jgy did, marry someone already beholden to the sect to tie them closer and keep wwx enmeshed 
Me: and he might not even have noticed it wasn't what he wanted, just 'well she's not attractive like lwj, but what an unreasonable standard to hold anyone to!' 'there will be a lot of angry maidens and disappointed young gentlemen, if that's the bar a wife must reach!' 
Phnelt: and he'd never leave lotus pier so it's nice, also, that the person is marrying doesn't have to leave their home. i mean imagining asking someone else to do that 
Me: lwj pressing him like '...do you love her?' and wwx like well I've not known her long at all! she seems very nice! I'll try to be a good husband to her, of course-- and taking it wrong when lwj is increasingly angry about it"

(I will say I'm not necessarily like, COMMITTED! to gender-first models of attraction for the character or personally, any more than the meta on sect power structures indicates a deep interest in how the Nie manage direct reports. I don't have a firm agenda or preference here, per se.)

[douqi]

It had occurred to me to wonder why no one tried to set up Wei Wuxian with Jiang Yanli, especially after her match with Jin Zixuan initially fell through. Obviously the two of them would probably have objected because they clearly don't see each other as romantic prospects, but considered as an arrangement, there would be advantages. You tie Wei Wuxian as tightly as possible to the sect, Yanli doesn't have to leave home (if anyone were caring about her welfare, that is. Also something I'm working through in one of my current WIPs: if you're a female cultivator/martial artist having to marry out of your home sect, that must have a serious negative impact on your own cultivation/training), and the two of them actually know, like and respect each other. The only disadvantage would be if you were keeping either or both of them free for external liaisons. I think when CQL first aired in China, there were viewers who initially thought Jiang Yanli was Wei Wuxian's designated love interest, sect-sibling romances being extremely common. There's wuxia precedent: at the start of Jin Yong's The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, the brilliant, very Wei Wuxian-like protagonist is all-but-engaged to his sect-sister, who is the sect leader's only daughter.

[x_los]

Though in terms of the Clan vs Sect thing that sets CQL/MDZS apart (like, the Jiang kids and WWX are 'siblings' in a way for ex SVSSS's two generations of martial siblings absolutely are not), I think a *lot* of big developments in CQL hinge on the 'siblings, not sect siblings' thing (imo, JWY looks a lot worse if what he's mad about is the betrayal of a vassal he expected to eternally serve him, rather than his brother's only partly-understood, growing distance from him (and why WAS he going to sacrifice himself for his vassal?); Yanli's sacrifice feels a little less emotionally immediate if they're sect-siblings; and Madam Yu's insistence that WWX is not part of the family/others' insistence he's a kind of servant goes from being a live source of resentment affecting character interactions to simply an unkind way of putting the truth). A lot of people very happy to bat about some Chengxian would REALLY shirk at the suggestion of Yanli/WWX on incest grounds, though it's logically the same degree of relation (in a way, I feel like denying their 'sibling-siblings' relationship puts us in Madam Jin's position, and we're explicitly told in that scene that's not the nature of the relationship?). I wonder also if CQL, bc they always knew it was going to broader international syndication, pushes 'siblings' even more? Bc it's not something that parses outside Asia--is it intelligible in all its other Asian syndication contexts?

But also if we're reading them as PURELY sect siblings, I bet Madam Yu nixed the fuck out of it (even if permitting that would really douse any 'actually Fengmian's kid' rumours).

[douqi]

mmm I can see that reading but honestly I see 'sibling sibling' as an emotional variant of the range of relationships that are enabled by the 'sect-sibling' framework. Like I don't necessarily see 'sect sibling' as an inherently more distant relationship than 'sibling sibling', though as you say the clan setup makes this more complicated. When it comes to stuff like this, I always feel like I'm parsing relationships differently from how Western fandom reads them.

[x_los]

I guess like--if sect sibling can mean sibling sibling, or friend, or DISTANT colleague, that's all fine. But if you're going to be raised and treated very *like* a sibling-sibling, under the umbrella of that term/relationship, then also having a romantic relationship--that would be like, functionally an incest ship, for me? I feel like these conversations on social media go straight to 'do sect siblings exist' and it's like--well of course, but what you MEAN when you say that is. Not at all necessarily the same thing? It might be easier in a BIG clan like Lan or Jin, where I don't think Lan Wangji was sharing a bedroom as a child and parental figures (a la JWY and WWX) with every other Lan disciple his age. I know this also comes up in some Six Classics books, where you're raised with Love Interest Cousin all under one roof. (Like I'm never going to SAY anything to anyone choosing to do it, I'm not a tumblr child, it's not my business and I don't care.)

