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yiling · 4 years

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pass the time (Xue Yang & A-Qing kink meme fill)

squeaking this one in under the wire for the @mdzsnet Xue Yang birthday event. also kind of double-dipping because this is also a fill for an anon who wanted xy+aq friendship.

read on the ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458970

A-Qing hates when Xiao-daozhang and the stranger go out on night hunts. They always come back covered in blood and slime and who knows what else, the stranger is always smug and annoying, and daozhang is always very tired. Sometimes, like today, he’s so tired that he sleeps all the way through the next morning, and that’s worst of all.

Xiao Xingchen had explained to her once that a cultivator’s golden core is like a muscle, and that if you use it too much it can get overworked. Then the cultivator needs to rest for a long time to build their strength back, so their qi doesn’t get all tangled. A-Qing understands this, she does, and she thinks the daozhang should get as much sleep as she needs, but she can’t help but hate it when he gets like this.

If daozhang is asleep, that means she has to be alone with the stranger.

They’re sitting together in the dusty dimness of the coffin home, waiting on Xiao-daozhang to wake up. The stranger is sitting at the table, cleaning his nails with one of his many knives, and A-Qing is sitting on top of a coffin near the one the daozhang sleeps in. She is mostly occupied with watching the two cultivators, while making sure the awake one doesn’t know she’s watching at all: when he looks at daozhang, she keeps her eyes on him, and when he looks away, she watches Xiao Xingchen’s gently rising and falling chest. While engaged in this, she keeps up a steady commentary with her bamboo stick – tap, tap-tap-tap. She thinks of it as a warning to the stranger, like the scolding of a blackbird – I’m still here! Don’t try anything!

The stranger complains about anything and everything she does, so she’s mildly surprised at how long she’s able to keep this up before he groans. “Fucking cut that out. It’s obnoxious, and you’re going to wake the daozhang up.”

“If I wake him up, it’s your fault for wearing him out fighting fierce corpses and whatever,” A-Qing retorts. “He never sleeps this late except after night hunts, it’s mid-morning already!”

“How do you know what time it is, Little Blind? You can’t see the sun,” the stranger says, laughing.

“Because I wake up the same time every day!” she replies indignantly. (This is a bald-faced lie, she can and will sleep til noon if she’s able, and she relishes it.) “Keep your creepy giggling down, you’re so noisy.”

“Ah, the shoe is on the other foot now,” he cackles. “You can complain about my laughing, but I can’t complain about you bobbing around your stupid little stick like a crazy old granny? That’s not very fair, what would daozhang say?”

“He should tell you to go throw yourself in the river,” A-Qing growls, clutching her staff protectively to her chest, “but he’s too nice, so I have to do it.”

“Pick better threats, if you’re gonna threaten,” the stranger says dismissively, flipping his knife over in his hand. “And keep your damn voice down.”

“Why do you care if he sleeps, anyway?” A-Qing snaps. “You’re a bastard and you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Because he’s supposed to do the laundry today and if he wakes up now he’ll be too tired later,” the stranger says glibly. “And I’m certainly not gonna do it for him, since I’m a bastard and all.”

“Well, I just think he should get to rest, is all,” A-Qing sniffs.

The stranger rolls his eyes, which is kind of funny since he thinks she can’t even see it. “It’s almost like we want the exact same thing.”

“Maybe,” A-Qing huffs.

There’s a moment of quiet.

“We could just go outside,” she suggests.

“Yeah, whatever.”

The stranger picks himself up, and A-Qing slides down off the coffin. He offers his arm to her with exaggerated graciousness, but she ignores him and picks her way outside on her own. She doesn’t step on his foot, since from the way he’s standing it would be too hard to make it look accidental, but she thinks about it very hard.

There’s a little open place with a fire pit out in front of their coffin home, where they sit in the evening and cook and tell stories. Neither daozhang nor the stranger are any good at stories, which puts a damper on things, but A-Qing considers it an acceptable price for a hot meal and some company. She’s paid worse.

The stranger hops up on one of the coffins they’ve dragged in to protect the fire pit from the wind, stretching out on his back like a sunning cat. She wishes she was strong enough to knock it and him over. Instead, she sits down with her back up against the coffin’s side, kicking her legs out.

The sunlight always seems weak and misty, here in Yi City, but a beam struggles through the fog to warm her face, and A-Qing is content enough with that. She reaches into a pocket she’s made with her sash, where she keeps important things like money and shiny rocks. Right now, there’s a hard candy in there, in its little twist of brown paper. Daozhang likes to give them candy in the morning, but he’d pressed this one into her hand last night, since he knew he’d sleep late. He’d smiled all soft like he was embarrassed, and she’d thrown her arms around his neck like that smile was something she could hold onto forever.

Now, she fishes out the candy and pops it into her mouth to savor. Sweet things taste better in the sunshine. The stranger must hear her sucking on it, because he bangs his foot on the top of the coffin like he’s annoyed; she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of jumping at it.

“Hey, you have candy down there, and you’re not even gonna share? Heartless little bitch.”

A-Qing would bet daozhang’s whole coin purse that he’s got candy too, and sure enough, when she listens she can hear him crunching on it. She raps her cane against the coffin in retaliation.

“I can hear you chewing on yours, asshole! You think I’m stupid or something?”

“I have a name now, you know,” the stranger says, voice all affected hurt. “You don’t have to call me by epithets.”

She knows he wants her to ask what an epithet is, so she doesn’t. Instead she sniffs. “Chengmei, you said. That’s too nice for someone like you, ‘asshole’ makes more sense.”

A couple nights ago, the stranger had apparently gotten tired of the daozhang calling him variants on “our guest”, and A-Qing calling him variants on “hey you”, and volunteered a name for himself.

(“Is it your actual name?” A-Qing had demanded.

The stranger had only smirked. “I dunno, Little Blind, what do you think?”)

A-Qing immediately disliked it. Daozhang didn’t seem to think it suited either, but in a way that made him laugh. Then he hadn’t been able to explain why because he was giggling so much – something about a proverb. Chengmei sounds flowery to A-Qing, two whole characters like the courtesy names rich people have. Xiao-daozhang’s first name is like that, but she likes it for him. Xingchen is pretty and noble-sounding, and while the daozhang is certainly not rich (his pocket was almost empty when she picked it) he’s good and kind like a hero in a story. He deserves a nice name. Chengmei-the-stranger is not good or kind or noble. He’s like A-Qing, and people like them don’t get courtesy names.

She glances cautiously up at him, careful to not meet his eyes. Apparently unimpressed by her insults, he’s loudly ignoring her and rebraiding a section of his hair. A-Qing is pretty sure the stranger is poor, or at least he had been. When they found him in a ditch, he was wearing fine, many-layered cultivator’s robes, and he had a big silver guan he’s since refused to sell. But he doesn’t act like the wealthy, thoughtless people that A-Qing has fleeced on city streets, and he doesn’t act like the daozhang either. He knows how to swear and he knows how to steal.

A-Qing keeps a wary eye on him. “Why Chengmei, anyway?”

He glances at her sidelong; she turns her head a little so it doesn’t look like she was looking at him. “Why Qing?”

“That’s just what I’ve been called, as long as I remember.” She gestures with her staff. “Maybe because of this.” It’s a qing that means bamboo, or so she was told once. A-Qing can’t read.

“An old friend of mine picked Chengmei out for me,” the stranger says. A-Qing’s brain trips a little over the idea of him having friends, but he continues. “So that I could sound respectable, you know.”

“I knew it!” A-Qing yells, jumping to her feet. “I knew it was too fancy to be your real name!”

The stranger actually laughs at that. “Yeah, I don’t really like it either. I don’t like flowery cultivator names much. The big sects get all jumped up on politeness and formality, like they think they’re so much better just cause they happen to have golden cores and money. Don’t even get me started on titles.” He turns his head and spits in the dirt.

A-Qing folds her arms and looks at him, bamboo tucked in the crook of her elbow. The daozhang hasn’t been especially positive about the sects either, when she’s asked him for stories, but the stranger – Chengmei – almost sounds insulted by them. Like it makes him angry that they have so much he doesn’t. A-Qing has felt that. She felt it on the day she met Xiao-daozhang, sneaking around people in fine clothes with fat purses.

She re-crosses her arms, irritated at this similarity. “What’s this about titles?”

Chengmei has folded his hands behind his head and shut his eyes, but he slits one back open to look at her. “Cultivators like to call each other stupid things so they can sound more impressive, like Red Blade Master or what the fuck ever. Didn’t you know? They used to call our daozhang ‘the bright moon and gentle breeze.’” He snorts. “Gentle, sure, like the idiot he is, but anyone who calls him ‘bright’ has never seen him try to haggle.”

A-Qing taps her stick anxiously on the ground. She really wants to disagree with him and defend the daozhang, but the problem is that Chengmei is not…wrong. Xiao-daozhang sometimes doesn’t seem to know how the world works. He gave her his purse when she stole from him, reasoning that she needed it more than he did. He’s unfailingly polite and kind, and when people take advantage of him for it, he doesn’t seem stop doing it. Sometimes he makes no sense to her; sometimes he makes her angry. How is it fair, that he can do these things without being afraid of the consequences? How is it fair, that he can be ignorant enough to be good?

“Well, neither of us call him that, so it doesn’t matter,” she decides, and walks around the other side of the coffin, hitching herself up on it to sit. “How come you don’t have a fancy title, then? You’re a cultivator too.”

“None of them like me,” Chengmei says, and sounds delighted by it. He stretches out his wiry limbs, nudging her with his shin. “They don’t like my attitude, they don’t like that I can outsmart them, and they especially don’t like that I got so far without a clan name or a famous teacher like our daozhang.”

He suddenly sits up to look at her, eyes dark and keen. “People don’t like it when you come up from the bottom, Qingqing. When you’ve had nothing all your life and then get strong enough to take what you want? People hate that.”

The seriousness in his voice makes A-Qing shiver. It’s not a threat, it’s almost earnest. For once he’s not trying to scare her. But she’s scared anyway, because she understands.

She’s known for a long time that she and the stranger are the same kind of person. He never talks about his past with any clarity, aside from the story of the boy who wanted sweets. But since then, he’s spoken offhand about beatings and hunger and cold and wandering, all things A-Qing knows in her bones. Daozhang always seems sad about it, like he would fix it all himself if he could, but A-Qing just feels angry. Sometimes no one is there to help. Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to fight for it.

She ignores the itch under her skin, the part that sees herself in him. Instead, she drums her heels on the coffin and stretches. “To take what you want? What’s that even mean? All you care about is candy.”

Chengmei has gone back to sprawling lazily on the coffin lid. He laughs. “I care about plenty of things, I just care about candy the most. And daozhang brings me sweets whenever I want now, so I don’t worry about taking them.”

“You’re spoiled!” A-Qing says. “You just want to mooch off daozhang and eat candy and be annoying, like a spoiled little sister. We should call you Meimei instead of Chengmei!”

A-Qing regrets it as soon as it leaves her mouth. She immediately starts wondering which knife the stranger is going to kill her with and how long it’ll take daozhang to find the body, so when Chengmei laughs, she startles so badly she almost slides off the coffin.

“Gotta admit, spoiled is a new one. Whatever, you’re even younger and more annoying, so you should be Meimei.”

A-Qing stares at him with open shock, entirely forgetting her rule of not looking at him directly. He blinks back.

“What’s your problem?”

“I thought you’d get mad at me for calling you a girl,” A-Qing mumbles, dropping her eyes.

“Why would I do that?” He seems genuinely confused.

“Men get mad about it sometimes, I don’t know!” She gestures vaguely with her stick, frustrated. “People always act like a girl is a bad thing to be, like you’re stupider or weaker. They treat you worse.”

“Well whenever people say that shit it’s cause they’re morons,” Chengmei says. “Women are just as vicious as men when it comes down to it.”

A-Qing tilts her head at him. This is a novel perspective. “Really?”

“Hell yeah. Listen, if some pig ever treats you bad for being a girl, chop his cock off and stuff it down his throat. Let’s hear him make fun of you then.”

A-Qing would like to believe she’s worldly enough that nothing shocks her, but her reply still comes out in an incredulous squeak. “I can’t do that!”

“Nah, I guess you can’t. You’re too soft, daozhang’s been a bad influence on you” He looks at her thoughtfully. “Tell you what. If you’re good and don’t annoy me too much, I’ll tell you stories about female cultivators I knew. Some of those bitches could fight.”

A-Qing finds herself smiling at him, which is incredibly strange. Fortunately, before things can get any weirder, a warm, familiar voice cuts through the mist.

“A-Qing! Chengmei!”

“DAOZHANG!” A-Qing launches herself off the coffin, whips around, and runs out to launch herself into Xiao Xingchen’s arms. “You slept forever.”

Xiao-daozhang lets out an “oof” like she staggered him, but he’s as steady as ever. “Sorry, A-Qing, I know I left you two alone.” He scruffs a gentle hand over her hair “Were you and Chengmei getting along?”

A-Qing turns around to keep his sleeve from getting in her face and sticks her tongue out in Chengmei’s general direction. He snickers. “Something like that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the daozhang answers in the sweet, sincere way he has. He reaches out to put a hand on Chengmei’s shoulder, and for once A-Qing tolerates the sight of it. Surely, daozhang has so much kindness he can afford to spend it on them both.

A-Qing grins, hiding it in Xiao Xingchen’s chest. This, the three of them, is what she wants. She’s going to hold onto this forever.

#xue yang #a qing #xiao xingchen #mdzs #cql #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #yi city #yi city gang #fic #mine #it's aq POV and not xy i hope that's okay for the event #it's still About him more or less #she was a lot of fun to write for too #read this fic if you like Obnoxious Bantz

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begrudginglytumbling · 3 years

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Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six

Part Three!

...or I suppose technically it’s part two of Part Two since this one will finish up what the other one started.

Shall we return to Grow Up?

(This’ll be long even though I managed to be a little ruthless and cut some of the images.)

We’ll start with the staffroom and finish with the dorm rooms.

I am only assuming it’s a staffroom. For all I know it could be some kind of common room. But they spend a damned lot of time there. They eat. They hangout. They study. And it’s not just the students, so I’m calling it a staffroom.

Anyway! This breakfast bar thing props up a fair amount of leaning, from general side leans.

To the favoured elbow hook lean.

What I find funny about this particular surface is that Bai Yu’s legs are so long that he actually can’t sit ‘properly’ at it. If he sits straight, then he has to lean forward, since his knees are knocking into it. And when he does sit close (his feet aren’t on the floor, since he’s on a stool, so he can sit properly), he has to spread his legs in some form of obscene manspreading fashion that made me cackle and that I apparently managed to not get a screenshot of (and annoyingly I can’t remember which episode it was in).

Right then, on to the table.

Literally.

On to the table.

Because, clearly, Bai Yu can’t resist sitting on a tabletop.

I made a post about it a while ago, but I’m still not over it so, just as a quick break from the sitting - that outfit is certainly a choice of the wardrobe department.

I mean just look at it, with it’s mustard trousers paired with that top, and a lime green tie. It’s like someone threw the 70s at him or something and went with whatever stuck. I feel like it shouldn’t work. But why does it? Is it a Bai Yu thing?

I mean I know he can pull off some slightly questionable fashion choices - that denim on denim look he has as Zhao Yunlan is something I’d normally say isn’t a good idea, but he looks damn good in it. There is also the jacket with the buttons on the back that I’m still questioning to this day. And the time they apparently rolled him in glitter. And, ok, I happily admit that I don’t tend to understand fashion, and I understand even less of Chinese fashion, but, just, how did this choice come about? Pretty much everyone else in this show seems to wear ‘normal’ sedate clothes. Then there’s this guy. With his bright colours, his polka dots on polka dots, and his cravats. Honestly, mixing his outfit choices with his sitting preferences and relationships, I’m becoming convinced that this is just another example of Bai Yu giving his character Disaster Bi energy. The dude ain’t straight, and the dude ain’t gay. I’d say this dude is a Certified Disaster Bi.

Ok, back to the table and Bai Yu’s leaning back in an almost draw-me-like-one-of-your-French-girls manner.

And, like, there is a chair right there.

But nope.

The unpadded table is apparently more appealing for this man’s relatively flat arse than the padded chair that is right there.

I mean, yeah, he makes an appealing picture that’s visually different from everything else going on, but that does not negate the fact he ignored the empty chair that’s right next to him in favour of draping himself over the table.

And look, he can sit at the table as opposed to on it. There’s quite a few instances where he’s sitting at the table in a chair like a proper person. Granted, in pretty much every instance he’s sitting with his legs crossed, because god forbid he have both feet touching the floor.

But of course this table also sees moments where he’s doing something different to the others. Like here. Everyone is standing, he’s sitting.

I think he’s sulking a bit in this one, but still. Different position, different aura, still not supporting his own meagre weight.

And here with his gay little scout-esque neckerchief/scarf thing, leaning back, not sitting properly.

He does this lean back on the sofa too.

The shot is only a couple of seconds long, then he’s standing up, just like in Part Two, where he’s the only one sitting when the Teacher Doctor guy opens the door, and I touched on this a little in the previous part. But I’m really starting to think it might be a deliberate thing that’s quite clever in drawing the eye.

I should probably preface this with saying I know basically nothing about the processes that go into acting and film making. I am however technically a historian by degree and, therefore, fully capable of pulling theories out of my arse which I will then scrabble around to find sources to back them up.

So! The theory is that movement naturally draws the human eye, and if everyone is the same then a scene can fall flat. Sameness is boring, your eyes can flit over it and not take in any details.

Bai Yu?

Bai Yu is a fidget (seriously go watch his livestream videos, he fidgets, fiddles, and wriggles), this movement can be used to his advantage in drawing the eye. That scene up there? He’s not just leaning back, he’s also shifting about. He’s not in focus, but you can be damned sure that movement made my eyes focus on him before I even knew it was him.

And for combating the sameness? Look at the examples above - he’s lounging on the table, different posture to everyone else - he’s sitting while everyone else is standing - in the previous part he’s standing while everyone else is sitting. I thought at first my eyes were drawn because it’s Bai Yu and, well, he’s a favourite of mine so why wouldn’t my eyes be drawn. But then I realised they would’ve been, regardless, because he’s different. He breaks up the sameness, he stops it being flat. It reminded me of a scene in Pride and Prejudice, where the Bennett girls turn one way, but Mrs. Bennett turns the other. I remember watching or reading a commentary about it, the move being praised. I don’t remember exactly what was said, just that it was praised for being different and adding something to the scene, and it made me wonder if Bai Yu makes similar decisions?

Ok, onto the seating area proper.

He was actually sitting on an armchair properly before this, with both feet on the floor and everything...he looked so uncomfortable. Then he moved to sit on the arm of the sofa, because of course he did.

Y’know, pillows get hugged a lot in this programme, mainly by Bai Yu, but by others too sometimes.

And why sit normally when there’s a perfectly good coffee table in front of you to rest your foot on and make some viewers wince because why is your ankle bending that way? How is that even comfortable?

Just look at it. Barely resting on the table with his other foot adding weight to it.

You make my joints ache, sir.

Ok so technically I probably could’ve cut this one, since he’s just sitting on the sofa, nothing fancy, legs crossed, arm slung over the back as he pulls faces while she’s playing a game - she’s training to be a doctor but has a fear of blood so to get her use to it his character gets her to play fighting games(?) and someone else puts red dye on her hands - but this ends up leading to...

...this.

And just...what? How...?

That can’t be comfortable, surely.

I don’t even...are your joints even real, sir?

If your own joints are twinging in sympathy pain, this is your chance to go give your arms a shake and your body a wiggle before we head to the last section of the dorm rooms. Make sure everything is where it should be to remind yourself that you’re not the broken marionette doll Bai Yu can apparently become.

Right. All shook out? Good.

First stop the girls’ dorms, last stop the boys’.

There’s not much in the main girls’ room, really, just his usual sitting with his legs crossed because obviously the floor is lava and can’t be trusted with both feet.

I’m not sure how much he can be blamed for this one, as he’s technically been thrown into the chair by the little doctor trainee whose character reminds me a bit of Wen Qing.

As a side note, when you’re watching something that you don’t understand the language of, scenes like this can really throw you, because you’re just sitting there minding your own business, when suddenly they’re alone in the room together and Bai Yu’s character is taking off his tie, before striping off his shirt and tossing it on the sofa, and then you’re sitting there like wait, what? When did...? I thought...? What? But then he just gets tossed into the chair and some kind of conversation happens that makes you relax because, yeah, from your vague understanding of the characters, that makes more sense.

Even though he was tossed down, he didn’t actually need to keep his feet on the chair, but of course that didn’t stop him.

He is actually capable of looking comfortable sitting in this particular chair, he even gets to hug a pillow while doing it.

Now then, the boys’ dorm.

He came in, he saw them, he plopped down on the coffee table.

He could’ve sat on the sofa, he could’ve pulled up a chair, but nope. Coffee table.

Obviously, as previously mentioned, the floor is lava, so at the first opportunity he lifted both feet on the table and happily sat on it like an indulgent cat or something.

The sofa.

This sofa is not big enough for a full Bai Yu stretch out, but he can happily curl up on either end.

You could turn him into Bai Yu themed bookends.

Now, from watching Guardian we are all aware that this man is fully capable of embodying the spirit of a cat.

I, however, raise you the spirit of a Great Dane.

I see no difference between these two images.

Also not even this character’s mother can get him to sit properly. She prods him up and shuffles him over, and the first thing he does is pull up a knee.

Y’know how people starfish in bed? Well Bai Yu can apparently starfish in an armchair. He just plops down and flings his limbs out.

I almost didn’t catch this one, it’s part of some studying montage thing, and I thought he was sitting properly since he’s leaning forward, and I can clearly see his slippers.

Then I had a ‘wait, hold up’ moment, went back, and looked properly.

There are no feet in those slippers.

There are no legs attached to them.

So even when you think he’s sitting properly. He isn’t because he is kneeling. And I almost missed this ridiculousness!

Yes, Bai Yu, sit on a bed post that is clearly not meant to be sat on.

This is a moment where he could’ve leant against the wall, but evidently saw even the smallest flat surface as an invitation to sit.

Is that post migrating to places a bed post shouldn’t be migrating to?

Should’ve thought of that before you went and sat on it.

Not only does illness and subsequent surgery give him an excuse to lay on a gurney, it also gives him an excuse to lay in bed!

Apparently being tucked in by other men is also something not entirely unique to Bai Yu’s Zhao Yunlan. That bloke, the roommate that he went on a not-date-but-looked-like-a-date-with-wine-and-everything, seems like an absolute sweetheart and I’m still pissed at what they did in the last episode. It was uncalled for, script writers, uncalled for!

Although, I suppose, in regards to this project, it is kinda ironic that by the end, of the three men in their 'friendship group' of seven, Bai Yu’s character is the last one standing.

If I was a ‘they were roommates. Oh god they were roommates’ kinda writer these beds would be a bloody godsend. Just look at the watching and pining potential if top bunk guy was mooning over bottom bunk guy, while top bunk was doing work at his desk, and bottom bunk was sleeping.

The potential, people, the potential.

So that’s it. Grow Up is all done, and I can confidently put this in the column of Bai Yu quirks that become character quirks.

If you want to watch it, it’s available on Youtube, but there aren’t any subtitles. It’s on Dramacool too, but, again, no subtitles and the quality is horrid compared to Youtube.

Considering I couldn’t care less about the main storyline, it’s not actually a bad little drama.

Part One, Part Two , Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six

#Bai Yu #Bai Yu Sitting Project #Grow Up #Xie Nanxiang

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vroomian · 4 years

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(headdesk slam) Yes, that was 2/2 percent didn’t even realize I forgot to add it in the message until after I sent it and spent like 5 mins internally screaming at myself. I’m a mess of a human being tbh. Really? I’m surprised because it feels like Xi fits perfectly in this AU. Xi as accidental cryptid is the best thing, in both worlds. That’s a relief to hear. My anxiety and I don’t get along so I tend to go to worst possible scenario. You’ll probably regret that soon enough. 1/2

I’m like a magpie if something catches my interest and I’ll fuss over it and go all crazy. Especially now, seeing that you did that hob oneshot and mdzs that is two of the main three bl web novels that I now of. Like, of the three I’ve only fully read svsss and my mind immediately went to wonder where Xi would fit in that verse and at this point he’d totally be where the biggest amount of knowledge is and that my mind went ‘what if Xi was head disciple of Qing Jing Peak?’ 2/?

But that’s pretty unlikely given Xi’s desperate avoidance of feelings, plot, and responsibility. Though I could totally see him as a reluctant head disciple and desperately trying to avoid plot. Plus, definitely the first to notice that something would be off with this new Qingqiu. That said, bullying in his peak would not fly with him so I could see Binghe crushing on this unknown elder disciple.

3/3 I’m sorry I don’t want to make it seem like I want to push you to write another AU when you’ve got enough on your hands. My mind just just went ‘ooh what if this happened?’ And I wanted to share my thoughts with you because I think it’s interesting. So yeah, again feel free to ignore this. I’m like that guy from the meme with the pictures on the wall and red thread when my brain goes nuts lol.

long ask so this goes under the cut

okay there are a million different ways this question could go, because like. is yrz female in this universe? is he male? is he older than the main characters? is he younger? which sect is he living near? is his family nice or assholes? which version of the story is he in? the sssvs version or the actual original demon path novel (or whatever it’s been a while since i read the novel)??? does yrz get a system???

because the answers to those questions change the story drastically

okay so lets do two versions

one: it’s sssvs. yrz has a ‘background character system’ or something. he’s gotta have a system otherwise he wouldn't get without a thousand li of cang qiang sect. so this systems chooses him (lets say he’s a guy in this universe) because its low key and yrz is low key and it was like hey lets be low key together!

lol system.

lol.

but the system and yrz get along pretty well, and they get into the peak they want -- which is Wan Jian peak, because if yrz can’t join the library peak because of Plot reasons, he’s going with hsi second love. Swords! plus i don’t think there are literally any named characters from the story, except the peak lord.

so. timeline wise, i think that none of the peak-lords have ascended yet, so yrz does his natural thing --- he over performs and becomes the head disciple for wan jian peak as consequence and it’s literally just in time for the former peak lords to ascend, so yrz is like. stuck. as a peak lord.

both the system and yrz are horrified and confused as to how this happened. or, no, by then the system understands the Mistake it made in choosing yrz. on paper yrz is very unassuming! but in reality yrz has no chill. he’s never even heard of the concept of chill. he does everything at 110%.