Like SVSSS isn't an incest ship and is VERY careful to circumnavigate it while maintaining that tension--but it is for sure invested in that tension, that's not *just* a Master/Disciple thing, like, a lot of the frisson is absolutely the age gap, the hard parallels between the love interest and the protagonist's mother, and at some point he says 'I don't need a father, I have you!' And there's a lot of--'I raised you'. Like the tension is always narratively held in check, but that is REALLY Freudtacular, &I don't think we could reasonably deny that's a deliberately-negotiated site of eroticism. If Mianmian were to make a terrible decision and sleep with Jin Guangshan, or if Su She were to sleep with LWJ or Lan Qiren (I'm really sorry to raise such prospects), that wouldn't feel weird on these grounds, because it's the term and relationship but not Luo 'Mommy Issues' Binghe living in your house, Making It Weird.

[douqi]

ngl I think there is a LOT to unpack in how familial/romantic relationships shade into each other in literature, and possibly real life. I am to this day glad that I don't have an older male cousin on the maternal side, because I don't think I could call him 'biao ge' with a straight face. To me, the nature of the sect-sibling relationship is up to definition by the individuals involved, but that definition may not necessarily be obvious to an outsider, who may impute other things.

[x_los]

...is biao ge the Aye Papi? It has been a true struggle as a Southern American who grew up using 'daddy' to watch the rise of, you know, DADDY-daddy.

[douqi]

The 'daddy' thing must be an extreme trial (my posh English-speaking cousins used to call their father 'daddy'. I wonder what they do now).

Biao ge, a formerly perfectly normal term of address for one's older male cousin on the maternal side, has now been corrupted so much by literary and screen romance heroines falling in love with their cousins that the thought of actually calling someone it is just very Do Not Want. Plain 'gege' is rapidly going the same way, for the same reasons. The post-plague family gathering is going to involve me constructing sentences so as to avoid addressing any older same-generation male relative directly.

[hiddenramen]

I tend to be a proponent of Wei Wuxian being bi and Lan Wangji being gay, and I suppose I'll explain why, just as a data point.

For Lan Wangji, I think his narrative hinges really heavily on the idea that he is a closeted gay man who is struggling with his sexuality and what it means about and for him as a person, and I think any sexual interest in women breaks his narrative fairly solidly. So, gay.

As for Wei Wuxian, I tend to read a lot of Wei Wuxian's flirtations with women in canon as indications of potential romantic or sexual interest, specifically because he mentions beautiful women, wives, and women being beautiful in conversations with friends / other men. That's not to say that I'm married to this reading religiously or insulted by anything else—you could easily make the argument for that being comphet, and in fact, in CQL, you could very easily make a case for Wei Wuxian being gay out of that scene where he tells Jiang Yanli that he doesn't want a wife.

And, to be fair, I also read Wei Wuxian's initial interactions with Wen Ning as flirtatious: I tend to read Wei Wuxian as the kind of person who'd be very flirtatious and potentially even somewhat hypersexual, which I recognize could be taken as a paracanonical reading, since in canon Wei Wuxian doesn't even kiss anyone until he's like, twenty. I tend to find the "you are the only person I have ever kissed or fucked or loved" thing in the story sort of weird for Wei Wuxian's character, in a way that specifically smacks to me of like, virgin purity discourse and part of the common BL trope of sex-shaming, so I tend to handwave it out of preference. Again, other people's mileage can vary.

[x_los]

Re sex in BL, I do wonder what the genre-fictional and larger RL conversations re bisexuality ARE atm? Like: is *anyone* in danmei 'bi', or do the tropes just not lean that way?

[hiddenramen]

As far as danmei goes, I've never read a danmei that had an openly bisexual character in it, but I'm not the most well-read in the genre, so that's not accounting for much.

In regards to real life, this is anecdotal and obviously colored by one person's experiences / opinions, but I've had some conversations around bisexuality with a Mainland Chinese friend of mine who's bisexual, and she's talked a lot about how bisexuality is stigmatized specifically in Chinese gay culture.

In her view, it's seen as particularly selfish to "disappoint" your family in that way when you have the option to be fulfilled by a heterosexual relationship, so it's seen as either 1) a stepping stone or cover for people who don't want to admit they're gay, and thus cowardly or less than, or 2) greedy and selfish (because you have the opportunity to do right by your family and be happy, but you're choosing queerness selfishly), and also somewhat hypersexed.

But she's also pointed out that, because of the culture around closeting in the Chinese gay community, a lot of people maintained front-facing heterosexual relationships alongside their gay ones. So in the end, it winds up being something fairly weird and complex. The aspect of queer culture that transcends all boundaries is that it's messy as hell 😂

[douqi]

This is really interesting! I've always wondered where the popular fandom reading of 'Wei Wuxian is bi' comes from. In the show, he reads very much -romantic to me, and not particularly -sexual (in any dimension). That could be a function of the broadcasting standards though. Am always amused by how Asian broadcasting standards have allowed me to read any number of drama characters as canonically asexual or demisexual.

[x_los]

Yeah I super see the point re broadcasting standards as both confining and enabling mechanisms.