I think that the bulk of this story takes place waaaay before the sssvs cannon, and lbh is sir not appearing in this fic. instead its -- liu qingge! and mu qingfang! both??? both is good! i think he meets lqg first, when he challenges yrz to a spar in the middle of a high stakes missing because lqg is a meathead jock at that age, and yrz is like. no? do your job? dumbass. (yrz has no idea who this shouty brat is, because the system is taking a nap. it wakes up and kicks itself for leaving yrz alone to do stuff.) yrz is older than lqg and kicks his ass because... well. because it’s hilarious really. so he gains a lqg shaped stalker.

yrz has a lot of interest in both sparring and healing, and with lqg following him around, yrz spends a lot of time at the healing peak and meets mqf there. mqf gets a huge crush almost immediately but never said anything. it’s not surprising that yrz quickly bonds with these totally cool new disciples -- and then learns that both of the are the succeeding disciples for their peaks. oops.

system gives up.

version two: bing-ge edition!

no system this time around and yrz stays far far away from the cang qiong. he joins a small sect to learn than fucks off to have adventures by himself as a rouge cultivator. so, male version again BUT yrz gets cursed or something and gets the ability to change gender at will because that’s funny and useful. also you know. porn world written by a “straight” guy. there are reasons for that kind of curse imma just gloss over.

then the plot happens. all of immortal demon path’s many, many chapters are playing around in the background of yrz’s life, but she manages to stay out of it -- until one night yrz gets accidentally recruited by a cult dedicated to bringing down the evil demon lord lbh, because this cult has a book yrz is after. she ends up being used as bait for lbh (because he eats virgins now according to rumors. he’s up to wife number 249 by now so it’s not wrong !)

yrz gets ‘saved’ by lbh, who’s kind of smirking and going ‘oh, no need to thank me, it was what anyone would have done,’ while totally expecting sex. yrz is like ‘oh, cool. bye then.’ and just. takes the book and leaves.

lbh: *surprised pikachu face*

and by the time he registers no sex is going to be happening, yrz is long gone and enjoying her brand new book.

after that, lbh and yrz end up seeing each other (mostly because lbh is trying to impress this woman and nothing is working) and yrz is like stop being a creep, i’m not interested in you. lbh needs to drink his respect woman juice and downsize on his harem a bit. yrz wouldn’t touch that with a twenty foot pool.

anyway i think it comes to a head when they both get doused in pa pa pa juice and lbh is like oh this is more familiar, shall we? and yrz is like bitch. and goes to a brothel in the city instead. at this point yrz and lbh are more like antagonistic buddies than anything else. lbh has too many wives and zero friends.

lbh starts developing some squishy feelings and is like what the fuck is this?? gross?? but he says nothing because he doesn’t get it.

then the cross over happens, bing-ge vs bing-mei!!! and after than happens, yrz is just chilling at home and lbh shows up at her place like really fucked up and subdued. he’s like ‘why him? why did he get the good teacher? what did he do right?’

yrz is like... hm. emotions. ew. she trys anyway because she’s finally ready to admit that she does like this trash goblin at least a little. so she takes care of him while he’s being depressed. lbh cooks for her and she’s like. this is so fucking good. thank you.

and lbh is just in love now. it’s nothing like he feels for his wives, but yrz makes lbh feels safe and accepted. it’s a comforting and comfortable love. yrz’s stupid little house is more of a home than lbh’s stupid palaces.

look. i stand by the head cannon that all lbh wants is to be a househusband, no matter what version im talking about.

lbh vanishes for a whole night. yrz is like hm, my house feels empty now. weird! and then lbh comes back and announces that he just divorced all his wives. he doesn’t want to be powerful anymore so can i stay herer with you.

yrz is like... sure.

and then there’s a long, long courtship and lbh marries yrz and archives his dream of just being fucking happy. the end!

#rivaladmirer21 #vrrm writes #so many possibilities #this universe is so funny #i can't decide which one i like better #svsss

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killerandhealerqueen · 4 years

Note

Hello! It’s me again with my greediness because I saw that you reblogged a lovely prompt list with one of my fav tropes! #9 “i don’t need you” for XueXiao or JinYi! plz 💋

Oh man, this was a LOT of fun to write. Like, a lot of fun. I really hope you like it!

“I don’t need you” Xiao Xingchen grumbled as he glared in the general direction of his new bodyguard, Xue Yang. Xue Yang looked over at him and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you sure about that? You’re the son of the meanest mob boss in Yi-City and you’re also blind. You’re like…a walking target” he replied. Xiao Xingchen huffed.

“I survived all this time without a bodyguard and I definitely don’t need one now” he grumbled before he took off, using his cane to gently tap the floor as well as the items around so that he knew where he was going. Xue Yang watched him walk away, crossing his arms as he tilted his head.

“He’s an…interesting character” he murmured.

“Isn’t he?” a voice agreed, making Xue Yang jump before turning to see a young woman walking towards him.

“Hi, I’m A-Qing. I’m Daozhang’s maid” she greeted. Xue Yang nodded in greeted.

“Xue Yang. Xiao Xingchen’s new bodyguard” he replied before he motioned with his thumb to where Xiao Xingchen just walked off.

“Is he always like that?” he asked.

“Yeah, he is” another voice called out, making A-Qing and Xue Yang turn to see another man dressed in all black walking towards them.

“And you are?” Xue Yang asked.

“Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen’s gardener” the man, Song Zichen, replied. Xue Yang hummed.

“So you’re telling me he’s always grumpy?” he asked. Song Zichen shrugged while A-Qing made a “fifty-fifty” motion with her hand.

“He didn’t use to be like this, but ever since his accident, he’s never really been the same” she explained. Xue Yang frowned.

“Accident? What accident? His father never told me anything about an accident” he grumbled. Song Zichen frowned.

“He didn’t? He normally tells all of the bodyguards he’s going to hire that his son got injured in a car accident when he was young and it blinded him. Most people don’t want to be a bodyguard to a blind person, since they have to do twice the work they would normally have to do for a seeing person” he explained. Xue Yang blinked at him before he shook his head.

“Yeah, I was definitely not told that he was blinded in an accident” he replied. A-Qing sighed.

“Just don’t…baby him” she suggested. Xue Yang looked over at her.

“Baby him? With a cane like that? He could easily kick my ass without me seeing it coming” he exclaimed. A-Qing sighed.

“Yeah, but see, you’re different. You know that Daozhang can take care of himself. Majority of the previous bodyguards babied him and he hates feeling babied. It’s like, he knows he’s blind, you don’t have to constantly remind him of his disability” she grumbled. Xue Yang was quiet before he gasped in realization.

“He thinks I’m going to baby him…” he whispered. Song Zichen inclined his head.

“Probably. He doesn’t trust a lot of people unless he can see, excuse me, experience, their actions speaking louder than words” he explained. Xue Yang nodded slowly.

“So…what you’re telling me is that for him to trust me…my actions have to speak for me? To explain to him that I’m not going to baby him?” he asked, looking at Song Zichen and A-Qing. The maid and gardener nodded, making Xue Yang groan.

“Seriously?!” he exclaimed.

“He doesn’t trust people’s words. Words are like double edge swords and they can stab you in the back. Xingchen has been stabbed in the back so many times that he doesn’t trust anyone unless they can prove themselves through their actions that they deserve his trust” Song Zichen explained. Xue Yang groaned again.

“Ugh…I’ve got my work cut out for me, don’t I?” he grumbled. A-Qing and Son Zichen chuckled.

“Mmhm” they replied before they turned and walked off, leaving Xue Yang alone.

“Fuck me” he grumbled.

~*~*~*~*~

Over the next few weeks, Xue Yang did everything in his power to try and get Xiao Xingchen to trust him or at the very least, fucking like him.

~*~*~*~*~

First, Xue Yang tried to move every object that might give Xiao Xingchen problems when he walked out of his way and of course Xiao Xingchen noticed the gesture since he rarely bumped into things anymore and he found himself walking much more smoothly.

“Is it easier to get around now without bumping into things, Daozhang?” Xue Yang asked one day. Xiao Xingchen glanced over in his general direction before he smiled.

“Don’t need you or your help” he grumbled before he turned and walked away, the sound of his cane clicking on the floor. Xue Yang let out a groan; this was going to be harder than he thought.

~*~*~*~*~

The next attempt to try and get Xiao Xingchen to trust him was to greet him every morning with a hot cup of tea, one that Xue Yang knew Xiao Xingchen liked. Since Xiao Xingchen had early morning meetings in the city, Xue Yang would always greet him with the hot cup, placing it carefully in his hands once he got into the limo before he went to the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition, driving away. This happened every day for a week and Xiao Xingchen never said anything until Xue Yang asked him one day if he enjoyed the tea he got every morning.

“It’s nice. But I still don’t need you” Xiao Xingchen replied. Xue Yang let out a groan and hit the back of his head on the headrest while behind him, Xiao Xingchen just smiled and took a sip of his tea.

~*~*~*~*~

The third attempt to get Xiao Xingchen to like him was to be there whenever Xiao Xingchen stumbled. Xiao Xingchen wasn’t a clumsy man, but there were times where he would trip over small things that his cane didn’t see or that he passed over. One time in particular, Xiao Xingchen missed a large crack in the ground which caused part of the sidewalk to be jutting up and he accidentally tripped over it, nearly faceplanting into the ground. Thankfully Xue Yang was there to catch him and hold him tightly.

“You need to be more careful, Daozhang” Xue Yang murmured. Xiao Xingchen let out a huff before he shoved Xue Yang away.

“I don’t need you” he gritted out before he walked away, leaving Xue Yang standing there like an idiot.

“Fucking hell” he grumbled before he rushed after Xiao Xingchen.

~*~*~*~*~

The fourth attempt to get Xiao Xingchen to trust Xue Yang was to show him that he would kick anyone’s ass if they dared to take advantage of his blindness. It did actually happen one day during a meeting; a pair of sleazy businessmen were trying to swindle Xiao Xingchen into agreeing to a deal that was priced unreasonably high and was worth actually a lot less. Xiao Xingchen, of course, couldn’t see the document since the businessmen didn’t print the deal in braille like most people who wanted to work with Xiao Xingchen did, but Xue Yang did. He saw the deal and the numbers and his blood boiled at the thought of Xiao Xingchen being swindled into a deal that would bite him in the ass later on in life. So he took the documents away from Xiao Xingchen, much to his surprise, and walked over to the businessmen, leaning down so that Xiao Xingchen couldn’t hear what he was about to say to them.

“I saw this deal and I know you’re trying to swindle him. Either you make this deal reasonable or drop the price or I’ll gut you where you sit” he hissed. The two businessmen gulped and looked at one another while Xiao Xingchen raised an eyebrow in that direction.

“Xue Yang? What are you doing?” he called out. Xue Yang looked up at him and smiled.

“Just talking a price reduction, Daozhang” he replied. Xiao Xingchen huffed.

“I don’t need you to do my business transactions for me” he scolded. Xue Yang smiled.

“Trust me, Daozhang, you’ll thank me for this one” he replied before he looked down at the two businessmen.

“Drop the price. Now” he hissed. The two businessmen and quickly worked out a number that Xue Yang approved off before Xue Yang took the documents back to Xiao Xingchen, taking the pen and placing it in his hand before carefully guiding it over to the dotted line.

“Sign here, Daozhang” he declared. Xiao Xingchen nodded and quickly signed the document, which Xue Yang took and handed back to the businessmen.

“Those numbers better be the numbers that I see when we get the deal or I’m paying you a visit. Understand?” he snarled. The two businessmen squeaked in reply that the numbers would be the same before they quickly left the room.

“You didn’t have to scare them off like that” Xiao Xingchen scolded. Xue Yang scoffed.

“I don’t want you to work with people who’ll take advantage of you because of your blindness” he replied as he walked over to Xiao Xingchen, helping him out of his chair.

“I told you, I don’t need your help to do business transactions. I’m perfectly capable of doing them myself” Xiao Xingchen argued.

“Yes, when people actually print their documents in braille. These assholes didn’t. You had no idea what was on those documents. If I hadn’t done something, this deal would have come back and bit you in the ass” Xue Yang stated. Xiao Xingchen huffed.

“I’m the businessman, Xue Yang, not you. I don’t—” he started.

“Need me, I heard you the last two time, Daozhang” Xue Yang replied tiredly.

~*~*~*~*~

The fifth attempt to get Xiao Xingchen to trust Xue Yang was protecting him from the elements when he went to or came out of the car. Song Zichen and A-Qing told him that in the past, Xiao Xingchen’s previous bodyguards would always try to cover him from the rain but Xiao Xingchen always waved them away and they listened to him and every fucking time, he got sick. Every. Fucking. Time. A-Qing was quite tired of having to take care of a sick Xiao Xingchen because of thoughtless bodyguards who couldn’t think for themselves and Song Zichen was tired of listening to her bitch about Xiao Xingchen getting sick. So when it poured rain one fine Wednesday, A-Qing and Song Zichen both sent him a death glare to which Xue Yang just replied with a smile, holding up a large black umbrella. When Xiao Xingchen walked out of the house, he heard the rain but as he stepped down the short flight of stairs, he didn’t feel any wetness on him.

“Wha—” he started.

“Can’t have you catching a cold, Daozhang” Xue Yang replied from where he was standing in the pouring rain, absolutely soaking wet, but he didn’t care as he held the large umbrella over Xiao Xingchen’s head.

“Xue Yang, what are you doing? You’re going to get sick!” Xiao Xingchen exclaimed. Xue Yang shrugged, even though he knew Xiao Xingchen couldn’t see it.

“Better me than you” he replied. Xiao Xingchen sighed and tried to walk out from underneath the umbrella but Xue Yang just kept pace with him, making sure that the umbrella stayed over his head the entire way to the limo.

“Xue Yang, for fuck’s sake, you’re going to seriously get sick! I don’t need my bodyguard to get sick!” Xiao Xingchen exclaimed.

“Oh, are you admitting that you need a bodyguard now?” Xue Yang asked, raising an eyebrow as he helped Xiao Xingchen into the car.

“No, I still don’t need a bodyguard. I just don’t want you getting sick” Xiao Xingchen murmured. Xue Yang sighed and closed the umbrella, placing it on the passenger’s seat before he slipped into the driver’s seat, starting the car.

“There’s no pleasing you, Daozhang” he murmured.

~*~*~*~*~

A few weeks later, Xue Yang was driving Xiao Xingchen to his doctor’s appointment to get his eyes checked, since his accident caused traumatic blindness and while the doctors told him that he might never get his sight back, there was a slight possibility that he might be able to see at least a little bit in the future. So they were heading to the doctors to see if Xiao Xingchen’s chances to regain a little bit of his sight were possible.

“Are you excited, Daozhang?” Xue Yang asked, glancing up in the rearview mirror at Xiao Xingchen.

“I’m…nervous” Xiao Xingchen replied.

“Why? You might get the new that you might the chance to regain your sight! Or part of it, at least” Xue Yang replied. Xiao Xingchen sighed.

“Or I might get the news that it’s not possible and that I’ll never see again” he replied. Xue Yang hummed.

“That’s true” he agreed. As they continued driving, Xue Yang didn’t notice the large SVU dangerously speeding towards them and before either of them knew what was happening, their limo was hit and sent spiraling through the air before crashing a few feet away, landing upside down. Xue Yang let out a groan and blinked a couple of times, trying to get his head to stop hurting, before he looked around.

“Daozhang?” he called out. There was no reply so Xue Yang turned his body to see Xiao Xingchen thankfully still buckled in, but unconscious.

“Daozhang. Daozhang, can you hear me?” Xue Yang croaked, but Xiao Xingchen didn’t answer. Just then, there was the sound of crunching glass, so Xue Yang turned his head to see two pair of pants walking towards their car.

“Who the fuck are you?” Xue Yang snapped, but the pair of pants ignored him as they headed to the back seat, opening the door before one pair of pants bent down and unbuckled Xiao Xingchen’s seatbelt while the other pair grabbed Xiao Xingchen before he fell out of his seat, pulling him out of the car. Both pair of pants then walked away, leaving Xue Yang in the car.

“You fuckers! Bring him back!” he shouted, quickly unbuckling his seatbelt. He then fell onto the roof of the car, hissing as he landed against shattered glass, but he didn’t pay much attention as he opened the car door and crawled out just in time to see Xiao Xingchen being place into a black Escalade as two men in black suits got in, the Escalade driving away. Xue Yang growled before he pulled out his phone, dialing a number.

“Song Lan! Listen, Daozhang’s just been kidnapped. How quickly can you and A-Qing get here with a car? The limo got totaled” he explained.

“Be there in five” Song Zichen replied before hanging up. Xue Yang had no idea if that meant five seconds or five minutes, so he just leaned up against the totaled limo, letting out a groan. This was a pain in his ass that he wasn’t expecting to happen today. Thankfully, Song Zichen and A-Qing appeared in less than five minutes with their own Escalade, Song Zichen in the driver’s seat.

“Get in” he ordered as he rolled down the window. Xue Yang nodded and rushed into the backseat, immediately buckling up.

“You know where they took Daozhang?” A-Qing asked from the passenger’s seat.

“I don’t, but I can check his tracker” Xue Yang replied as he pulled out his phone.

“You bugged Daozhang?!” Song Zichen and A-Qing exclaimed. Xue Yang looked up at them and frowned.

“Y’all never thought to do that if he got kidnapped?” he asked.

“Not…really” A-Qing replied.

“Well, I did, so let’s see where these fuckers took him” Xue Yang murmured as he pulled up the tracking app for the bug that he placed in Xiao Xingchen’s phone.

“They’re heading East. Just keep driving, I’ll tell you were to go” he ordered. Song Zichen nodded and stepped on the gas, driving away from the scene a few seconds before cops pulled up.

~*~*~*~*~

Xue Yang had Song Zichen drive for almost an hour before they came upon an abandoned farm in the middle of fucking nowhere.

“An abandoned farm? Seriously? Where’s the originality?” Xue Yang grumbled as he, Song Zichen, and A-Qing got out of their Escalade.

“Dude, have you been in situations like this before?” Song Zichen demanded, looking back at him.

“Yeah. My previous dude got kidnapped all the fucking time. I was waiting for something like this to happen to Daozhang, since you know, it’s a normal thing apparently for triads to do” Xue Yang murmured. Just then, the old barn suddenly went up in explosion of flames, making Xue Yang, Song Zichen, and A-Qing quickly cover their faces before they lowered their arms and look at the barn in horror.

“XINGCHEN!” Xue Yang screamed before he started sprinting towards the barn, Song Zichen and A-Qing on his heels. The three soon burst into the barn, Song Zichen heading to the left while A-Qing headed to the right, leaving Xue Yang to head down the middle.

“Daozhang!” A-Qing’s voice echoed throughout the burning barn.

“Daozhang!” Song Zichen shouted.

“Xingchen!” Xue Yang screamed, searching the burning barn with burning eyes until he finally found Xiao Xingchen lying on the barn floor, coughing harshly as flames burned around him.

“Xingchen!” Xue Yang exclaimed, running over to him, kneeling down before him.

“I’m here, Daozhang. I’m here” he soothed, reaching out to grab Xiao Xingchen’s hand to let him know that it was him.

“X-Xue Yang?” Xiao Xingchen croaked.

“I’m here, Daozhang. I’m right here. Song Lan and A-Qing are here too. We’re getting you out of here, don’t worry” Xue Yang soothed before he carefully picked Xiao Xingchen up bridal style, Xiao Xingchen’s arms immediately going around his neck. Xue Yang then rushed towards the exit, glancing to his left and then to his right.

“A-Qing! Song Lan! I found him! Let’s go!” he shouted. Xiao Xingchen buried his face in Xue Yang’s chest as Song Zichen and A-Qing joined him, Song Zichen taking Xiao Xingchen from Xue Yang since Xue Yang was a lot smaller than Xiao Xingchen. The three of them then rushed out of the barn, just as the wood cracked and groaned before the entire structure collapsed in a giant ball of flames.

“Jesus fuck…thank God we got here in time” Xue Yang breathed. A-Qing and Song Zichen hummed in agreement before they turned and headed back to the Escalade, Song Zichen placing Xiao Xingchen in the backseat, Xue Yang immediately at his side, allowing Xiao Xingchen to use his shoulder like a pillow as Song Zichen and A-Qing got into the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat.

“Song Lan?” Xiao Xingchen croaked from where he was leaning against Xue Yang.

“Hmm?” Song Zichen replied.

“Let’s go home” Xiao Xingchen pleaded. Song Zichen nodded.

“Of course, Daozhang” he replied, starting the car and driving away from the burning barn. As they drove away, Xue Yang wrapped a comforting arm around Xiao Xingchen, who snuggled into his embrace like a scared cat during a thunderstorm.

“It’s okay, Daozhang. You’re safe” he soothed, gently stroking Xiao Xingchen’s arm.

~*~*~*~*~

“I still don’t need you” Xiao Xingchen grumbled later on that evening when Xue Yang was patching him up in Xiao Xingchen’s bedroom, since you know, he was first in a car accident and then trapped in a burning barn. Xue Yang let out a groan.

“Look, Daozhang, I’ve done EVERYTHING I could think of to get you to trust me and to show you that I’m never, ever, going to baby you or treat you like less because of your disability…I freaking saved your life from that burning barn for God’s sake—” he started when Xiao Xingchen held up a hand, immediately silencing Xue Yang.

“If you’d actually let me finish” he started before he huffed.

“What I was trying to say was, while I may not need you…I want you” he murmured. Xue Yang looked at him in shock.

“Wha—” he started.

“I…I want you, Xue Yang. I want you here. With me. Always by my side. I…I haven’t felt like this about anyone in a long time and I just…I want you. And I think deep down…I need you too” Xiao Xingchen admitted. Xue Yang blinked at him before he put down the rag he was using to clean Xiao Xingchen’s cuts and stood up from where he was kneeling before Xiao Xingchen, since Xiao Xingchen was sitting on the edge of his bed, and gently cupped Xiao Xingchen’s face.

“Daozhang…can I kiss you?” he asked softly. Xiao Xingchen blinked cloudy brown eyes at him before he nodded.

“Please” he whispered. Xue Yang smiled softly before he leaned forward and gently kissed Xiao Xingchen on the lips, cupping his face lovingly as he did so. Xiao Xingchen smiled slightly into the kiss and brought one of his hands up to cover Xue Yang’s, letting out a content hum. When they finally pulled away, Xue Yang pressed his and Xiao Xingchen’s foreheads together, letting out a happy little huff.

“I’m happy father chose you as my bodyguard” Xiao Xingchen whispered. Xue Yang looked at him and laughed before he pecked Xiao Xingchen on the nose.

“I’m happy he chose me too” he agreed before he pulled away and knelt back down.

“Alright, let’s get these wounds cleaned. Can’t have you get an infection now can we?” he asked as he picked up the cleaning rag and began to clean Xiao Xingchen’s cuts again. Xiao Xingchen huffed and shook his head.

“I don’t need you to do that, you know. I can have A-Qing do it instead” he stated. Xue Yang smiled.

“I know. But I want to” he replied. Xiao Xingchen chuffed before he nodded.

“Alright” he agreed. Xue Yang smiled as he began cleaning the cuts again; Xiao Xingchen finally trusted him. And maybe…even loved him.

“Of course I love you, you idiot” Xiao Xingchen murmured, making Xue Yang look up at him in shock.

“But I didn’t—” he started.

“You didn’t have to. I just knew” Xiao Xingchen replied with a smile. Xue Yang blinked at him before he laughed.

“Ah, my Daozhang is filled with so many secrets” he teased. Xiao Xingchen laughed and Xue Yang swore he would get him to do that more often, since his face lit up like the actual sun when he did.

“Xue Yang?” Xiao Xingchen murmured, making Xue Yang pause from his cleaning and look up at him.

“Hmm?” he replied. Xiao Xingchen smiled a small smile.

“Thank you. For everything” he replied. Xue Yang beamed as he reached out and gave Xiao Xingchen’s hand a squeeze.

“You’re welcome. I am your bodyguard, you know. It’s part of my job” he stated. Xiao Xingchen raised an eyebrow before he chuckled.

“Is it now?” he replied. Xue Yang hummed.

“Mmhm” he answered. Xiao Xingchen then gave Xue Yang’s hand a squeeze, making him look at him again.

“Well then, I’m glad you’re my bodyguard” he declared. Xue Yang smiled.

“I’ll always be your bodyguard, Daozhang. In this life and in the next” he assured. Xiao Xingchen blushed and gave Xue Yang a gentle push.

“Don’t makes promises that you can’t keep” he murmured. Xue Yang shook his head.

“I promise that I, Xue Yang, will be your, Xiao Xingchen, bodyguard in the next life if we ever meet again” he declared. Xiao Xingchen looked at him, cloudy brown eyes sparkling, and smiled.

“I’ll hold you to that” he stated. Xue Yang laughed.

“I know you will” he replied before he went back to cleaning Xiao Xingchen’s cuts, Xiao Xingchen still holding onto his other hand, a small smile on his face. While he may not have wanted or needed Xue Yang in the beginning…he definitely wanted and needed him now. And Xue Yang wanted Xiao Xingchen too; he wanted to be with him forever. Even in his next life, he would have no one else but Xiao Xingchen. He was Xiao Xingchen’s and Xiao Xingchen was his. And if death ever took them apart in this life, they would find each other in the next. They knew they would.

#the-sassiest-trixster writes #xuexiao #bodyguard prompts #bodyguard au #xue yang #xiao xingchen #a-qing #song zichen

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razberryyum · 5 years

Video

The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 9, Part 2 of 2

(spoilers for everything MDZS/Untamed)

[covers MDZS chapters 28 and 29...kinda….]

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰 +🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰+🐰+🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰🐰

Continued from Part 1:

Aside from the fact that Wei Ying grabbing and pulling on Lan Zhan’s tassle like a leash is really one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen, I think it’s also adorable how Lan Zhan went from not even tolerating Wei Ying touching his sleeve to now putting up with him poking him and holding onto his wrist. Once again he never makes any attempt to shake him off and instead allows Wei Ying to lead him forward. Watching the little ways Wei Ying is changing Lan Zhan is so endearing and rewarding. I’m so glad Wei Ying came on this mission with him. According to Big Bro Xichen, Lan Zhan’s never had friends before, the reason he wanted Lan Zhan to attend classes at Cloud Recesses was so that he could make friends with people his own age. However, considering his cold and aloof disposition, it’s doubtful he would have made any friends if Wei Ying hadn’t come along and been so insistent on gaining his friendship. Just thinking of the boys that were at Cloud Recesses with them—Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang, Jin Zixuan, Wen Ning, in addition to all those other nameless disciples—whom among them would have even made the slightest effort to get through to Lan Zhan? Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan couldn’t care less, Nie Huaisang seems downright scared of him, and Wen Ning probably feels the same, not to mention, I can‘t even imagine shy sweet Wen Ning trying to proactively make friends with anyone anyway. Therefore, if it wasn’t for Wei Ying, Lan Zhan would have ended up as friendless and alone as he started out being. He probably never experienced something as simple as sitting down and having a meal or drinks with his peers, and yet now he’s doing it as if it was just the most mundane event for him. To think, if Wei Ying hadn’t invited himself along on this secret mission, thereby eventually bringing in Jiang Cheng and NHS as well, Lan Zhan would’ve been all alone through this journey...who would’ve been there to comfort him when that yin metal went all haywire on him?

Fascinating thing about this moment that I noticed is that the words (the Chinese characters specifically) Wei Ying uses to calm Lan Zhan are the same exact words that Lan Zhan uses later on at Phoenix Mountain when he is trying to calm Wei Ying down as he is being overcome with dark rage.

I would love to think that Team CQL set up this parallelism on purpose to show how Lan Zhan remembers everything that Wei Ying did for him and said to him, even down to the usage of two simple calming words. It melts my heart to imagine Lan Zhan carefully collecting all these memories and holding on tightly to them because every single moment they shared together became so important to him. When I think about how he probably lived on just those memories alone, not only during the sixteen long years when Wei Ying was dead, but probably even during the times when they were apart while he was still alive, I just feel so unbelievably sad for Lan Zhan that my eyes always well up with tears.

Yeah, I pretty much get weepy once a day because of these boys. Unfortunately I’m not exaggerating at all.

Nie Huaisang/Ji Li Appreciation Time

To be honest, I don’t know if what I feel about Nie Huaisang could really be called love, even though I think I’ve thrown that word around when referring to him at least once. I definitely don’t hate him...he’s too complex and interesting and adorable in his own way to hate. And I did buy into his dumb, naïve and helpless act for a long time, much like everyone did. But I can’t say I really love him anymore either because of what he did to dear, sweet Big Bro Xichen, which was really unnecessarily cruel. It’s premature to go into all that now, so all I’m going to say is, while my feelings towards him are probably more on the ambivalent side overall, I do really appreciate him as a character, especially at this point of the story, because he’s always so funny and entertaining. I’d like to think that he did genuinely like Wei Ying as a friend because, as exemplified in the scene above, Wei Ying was actually really nice and considerate to him, not to mention protective. I hope that was part of NHS' motivation for reviving Wei Ying later on, and not just because he thought the Yiling Patriarch would be the only one strong enough to deal with the Stygian tiger seal.

Despite how I feel about NHS, I do really enjoy Ji Li’s portrayal of the character, and I think his voice performance is awesome as well. I believe he’s the only actor on the show that used his own voice whereas everyone else’s dubbing was performed by a voice actor, and his voice work definitely made NHS even more fun as a character. He definitely has a talent for voice acting. He’s been cast in the Hikaru no Go live action due to be released next year and I cannot be more excited. I can totally imagine him as Sai. (Although, there’s not much information on the show yet from what I can see; looks like one of the male leads has been cast and also a female, but no other information on their actual roles...God I hope they don’t decide to turn Hikaru no Go into a BG romance because that’s not what it’s about AT ALL.)

ChengQing

We didn’t really see his reaction but when Wei Ying grabbed Wen Qing’s wrist, I did wonder how Jiang Cheng felt about it. Here he is, trying his hardest to gain Wen Qing’s favor, but all of his efforts seem to be mostly futile since she hardly gives him the time of her day. Honestly, for a while as I was watching the show for the first time, I did worry that Team CQL was trying to create a love triangle between Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing/Wei Ying. Even after reading the novel and knowing nothing of the sort exists in the source material, because Wen Qing’s characterization in the show was already so different from her novel counterpart, my concern remained for quite some time. I hated the mere idea a lot because it’s such a tropey and stupid gimmick, especially since Jiang Cheng really didn’t need yet another reason to be angry at Wei Ying. I’m glad they didn’t go in that horrible direction after all, but I don’t think I was able to breathe easy about the issue until after her death. Poor Wen Qing, she gave me so much anxiety throughout the first half of the show; I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a teeny bit relieved when she died because I was finally able to lay my worries to rest completely.

Odds and Ends

I just love these three stooges; they’re so adorable together and I wish we got to see them engage in more shenanigans before all the fun was over forever.

When I first saw this scene, I thought it was pretty horrific and creepy; really, it’s one of the most effective scenes in the show. However, now, when I see this scene, my heart clenches a little because I know that’s the same fate that will eventually befall the Yunmeng Jiang sect as well. The fact that both Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying are present to see that horrible tableau just makes things worse, especially the sight of those two sect leaders hanging in the doorway. Completely heart-breaking.

Wen Qing being able to control the ghost puppets with the flute was totally a creation for the live action since she never did that in the novel, but I actually thought it was a neat touch. At first I thought she was going to be the one to teach Wei Ying that ability, but when that didn’t pan out, I wondered if he was inspired to learn that ability after seeing her do that. While it does take away Wei Ying’s inventiveness since in the novel that was a skill he developed on his own, I didn’t mind that change since it also established that other people can control the ghost puppets as well, which nicely sets up what Su She does later on with that skill. Interestingly enough, she’s playing “Rest” so now I wonder if she learned that during her time at Cloud Recesses and if so, does that mean essentially Wei Ying’s inspiration for fluting can be traced back to his time there as well, which means he was able to survive the Burial Mounds really because of his tutelage by the Gusu Lan sect. Omg that’s so sweet.

Anyway, I just wish we got to see Wen Qing do more with that skill, it’s kind of odd how later on she relied on Wei Ying completely for calming Wen Ning when she seems to be perfectly capable of that feat as well. It’s like the show forgot she had this ability.

Question I still had

So basically, Lan Zhan met A-Yuan this early on but he completely forgot about that little Wen kid when they crossed paths again in Yiling? It’s no big deal, but I just thought that was rather odd considering Lan Zhan is usually more observant than that and of course he has a really good memory. I guess there’s always the possibility that he just didn’t care enough about the Wens to notice the kid.

Overall Episode Rating: 8 Lil Apples out of 10

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othercat2 · 4 years

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Trip to the Mall

Crossover between Untamed and After the Storm by Hannah Birchwood, Key Dyson and Raymond Roach a fusion au in which Wei Ying is a geneticist who rescues a family of experimental soldier mods and moves to a city of ships out in the middle of Lake Michigan.

___________________________________

It’s been a month since their arrival as refugees to the Michigan Fleet. They’re still working their way through hours and hours of “prosocial education,” that takes the form of watching a children’s program and answering questions and talking to counsellors and their social worker.

Wei Ying has been living with Wen Qing, her brother and their little cousin Yuan. Qing has been barrelling her way through qualifications to become a medic, Ning got a job on a restaurant boat while taking psychology classes. Baby Yuan still has nightmares about the labs and the trip, but he’s recovering. Wei Ying has a job waiting for him: an “internship” working with another bio-engineer that’s mostly just a drawn out assessment period, from what the social worker says, but that’s a couple weeks away.

Wei Ying is half asleep with Yuan in his lap. Yuan's singing along with Nanna Dog the Librarian as she teaches a lesson about sleeping things organized and neat. Wei Ying wants to object to this on grounds of dog, and also, he already had to watch several episodes that are thinly veiled and not so thinly veiled discussions of ptsd and trauma. And also dog. (Even if it's actually a puppet.) Sadly, Yuan's piping voice and tendency to actually answer questions the puppet asks out loud is adorable, so he's trapped.

He also falls asleep, only to be woken up by Wen Qing, who's nudging him. "You need to get out," she says.

Wei Ying gives her a look of exaggerated hurt. "After all we've been too each other, Miss Wen?" He nudges Yuan, who's also fallen asleep. "Yuan, big sister is throwing me out!"

"Noooo," Yuan says sleepily, and clings like a limpet.

"Drama queen," Qing says with a snort. "You've been mostly hanging out on the couch since we got here. The neighbors have been politely wondering what's wrong with you that you don't come out of our quarters ever."

"So that means you're kicking me out?" Wei Ying asks, pouting.

"Just temporarily," Qing says. "I've uploaded a shopping list. Take Yuan with you."

Wei Ying whines about it, but his protests lack force. A trip to the Mall might help him shake off the fog that had been hanging around him since they'd reached safety. (Travelling cross country, travelling through countries, bribing and lying and praying no one saw under the Wens' makeup and realized they were looking at experimental gene mods. He'd been on a hyper alert adrenaline rush and this was the crash.)

He gets dressed in the Local Costume of sarong, sandals and a t shirt (his says in binary, "if you can read this you know binary"), gets Yuan dressed and takes one of the deck hoppers from the Sandy Button out to the Mall. The Mall was a huge former tanker, repurposed as a trade center for not only the fleet, but also most of the American Midwest. It was permanently anchored about a mile from shore and acted as a buffer between the Fleet and the cities surrounding Lake Michigan.

Yuan is of course immediately drawn to the toy and foodstalls. Wei Ying gets him bacon on a stick as they sightsee their way to the clothes and second hand vendors. He's working his way through the shopping list when he realizes Yuan is missing.

"The little boy who was with me, did you see where he went?!" Wei Ying asked frantically.

"Could've sworn he was here a minute ago!" a vendor says. "Should've had him in harness." The vendor tsks.

"I'll keep that in mind," Wei Ying says while trying really hard not to think of Wen Ning walking with the chains that had been used yo restrain him dragging. On the other hand he'd seen a really cute backpack harness with Wilimina Wolf, a character that mostly showed up in Family Fleet to talk about nature, weather and ship safety.

"If he's wearing data rings or a tracker shouldn't be any problem for the Mall to track him," the vendor says reassuringly.

Asking the Mall to track Yuan turns out not to be necessary, though Wei Ying almost needs a medic. Yuan is back at the toy vendors, bothering what looks to be off-duty Security. The officer, a cute guy with a solemn appearance, has Yuan balanced on his hip and appears to be listening intently to whatever it is Yuan is saying. "I'm so sorry, officer," Wei Ying says, running over. "He wandered off."

"If you or your caregiver is lost, you should find Security," Yuan says in a very definite tone. The Security officer nods approvingly.

Wei Ying isn't so sure about that. "Even if they're off-duty?"

"I am not off-duty in the case of a lost caregiver," the officer says with a faint smile as he sets Yuan down. The kid immediately latches onto Wei Ying.

"Excuse me? I'm not the one who wandered off!" Wei Ying says in mock offense. Yuan just giggles at him.

"He should have a harness," the officer says. "If it were rainy or windy there would have been a fine."

Wei Ying just barely manages to avoid snapping a childish, well it wasn't. Partly because the officer was so quietly genuine about it, partly because if he got in trouble with the police, Wen Qing would probably--no, definitely--kill him. "I promise it'll be the next thing I buy." To be friendly, he says, "How about I treat you to lunch, officer?"

"Zahn Lan," the officer says.

"Wei Ying, or I guess Ying Wei now," Wei Ying says. And because he can't help himself, and Zahn hadn't said anything one way or another, "so, lunch?"

There was another faint smile. "You said the harness would be the next thing."

"Want to make sure I follow through?" Wei Ying asks in mock offense. "Or just the right order?"

"Yes," Zahn says.

Wei Ying heads to the nearest children's clothing shop, giving a highly edited story of asylum seeking and immigration. He ends up carrying most of the conversation. Zahn seems quiet, not a talker. The kind of guy who's better at listening than talking.

They go to lunch in one of the small diners on board the Mall. It's a bright airy place with a good view and lots of rowdy gulls vying for scraps. Yuan gets nuggets pressed into dinosaur shapes and sweet potato fries and fruit punch. ( He immediately starts making them fight.) Zahn gets a tempura plate sampler and green tea. Wei Ying gets a burger, onion rings, and without thinking about it, a beer. Zahn says nothing, but Wei Ying could almost feel the weight of disapproval. "Just one won't hurt," Wei Ying says. "It won't even set off the alchohol detector on the deck hopper."

"Hmn."

The drinks arrive first of course, and Wei Ying starts to take a drink. Zahn immediately reaches out, stopping him. Wei Ying can't help the slight flinch. "Is there a problem officer?" Wei Ying asks. He tries for humor but misses.

"The lake must first be given her due," the security officer says, disapproving.

"What?"

"Pour some of the beer out the window," Zahn said patiently.

"For the lake," Wei Ying said blankly.

"The lake is thirsty?" Yuan asks, brow furrowed.

"It's a custom, to pay respect to the lake," Zahn explains. "Food dropped into the lake must not be retrieved, it belongs to the lake, and one must pour a drink for the lake before drinking yourself."

Yuan frowns at his punch, looking worried. "I don't want lake-jie to be mad at me," he decides, and before Wei Ying can stop him, he tries to toss the contents of his glass into the water. Unfortunately, the glass goes out the window along with the punch.

"Yuan!" Wei says in exasperation. He feels instantly terrible about the way the little boy freezes. At the same time, he feels a spike of anxiety about the cup, stupidly out of proportion to the accident.

"No harm was done," Zahn says.

"Harm!? You're security, Fleet littering fines are ruinous and we're still under probation!"

"An accident," Zahn says. "Is hardly littering. You are fine."

"Thanks I know," Wei Ying says, and immediately regrets everything. He unthinkingly starts to take a drink, only to be stopped once more by Zahn's hand on his arm. "Seriously?!"

Zahn just stares at him.

Wei Ying sighs, makes absolutely no comments about quaint folk religions (North America also having everything from radiation worshipping death cults to gene mods who thought they were literally gods to ancient web comic characters and saints invented by fantasy authors) and pours some his beer out. "There. Happy?"

Zahn nods. "Mn."

#after the storm #boat boys #the untamed #wei ying has the traumas

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a-very-fond-farewell · 4 years

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The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 24/?

CLAMP AU n.3 [chengyu? yucheng? (JC/MXY) edition. don’t...question my taste bruh]: “Somewhere, sometime.”

[tw eating disorders mentioned + tw suicide mention (body sacrifice)]

[ok fam. ok. I get it. I would basically ship JC with a rock if it meant I could play with my crack AUs. but I have solid evidence for this one. I promise you.]

[so, “Kobato” from CLAMP is possibly my favorite series from them. it’s 6 volumes long, roughly 40 chapters (and I only recently found out there was an epilogue...even though it was not there in my published version of the series. bc your local cryptid did in fact buy the entire thing in the flesh, that’s how much I love it)]

[in this AU I’ll change some things for the sake of consistency, but I suggest you read it bc the hurt/comfort and pining is enjoyable...so...if you read my silly AU I’m afraid I will spoil the plot for u :( and that’s the last thing I want to do...I understand if you decide to go read the manga and skip my prompt. it’s ok, I’m fine, go and have fun ;-;]

[if you kept reading, hi :D]

[now. am I uncomfortable with certain common tropes in CLAMP’s work in general? yes. especially the age gaps between some of the characters, some of which are not adults. hence the reason behind the changes in this AU. but! the aesthetics fam. the beautiful drawings. the cute outfits. (*ﾉ▽ﾉ)

do you see these?? how cute would Mo XuanYu look in these fam?? I honestly hc him enjoying skirts and feminine outfits a whole lot, but you can imagine him with pants and they would be just as cute. my favorite one is the second from the left btw.]

(imagine Mo XuanYu like this btw and check out the fancomic by the same op! an anon suggested it to me a while ago and now I’m hooked!)

[other mangacaps bc you need visuals:

yeah. angry boy meets bby with a mission to accomplish, bonding over their inferiority complex. yep. I only love the nicest things in life. that’s me.

also look at my baby girl ;-; so cuTe]

[the title is from the ost from the anime series, “Itsuka dokoka de” (check it out!). the anime feels more cohesive than the original manga, possibly bc the pacing is handled a little bit better (since the manga was cut short and the end felt a bit sloppy, but the emotional engagement was still good). and I remember being 17 and crying like a baby when this song came in. if you don’t have time for the manga binge the anime instead! there are plot holes in both of them and the stories are different but still both very enjoyable if you like soft things and angsty vibes.]

[enjoy!]

When YanLi saw him for the first time in front of her door, at the beginning of spring, she thought XuanYu was too pretty and too young for his own good. Sitting across her on the floor, a tea set between them as he politely answered her questions, the boy couldn’t have looked older than sixteen yet he assured her he was of age and well into adulthood. Which seemed pretty difficult to assess, not with the way he dressed: cute button down, beret slightly askew on top of his pretty head and an old-looking suitcases in hand. She didn’t mention the stuffed black rabbit poking out from the front pocket of his luggage, which seemed more of a comfort thing than a reliable source of company.

Moreover, Jin Ling seemed transfixed by him, toddling his way towards their guest asking for cuddles... something her son had never done in front of strangers.

XuanYu refused to give his last name, nor did he have an ID he could show her, nor did he seem worried about how strange that was. And YanLi knew ZiXuan would have been against it, but she couldn’t leave the kid looking all over Lanling for a place to stay... so she gave him the only available room in their rundown pension.

She only hoped Jiang Cheng would be a nice neighbor and leave the kid alone. Who knew what horrors XuanYu was running away from, after all.

When XiChen heard from YanLi of her new tenant, he would have never guessed the kid to look so naive. Not in a bad way, mind you. But his smiles, for how genuine they seemed to be, looked a little bit too big. A little bit too strained not to be a distraction tactic from his part. Or maybe XiChen had lived too long surrounded by fake smiles and closed off people to not worry.

That’s probably why he gave XuanYu a job when YanLi asked him to look over the kid. More to prove himself there were still trustworthy people in the world than to give the younger man a chance. He couldn’t even pay him a full salary, not with the debt collectors breathing on his neck as he tried to run his late mother’s kindergarten.

But maybe that would have been enough for now. A starting point for something better, something new.

A-Yuan had always known the kindergarten used to be an orphanage back in the days, but now he had reached an age where doubts stuck to his head instead of being forgotten with the passing of time. Wen Qing and A-Ning were always busy -be it in the hospital or in university- and A-Yuan didn’t know if they loved him enough to keep him. Ever since granny had passed away he had wondered, day after day, when his cousins would have left him behind for good.

He was thinking about such things when he first met XuanYu, on the man’s first day on the job as a teaching assistant. A-Yuan was mulling over his sadness when XuanYu had come to his rescue, asking him what was wrong... before enthusiastically praising his cousins for working so hard after hearing they were late to take A-Yuan home. XuanYu stayed with him and they played on the swings as they waited for A-Ning to come pick him up, apologizing profusely.

On the way home, his cousin held him close and kissed his forehead as he asked him if he had had fun with the new teacher. And A-Yuan felt less doubtful afterwards.

After hearing the story from her brother, Wen Qing had made it her job to look into XuanYu and his weird approach to life in general. She took every opportunity she could grasp to spy on the younger man, lunch breaks be damned. She needed to confirm if the kid was a trust worthy person or a runaway child pretending to be older than what he actually was. Well, maybe tailing an unsuspecting young man on the streets of Lanling in scrubs and sunglasses would be considered a bit much, she could admit as much. But it was the thought that counted, no?

Her friend MianMian told her to knock it off and talk to the kid like a normal human being, but the truth was that... well, XuanYu was really too weird to be considered normal. He seldom put himself in dangerous situations without much care, such as picking up a random (and still lit) cigarette from the ground just to give it back to the person who had “accidentally dropped it”. Other times he would cross a road without looking left and right first, risking to be run over by cars at every corner. He never, never, fumbled with a phone and he frequently talked to himself... sometimes even directing his words to that creepy stuffed rabbit of his.

No thank you, Wen Qing felt safer behind light poles and crumpled newspapers held upside down. Even if that made her look sketchy as fuck.

Wen Ning made sure to arrive on time to pick A-Yuan up after that time, often chatting with XuanYu as they waited for his baby cousin to retrieve his backpack and raincoat. It was refreshing to speak with the younger man, no matter how weird he acted sometimes. Like that time A-Yuan asked him to tie his shoe-laces for him and XuanYu didn’t know how to do it. Or that time they caught the man taking a nap on the floor in the middle of the school hall. Or that time XiChen had ordered a cake for one of the kids’ birthday and XuanYu didn’t seem to know how to sing the birthday song.

Wen Ning had no place to judge, after all. But XuanYu’s smiles felt like balm on his heart. And if his sweet voice followed Wen Ning home as he bounced A-Yuan in his arms, well. Nobody needed to know that.

The last thing Meng Yao would have expected to hear that summer day when he called the kindergarten was a voice so different from XiChen’s. Startled, he had confusedly asked if the kid worked there and how so, given that the school definitely couldn’t afford to hire anyone. He ought to know. He was the debt collector.

But the kid apologized, introduced himself, and then explained XiChen had offered him a part-time job out of kindness more than out of need. The idiot. XiChen should have remembered who his money belonged to instead of taking charity cases left and right.

But when Meng Yao said as much to naive XuanYu, the other vehemently protested, surprising the debt collector with strong opinions on how he shouldn’t underestimate other people’s intelligence and kindness in the first place.

Meng Yao laughed out at that, genuinely so.

There was more to that kid XuanYu than what one would have expected.

Nie HuaiSang caught a first glimpse of the mystery man only in late summer, when XuanYu stepped into his cake shop to look at the display. His coworker MianMian seemed to recognize the younger man immediately, greeting him by saying they had a friend in common, namely Wen Qing. The kid merely tilted his head and answered he had never formerly met “Miss. Wen” and that he only knew who she was from what the woman’s younger brother had told him about her.

MianMian shrugged and smiled at him.

To which HuaiSang asked him what they could do for him and XuanYu... just... stopped working. Saying that he had wondered if he could do something for them instead. Apparently, Wen Ning had let it slip they were currently understaffed and needed a hand to deliver their sweets.

Delighted, MianMian set him to work, no matter how many times HuaiSang assured her they didn’t need to force the kid to help them... also because they didn’t actually have the means to pay him in kind. But XuanYu refused money altogether, simply asking them to let him help.

To their amusement (and horror) XuanYu didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, so he insisted on covering the deliveries by foot in the neighborhood instead.

HuaiSang called XiChen on the phone that same evening, asking him to give the kid some slack the following day. And maybe buy him some balm for blisters as well.

Jin Ling was young but he wasn’t stupid. Turning three had made him wiser, he knew as much. So he knew XuanYu was magical. He just did.

His pretty-gege talked with stuffed animals, always wore nice things, and kept in his satchel bag a vial filling up with magical candies every time he did something nice for others. A-Ling had seen it with his own eyes, that time XuanYu had put a plaster on his scrapped knee and blew on it to make the pain go away: the golden candy had appeared in the bottle out of nowhere and XuanYu had asked him to keep the secret.

And A-Ling may have been young, but he wasn’t a snitch.

No sir.

ZiXuan eventually stumbled upon their new tenant even though YanLi had tried everything in her power to prevent it. He was very displeased with her: taking a scrawny kid in, cutting his rent in half merely because he couldn’t afford to pay the room in full. Utter nonsense.

No matter how much this kid XuanYu praised A-Ling’s personality or YanLi’s cooking, no matter how much he smiled and made himself look accommodating and unthreatening. ZiXuan didn’t work pro bono even at the firm, let alone for his wife’s business.

Yet, when he asked to be let inside the kid’s room to formally discuss the terms of his contract (and tell him to pack his things and leave at the end of summer), ZiXuan was left speechless. There was no bed, no table or chairs. The fridge wasn’t humming and the AC wasn’t working. The only things he could see were the younger man’s clothes neatly folded in his open suitcase or hanging by the window to dry. No books, no snacks, no nothing.

Usually tenants brought their things in right off the bat, their stuff mailed in within a week after moving in. YanLi was very particular about it, she would have not overlooked something like that. But maybe she had been too busy with A-Ling these past few months and hadn’t noticed the kid was actually too poor to even breathe.

And now that he looked at him, XuanYu looked suspiciously skinny.

Was he sleeping on the floor? Didn’t he have covers for the colder season? Was his fridge broken, empty, or -gods forbid- purposely left with no power because the kid couldn’t afford the electricity bill?

“Do you actually live like this?”

XuanYu didn’t answer to that, but smiled anyway. It looked sinister in a way ZiXuan couldn’t explain, afraid of the things such a young man may or may not have endured in the past. And was maybe still enduring now.

The following day ZiXuan gave the kid their spare futon they bought in Japan on their honeymoon. They never had guests anyway and they could afford to pay for a tenant’s electricity bill every now and then, they weren’t poor.

Certainly YanLi would have agreed with him on the matter.

JinGy saw it. He did! He wasn’t lying! Xuan-ge was there, surrounded by darkness and shadows, looking over the children during their nap time, only a sliver of light coming from the door left ajar... casting shadows on half of his pretty face.

And he saw him reviving that stuffed black rabbit he always had on him.

The rabbit just rose on his hind legs and turned his head up and started whispering things to Xuan-ge, who nodded every now and then in deep though.

JinGyi had read about how paper-man talismans had been stuff of legends in the past. His books spoke of ancient times in which even corpses could be brought back to life. How even animals could turn into godly beasts if enough resentful energy polluted them. But he would have never thought magic could actually be real and so easy to play with.

And Xuan-ge had looked nothing but beautiful as he was talking to the stuffed animal, humming softly under his breath.

When Jiang Cheng dropped out of university for the second time, YanLi didn’t say anything and instead welcomed him back in his old room. So much for enrolling in law school at twenty-three, uh? ZiXuan would have been disappointed in him like the first time that had happened in his bachelor anyway, no point in avoiding the man. It was autumn anyway: it was either going back to the apartment complex or look for a new flatmate. But the school housing had rightfully kicked him out after dropping out in the middle of the academic year, so there would have been little hope for him to find a new place anytime soon.

What he did not expect to find was a new tenant living next door.

Sleeping in front of the door, clutching a satchel bag and a fucking stuffed animal on his lap.

Jiang Cheng jolted him awake and took in the sight of his shoulder length hair, his long lashes and sleepy eyes and thought he looked ridiculous. Wearing a silly hat and moccasins, purple shadows under his eyes, a confused expression on his worn out face. When asked what the hell he was doing there, sleeping out of his room instead of inside of it, the younger man said he had forgotten his keys inside that morning.

He was clearly an idiot, so Jiang Cheng walked away and returned to his room after more than a year away. If someone asked him who had rung YanLi to bring the spare keys to help the idiot he would have shrugged at them and shut the door in their face.

He didn’t have time for that, he had to think how to ask XiChen to let him back to work at the school the following day.

A-Qing had seen many things in life, met many horrible people, dealt with the scum of the scum... but she had yet to meet XuanYu.

A menace. A hurricane. A fool. The amount of times she had had to scoop him up from the ground after he had clumsily slipped on invisible bananas and such should have earned her a honorary title for outstanding citizen. It’s been months since his arrival and the kids had already learned to make way whenever they saw him. He inspired fear even in their tiny heads, honestly. What a fellow teaching assistant, really.

She was just there to score brownie points for his electives and internship program to become a social service worker, that was true. But she cared about the kids enough to know she had to do something about that. The children loved XuanYu and they were this fucking close to either worship him like a small deity or criminal and something ought to be done.

The last thing she would have expected to see, however, was Jiang Cheng coming back so soon. Crawling back from university to ask to work there, wagging his tail like the lovesick dog he was. She could easily imagine what the older student would have said to XiChen, something on the line of “you know goddamn well I’m not doing it for the money. I grew up here, I don’t want to see this place crumbling down. I’m definitely not doing it because I’m in love with you and seeing you sad makes me want to gag.”

Well, maybe the last part could be considered artistic license from her part, but judging by what she could overhear behind XiChen’s office door... yep. She had definitely nailed the part about being fond of the ex-orphanage and for the rest... the sentiment was there. The pining bastard.

“Do you need anything, A-Qing?”, XuanYu asked her out of no-fucking-where, startling her as she pretended to dust off the floor very close to a door. Cheek-plastered-on-it kind of close.

“Nothing. Mind your business,” she answered, flustered as fuck.

XuanYu couldn’t be that naive, he knew what he was fucking doing. His creepy little smile so similar to the one the debt collect always had on his face. No wonder XiChen had fallen for such a tricky bitch.

“Then will you help me find JinGyi? He doesn’t want me to help him with his project for the festival and went into hiding again.”

There, that smile and knowing gaze. Judging poser. He looked much older than his alleged twenty years. He knew what he was fucking doi...

“You?!”

Jiang Cheng’s honest-to-gods screech pulled A-Qing out of her thoughts. She turned and had to witness XiChen amiably patting Jiang Cheng on the head as their boss explained him how XuanYu worked there.

“It’s been almost six months now, he’s a very valuable kid and helped out around here while you were studying.”

Jiang Cheng was both livid and red with longing, because his touch-starved ass was all over that hand patting him platonically on the head. He was also angry, which was default for him... but there was something else underneath. Something promising in the way he stared XuanYu down.

Maybe A-Qing could win some candy by betting with the kids about such unexpected turn of events.

ZiZhen believed A-Yi. If his friend had told him the new teacher assistant was a witch then he was right. So they had started researching witches at the school, but only found a couple of colored books on the matter, mostly useless. All but one, telling the story of a nanny called Mary Poppins... some western thing.

But everything checked for the most part. The hat was there, every day a different one, but ultimately never leaving XuanYu’s head. The umbrella was not, but both him and A-Yuan had seen their gege with a parasol once and that was enough. His satchel contained infinite amount of things, from sweets to possessed stuffed animals, like a qiankun bag from the legends! He talked with things as if he could control them.

Well, even the teacher sometimes tried to convince the printer to work with sweet words, gently coaxing it back to life... maybe that was just how adults functioned. Even his dad would ask the fridge where his favorite cake had disappeared sometimes. Adults were weird.

Fuck Lanling. Rain day and night, autumn planning everyone’s demise by flooding every bloody year. Xue Yang was over it.

He took a random umbrella from the rack by the door of the convenience store and left without a second thought, already wondering what he could say to convince XingChen to offer him dinner somewhere new. The man wasn’t married anymore after all, so Xue Yang could technically have his way with him now, right?

“Excuse me!”

Xue Yang was not in the mood for people calling him out on his bullshit that night, but he turned anyway and saw the weirdest thing. A young man roughly his age, maybe a year or so younger, drenched from head to toe after rushing to him. He was panting, clutching a plastic bag full of cleaning supplies from the convenience store Xue Yang had just left.

“I believe you mistakenly took my umbrella,” the other said, pretty face framed by wet hair sticking to his forehead and cheeks.

Amused, Xue Yang shut the clear plastic umbrella he had “mistakenly taken” and held it at arm’s length by the handle, directing the pointy edge to the other like a sword. Hell if he was going to get wet himself, he needed to prove something to the idiot. He could handle a bit of rain for the sake of being dramatic.

“You want it back?” Xue Yang asked, rising his chin and arching an eyebrow at the other. The man nodded, holding his now wet beret in place on top of his head as if he was more worried about it falling on the ground than keeping his crown dry.

“I knew it was someone else’s when I took it.”

“But...?”

“And what’ll you give me back for it? What are you gonna do about it?”

This should have taught him not to mess with him: he didn’t even have to use his business tone to make the other take a step back. Meng Yao, the bastard, had taught him smiles went a long way in dealing with stupid people after all.

“Right, if I take it from you... you won’t have one to go back home with.”

Uh?

“Wait here. I’ll go buy you one at the convenience store. I’ll be back.”

Uh??

The idiot actually run back to the store and purchased him a fucking umbrella. And Xue Yang was twice as stupid because he waited for him to come back, startled as he was. The idiot was smiling megawatt bright when he came back as well, what the fuck?

The sick bastard extended the clear plastic umbrella to him like Xue Yang had done earlier, but he held it by the middle, as if surrendering his weapon. It was fairly similar to the one Xue Yang had stolen anyway, why bother asking for his umbrella back?

“Did your dead mother give this particular one to you or something?”

The bite in his words only mildly deterred the other man, who pressed his lips together before forcing an even bigger smile on his face.

“No. It’s pretty cheap. But it’s mine. It’s the first thing I bought with my money.”

Xue Yang left after that. With the stolen umbrella. Because he was still a scumbag and not a sentimental asshole. But he was very quiet that evening when XingChen treated him to some fancy takeout on his couch while lovingly drying Xue Yang’s hair with a towel.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Qin Su worried over Jiang Cheng. He was her best worker, but she knew for a fact that he had a million part-time jobs in town and she didn’t want to overwork him. She also knew he would give all of his hard-earned money to XiChen anyway. All to pay a stupid debt. The huge lovesick idiot.

Was he the fastest delivery driver? Yes. Was he the most well behaved of his staff? Not even close. But he was respectful enough to work over his issues and she trusted him with doing his job at the end of the day.

So when she found a young man in a frilly outfit waiting for her on the lobby of her shop asking for Jiang Cheng... well, she was pleasantly surprised.

He introduced himself as XuanYu and held a lunch box in his hands, saying Jiang Cheng had forgotten it at home. Which left A-Su properly impressed. How could a man as angry as Jiang Cheng secure himself such a lovely person was beyond her comprehension, honestly.

He was adorable and she wanted to be his sister like, yesterday.

But when Jiang Cheng came back from a delivery, entering the dumpling shop with his helmet still on, he stared XuanYu down and told him off right off the bat.

“Not you again,” he said, to A-Su’s utter confusion, “Can’t you take a fucking hint? I’m already avoiding you at work. I don’t want to be your friend.”

Something akin to hurt painted XuanYu’s feature for a fraction of a second before he could retrieve his smile and point at the lunch box.

“Your sister asked me to give this to you on my way out. A-Ling helped making rice cakes this time and wanted to hear from you if you liked them or not.”

Qin Su could have easily missed the change in XuanYu’s voice at that, that’s how much of a good actor he was. But Jiang Cheng had no face even to feel ashamed for lashing out at the kid like that. How much older could he be from XuanYu, three years? Two? Had nobody taught him some respect?

“XuanYu, if he bullies you again you come here. Am I understood?”

Like hell she was gonna let this gem of a child slip away from Jiang Cheng’s hands.

Not in a million years.

Song Lan breathed in and out. In and out. The clear morning air surrounded him like an old friend, hugging him closely as he clutched the papers for his divorce.

XingChen had signed them in the end. Five years together were now in the past for him.

Maybe they had been too young back then, when they had taken the chance to get married the moment the government announced the change in the law for people like them. How old have they been, twenty-three? Twenty-four? Another lifetime. An existence away.

He wished he could cry. It would have been easier.

But, as he turned a corner, someone stumbled into him and sent the papers scattering on the sidewalk. Song Lan tried to save them from being dirtied on a puddle but was unsuccessful. He didn’t know why he bothered anymore. It felt like the last piece of his lover had left and Song Lan couldn’t even prevent something as simple as that. XingChen’s signature dirtied in a pool, but not enough to be washed away. What a joke.

The young man in front him bowed down, apologizing profusely, trying to save the documents at the best of his abilities. He even suggested finding a public toilet to dry the sheets under the hot air blowing machine, the silly man.

Song Lan smiled instead, reassuring him it was fine.

He was fine.

But the kid accidentally read the first few lines of the agreement before looking up at Song Lan. And where he would have expected pity, Song Lan only saw consternation instead on his pale face. It was so startling to see it, that he had to crouch back down on the ground next to the kid and reassure him everything was fine. It was just paper, it wasn’t important, he didn’t have to feel so guilty about...

“It is important. Your life is important.”

Such a dramatic sentence, uttered so vehemently, should have sounded weird to Song Lan. Especially because he disapproved of such antics in the first place. But it sounded so sincere, so earnest that he felt touched for a moment.

So he helped the kid up on his feet and asked him to walk a bit with him, to keep him company. Reserved as he was, he would have never thought possible opening up to a stranger the way he did that day. But there was something calming about the kid, almost as if he had been put on earth to soothe other people’s existence.

So he told him how his husband had fallen in love with someone else, someone much younger than them. How this had strained their marriage even if Song Lan had known all along his husband had the ability to fall in love with more than one person at a time. But Song Lan was monogamous and would have never justified forcing his lover to suppress his feelings just to please him. So it had been Song Lan himself to call it quits and wish him all the luck in the world.

The kid had started crying at some point, without Song Lan even noticing at first.

“Why are you crying? Please no, I didn’t wan to upset you.”

“So much love. In different ways but... it’s too much. There’s so much of it, of course I’m crying for you and your loved one.”

Song Lan was many things. Too stern, too rigid, too peculiar about who could touch him or not, too cold in expressing his emotions. But he felt warm then, in front of a kid crying for him in the middle of the street, one day of late autumn.

“Thank you.”

***

XuanYu let it slip once with Mrs. Jin how little he remembered of his past.

It wasn’t a lie, he really didn’t remember what it had been of him before he had met her, asking for a room. But the kind woman just assumed he was talking about his past or youth, so he didn’t correct her on the matter.

Knowing the truth would have scared her, after all.

But he still let himself trust her that day as they sat in front of a pot of tea and he pretended to drink and eat the pastries on the low table. He didn’t need to eat or drink. He wasn’t even sure he had a digestive system.

“I only remember... a song.”

“A song?”

“Yes. Someone singing every night before falling asleep. I don’t think it was meant for me to hear... but my body remembers the shivers. The feeling of being loved.”

“The body remembers the weirdest things, XuanYu. You should trust it more.”

He smiled at that, wriggling his hands on the handkerchief where he had hidden the pastries from sight.

“I’m pretty sure that song wasn’t for me. My body was merely there to listen.”

YanLi looked uncomfortable at that, something scary painting her features.

“Maybe I was eavesdropping,” he reassured her with a self-deprecating joke, not sure if that would have made her feel more at ease or not, “Maybe I was listening in, hoping such lovely words could be directed at me for once.”

Mrs. Jin sipped her tea for a long while afterwards, before finding the resolution to look up and stare him down with a serious expression.

“Unrequited feelings hurt, don’t they?”

XuanYu didn’t know what she meant by that, but he nodded anyway.

He heard something rustling in his bag and hid the sweets inside of it the moment YanLi turned to clear the table. If A-Ling heard someone munching their protests away from inside of the bag, he didn’t snitch on XuanYu and retrieved playing with Fairy on the carpeted floor next to him instead.

Lan Zhan was disappointed in him, XuanYu knew that much. They were admiring the sunset from the small balcony in their room, folding laundry.

XuanYu always wondered why Lan Zhan assumed the form of a black stuffed rabbit, of all things, but he didn’t want to pry. He didn’t even know his real name. The other had told him he used to be a human in his past life and that he hadn’t technically reincarnated in this lifetime. That his current form was just a mean to a goal, that he could use it to guide XuanYu and help him better that way without expending much spiritual energy.

He told him someone dear to him taught him how to manipulate paper-man talismans in his previous life. How similar the process had been to move around in a stuffed animal’s body. How convenient.

XuanYu believed he secretly loved it, even if Lan Zhan would have never said as much. He already talked very little to begin with.

“You told her you don’t remember your past.”

“That I did.”

“Don’t do it again”

XuanYu folded the last towel on his lap and then let Lan Zhan take a nap on it. He felt silly having to take showers and pretend to be a normal human being. He hated inconveniencing the Jins with him, accepting their bedding and paid kitchen appliances and so on. But if he wanted to accomplish his mission he had to make an effort to look normal... instead of spirited away from another world or maybe simply another era.

“I won’t do it again, don’t worry Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan was disappointed, but he was also patient to a fault.

Sure, it would have been much appreciated if Mo XuanYu didn’t lose him around every other day. This time the younger man had forgotten to pick him up from the floor where he had been reading stories to the children at the kindergarten.

But Lan Zhan was also a stuffed animal now, so it wasn’t like he could move around and risk being seeing by normal humans. His body was a vessel and any damage would have had repercussions on his soul as well.

What to do.

He tried not to panic when he felt someone picking him up from the floor after an hour or so. He silently prayed for them not to be A-Qing: even in this life she was too smart for her own good and he couldn’t risk being found out so soon. Mo XuanYu wasn’t even halfway to complete his mission and Lan Zhan couldn’t...

“I’m sure A-Yu is looking for you, little guy. What are doing all the way back here?”

It was always difficult to hear his older brother’s voice in this life. To see his face, to notice how sad he was even in this new reincarnation of his.

Lan Zhan didn’t move a single muscle as XiChen dusted him off and put him in his apron front pocket as he looked for “A-Yu”.

In order to give a second chance to Mo XuanYu, Lan Zhan had sacrificed any possibility to ever reincarnate until his mission was accomplished. So XiChen didn’t have a younger brother in this lifetime and he would have not had one for a while. Lan Zhan missed him, but they had to wait for a bit more.

They still had three months to fill the bottle the King of Hell had entrusted Mo XuanYu with. Then he would have entered the list for reincarnation once more and everything will have been fine in the end.

Lan Zhan owed the kid his life, so he trusted him.

No matter what.

XuanYu remembered the boy who had stolen his umbrella. He remembered him well enough to recognize him when he found him crawling on the floor, a stab wound in his belly, one winter night.

Panicked, he asked Lan Zhan what they could do as he instinctively pressed the wound with his bare hands. Lan Zhan didn’t dare move not to attract attention on himself. The other man snarled out at XuanYu, asking him why did he even bother, seemingly recognizing him.

“I took your fucking umbrella. Hate me and leave me alone.”

“Ridiculous.”

Lan Zhan would have been proud of him for that remark, but XuanYu was too scared to think about it. He didn’t have a phone and he didn’t even know the number for emergencies. He wasn’t even qualified to be a teacher. How had he survived until then. He was useless and stupid and...

“What the fuck?” Jiang Cheng’s voice came in a whisper behind him.

What a sorry view the older man had to take in that night: a pool of blood staining otherwise clean clothes, a moaning boy on the ground in restless pain, a crying mess of a sad excuse of a human pressing on a throbbing wound next to him.

Jiang Cheng muttered something about the boy being one of Meng Yao’s men, that they should leave him there to die for all he cared.

The man under XuanYu barked back, telling him he had tried to “convince the idiot of the same”. But XuanYu was horrified by what he had just heard.

“People die for nothing. People die for fucking nothing. You don’t leave someone behind just because you fucking hate them.”

XuanYu has never cursed in this brief, borrowed life of his. Maybe spending so much time with Jiang Cheng had rubbed some of his habits off on him in the end.

Startled, Jiang Cheng seemed to agree with him because he fished out his phone and called an ambulance right away.

The stabbed man laughed at that.

Lan Zhan was clutched in XuanYu’s hands as they waited in the corridor of a badly lit hospital. The kid was crying, hard. He must have remembered how his family in Mo Manor had mistreated him in the past, how easily his own relatives had starved him off just out of spite. How already impossibly emaciated he had been when he had sacrificed his body for Wei Ying, to bring him back in a weakened vessel just to seek revenge. Just to let his hatred run free.

Such cruelty had earned him nothing but distrust from the hell judges, who sentenced him to never be reincarnated again. Only when Lan Zhan had ascended to heaven -many centuries after reaching immortality- he had been able to make them relent.

If Mo XuanYu could prove to be a good human being during a trial time of one year on planet earth, filling a vial with good actions in the form of golden gems, then they would have considered Lan Zhan’s proposal. Mo XuanYu would have atoned his sin and be granted a new life, a clean record, and a second chance at happiness.

Seeing someone almost die in front of him must have awaken something ugly in him. His stained hands, the iron stench in the air. All that blood... like the last thing he had most probably seen in his previous life before his body sacrifice. A scarlet array under his feet, another soul replacing his in his own body.

Lan Zhan let himself be held tightly in Mo XuanYu’s hands that night at the hospital.

And hugged back without anyone else noticing.

Xiao XingChen. That was the name of the man showing up at the kindergarten one week later. XuanYu had never seen him before, but the man hugged him in front of the kids, alerting both XiChen and Jiang Cheng.

“Thank you,” the tall man said in between tears, holding him tight.

“I don’t understand. I...”

“You saved A-Yang. Thank you.”

XuanYu pressed his lips together tightly at that, so overwhelmed he didn’t know what to say. His fingertips hurting with sometimes akin to electricity the more he let himself be held so fiercely by the other man.

He started crying in earnest only after the man had left, surrounded by the children who worried and fussed over him. He fell asleep with them during nap time and when he woke up he found Jiang Cheng placing a quilt over him.

Caught red handed, the older man feigned disinterest in the beginning... but then he sat down next to him. Just like he had done in the hospital one week ago.

“Did you see someone die before?” Jiang Cheng asked then, awkwardly scratching the back of his head, “You had such a strong... reaction to my words. It was insensitive of me. I apologize for angering you. I’ll better myself.”

XuanYu didn’t answer at that.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to sacrifice yourself to hatred and revenge. How much it had scarred him to be brought back to life, but only as a worn out set of robes on top of someone else’s soul. How distant he had felt when the Yiling Patriarch had inhabited his body and had let himself be touched by someone else.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood what it meant to be touched in the flesh but be utterly unreachable as a soul. Or how much it hurt to become an empty body filled by someone foreign and new. Someone who could wear his skin better than him.

Jiang Cheng would have never understood. And thank all the gods for that.

So XuanYu... Mo XuanYu kept quiet and smiled instead.

Lan Zhan didn’t trust Jiang Cheng. He hadn’t in the past and he wasn’t gonna start now. Wei Ying would have been so disappointed in him for thinking badly of his baby brother, but there was little Lan Zhan could do about that.

Wei Ying wasn’t there to judge him for it.

Mo XuanYu would wake up every morning and wash himself, get dressed and tidy up the room before leaving. He would fix his appearance in a mirror Young Lady Jiang had gifted him in autumn, making sure his hat was still in place.

“What would happen if I were to...?”

“You must keep your hat on... even when you sleep. You know this much.”

“I wear a headband to bed.”

“And what of it?”

“It’s... silly.”

“Nobody can see you in your sleep. Why the sudden worry?”

Mo XuanYu said nothing in response to that, but Lan Zhan knew. The kid had never worried too much about his appearance aside from looking proper and well dressed. He had never fussed over his features, but recently he had taken the habit to walk dangerously close to makeup stores and check various displays at the convenience store close by. Lan Zhan knew Mo XuanYu had remembered his past... how he had quickly realized he was already an adult. With needs and desires.

But now a brand new reincarnation of Jiang WanYin would wait for him every morning to walk to work together. Now Jiang Cheng acted pleasantly enough to be considered kind and doting to someone starved of affection like Mo XuanYu had always been. Which wasn’t planned, it had never been.

Lan Zhan didn’t like where this was going.

He didn’t like it at all.

Nie HuaiSang came to bring a cake for XuanYu one day or so before the end of the year, snow sticking to his hair and flushed cheeks.

“I don’t know when your birthday is... so I’m pretty sure I’m late to the game. But I wanted to thank you for helping me and MianMian that one time. So I made a cake for you. I hope you like strawberries.”

Mo XuanYu had no idea if he liked them or not. He couldn’t even eat.

He started crying in the middle of his room, where HuaiSang had placed the boxed cake on top of his low table.

Panicked, HuaiSang jumped up and out of the room to alert Jiang Cheng next door. But upon seeing the other man’s worried expression XuanYu cried even harder.

“What did you do to him, you bastard?”

“I’m not the one who used to prank people all the time. Grow up!”

“You clearly did something horrible to him for...”

“A-Cheng we’re not twelve anymore. Who do you take me for?”

XuanYu took his chance to stuff his face with cake, gulping it down bit by bit even if he knew he didn’t have the necessary organs to process it without vomiting it all out in an hour or so. He had tried many times to hold food down to no avail. His body rejecting it as if it was poisonous and dangerous.

He had tried so many times... to practice. To be able to appreciate YanLi’s generous cooking, to help A-Ling and the children at school prep their lunches and maybe... maybe to eat with Jiang Cheng every now and then.

Nie HuaiSang hugged him and patted his head, confused but too scared to ask for an explanation. Mo XuanYu smiled at him and lied, saying his cake was the best he had ever eaten. It wasn’t the best. It was simply the first.

He had no way to compare it with anything else, really.

Wen Ning had heard about his “stomachache” from XiChen, who had known all about it from YanLi and Jiang Cheng. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise for XuanYu when he saw the older boy in front of his apartment complex the last day of the year.

But it was a surprise.

“Can we talk for a bit?” Wen Ning asked, holding his umbrella up for XuanYu to walk beside him, protecting him from the icy snow.

They walked to the nearest park, sitting under the gazebo to watch the snow falling down. Their heavy coats keeping them warm, despite the cold.

They used to take long walks back from the kindergarten with A-Yuan after school, since the Wens lived close to XuanYu. Before Jiang Cheng came back anyway.

Wen Ning looked uncomfortable, fidgeting with his fingers as he tried to find the right words. He surprised XuanYu by telling him how, in the past, he had suffered from an eating disorder and had been hospitalized for a while in his teens. How worried his sister and their grandma had been for him, how much they helped him in his recovery. How alone he had felt for years still, no matter how loved he was.

“A-Yuan told me he never saw you eat. So I was wondering if you needed help.”

It wasn’t the case, but XuanYu knew he meant well. Telling him everything was fine would have only worried him more, so he tried to explain an half-truth that could satisfy him. Saying it was difficult for him to process food, that in the past he had suffered from malnutrition and now he had digestive issues.

He was talking about his past life, but he figured that could work as well.

When they parted ways in front of the apartment complex, Wen Ning asked to hold XuanYu’s hands for a bit. He cradled them carefully, as if they were precious. His slender fingers cupping XuanYu’s smaller palms almost reverently.

“I know you don’t feel the same about me. But I’ll ask you to look after yourself anyway. Not out of obligation for me... but out of respect for yourself, if nothing else.”

The moment Wen Ning let go of his hands, Jiang Cheng stepped out of the front door of the building and saw them.

He said nothing and walked away after stepping out of the gate.

Lan Zhan would have very much liked to flip a finger at Jiang WanYin’s forehead. Hard. Wei Ying would have done the same, he was sure.

Wei Ying would have also smacked some sense in his baby brother, forcing him to face his feelings and take responsibility for what he was doing to poor Mo XuanYu.

Who was currently waiting for the other man’s return like a dog by his room balcony, surveying the front courtyard like a bird of prey from above.

Lan Zhan tried to coax the kid inside, reminding him snow was still falling down and that his beanie was slipping away. He tried to be gentle about it, knowing how much XuanYu had grown resentful of the hats he had to constantly wear.

But the younger man simply shrugged, saying he wanted to wait for another five minutes. Just one more. Just to make sure.

Jiang Cheng didn’t come back that night.

And Mo XuanYu cried in his sleep clutching the half-empty vial to his chest.

Lan Zhan spent the night watching over him, singing to him the song he had written for Wei Ying. He snuggled close to XuanYu and made sure his wide headband was covering the crown of his head, before pressing himself to the other’s forehead.

He never stopped singing.

Wishing he could take all the pain away.

YanLi, A-Yuan and even ZiXuan knocked on his door to greet him into the new year, despite how XuanYu should have been the one to pay his respects to his landlords.

But they asked him to visit the funeral home with them instead, to say their thanks to YanLi’s parents with offers and flowers.

He dressed in his best clothes, having never been in what seemed to be a modern version of the ancestral halls of his childhood in a past life. The establishment was fairly sterile, with shelves filled with plaques and pictures instead of wooden inscriptions on an altar. The lot of them bowed and said their thanks, chatting with the late Jiangs almost as if they had never left. YanLi apologized to her mother for Jiang Cheng’s absence that year like any other year, while ZiXuan told his father-in-law how they would have visited the Jin ancestors during Chūnjié to make it fair.

XuanYu looked at them and barely kept himself from crying.

On their way back, YanLi explained her parents had died when she was still twelve and Jiang Cheng was merely six. How they had lived in the orphanage run by XiChen’s mother and made friends with the boy, who was YanLi’s classmate. How the siblings stayed there until YanLi came of age and got custody of her baby brother. ZiXuan’s family of lawyers had helped her pro bono and that was how she had met the man and fallen in love with him. Even if it had taken a while for ZiXuan to notice her at first, preoccupied with university and law school as he had been at the time. But the Jins helped her with the inheritance left by the late Madame Yu: the apartment complex where they currently lived.

Watching them explaining their past in such detail moved XuanYu deeply. Feeling as if they wanted to make him part of their family by filling in the gaps for him.

That was still his older brother after all and those were still his sister-in-law and his beloved nephew and he... he loved them. He had missed them so, so much.

And he was about to leave them again soon.

Wen Qing finally showed herself up one day at the park, when Mo XuanYu was taking Fairy out for an evening walk. She approached him by telling the younger man she had assisted in the surgery Xue Yang had undergone some time back.

Lan Zhan (hiding in the kid’s coat pocket) could see how startled the kid was at the mention of the criminal, but he decided to trust this version of Lady Wen as he would have done in the past.

Wei Ying cared deeply for her, after all.

Whatever truths she was about to entrust Mo XuanYu with, Lan Zhan knew the kid could take it.

He hoped as much, at least.

Jiang Cheng came back only for Chinese New Year. Saying he had stayed at XiChen’s since the winter break allowed them to take it easy and figure some stuff out for the following school year.

It hurt to know where he had been all along, but XuanYu braved a smile anyway. He knew how much Jiang Cheng cared for the older man, how much he wanted to save the school from the debt collector. How much he didn’t love XuanYu back.

So he let himself cry one last time before waking up one morning and deciding he had had enough.

He talked with Lan Zhan, asking him to tell him all about Wei WuXian and their love. If XuanYu’s sacrifice had allowed them to be happy as they deserved in the end. If Lan Zhan hated him now, for forcing him away from his loved one, who was currently waiting for him to come back to heaven.

Mo XuanYu knew the couple had sacrificed their chance at reincarnation to allow him to seek a second lifetime for himself. He knew Wei Ying watched over them from up above, waiting for Lan Zhan to secure a new life for the kid.

They talked all day and then well into the night.

By dawn Mo XuanYu had decided what to do.

XuanYu properly met Meng Yao one day of early spring, when flowers weren’t yet brave enough to poke their way out and greet the sun. The man was dressed in black, his hair cut short, a sigarette between his lips as he waited patiently for the kindergarten to open.

It was XuanYu’s duty to open that morning, so he was the one to greet the man.

Upon hearing his voice, Meng Yao immediately recognized him.

“There you are. I was waiting for you.”

“Me?”

“You’re the kid who answered the phone. And the one who helped my subordinate back in winter, right?”

His dimples were so deep, his face so pleasant.

Mo XuanYu remembered him from another lifetime. He remembered how much he had cared for his older brother Jin GuangYao. How hurt he had felt when the other had lied and accused him of harassment just to get rid of him.

But this was a new life and Meng Yao was just a man.

Who happened to have been married with XiChen for a while before turning to a life filled with crime and gang violence.

Wen Qing had told him Meng Yao had initially tried to live far away from his adoptive father Wen RuoHan. All for the sake of marrying XiChen and keep him safe. But XiChen’s mother still had had a debt to pay for the construction of the orphanage, a price too high for her to pay with her poor health and delicate disposition. A debt that XiChen had inherited from her when she had died.

That was why Meng Yao had left him: to go back to his father and ask him to handle the debt himself, supplicating him to overlook such small issue and let him dry XiChen out of every penny and cent instead.

Wen Qing may have learned this only from the gossiping running in her family, with the Wen Clan being as big as it was, but she was pretty sure of what she had told XuanYu. That Meng Yao had simply faked having fallen out of love with XiChen to protect him from his adoptive father and his cruelty. That XiChen still loved him and was waiting for him to fight alongside him instead.

Mo XuanYu knew all of this.

So now he could act and fulfill his mission.

“I want to pay the debt XiChen owes you.”

“You are full of surprises, XuanYu. And how do you plan to do that?”

“I can do many things.”

“You’re very pretty, you can make good money out of it.”

XuanYu considered his words before shaking his head.

“It’s not something I can do.”

“Then what can you do?”

“I’ll solve everything.”

“I’m all ears.”

“But you’ll have to stop making XiChen worry so much.”

“That’s not how business work...”

“Lie to me. Give your word and I’ll... I will solve everything.”

Meng Yao humored him and nodded.

Then and only then, Mo XuanYu took his hat off.

Lan Zhan had watched the entire scene unfold before his eyes without intervening, trusting Mo XuanYu with such an important choice. He took in the sight of the beautiful spiritual light shining brightly on top of XuanYu’s head like a crown.

His soul in full display, its energy so raw it had slowed down time all around them.

Lan Zhan turned around and looked at XiChen, who had just turned a corner and had been walking towards XuanYu to greet him good morning. Frozen in time, his older brother’s face still looked peaceful... simply because he had had no time to notice Meng Yao’s presence quite yet.

Lan Zhan turned once more and saw Jiang WanYin making his way in a rush towards them, surely to protect XuanYu from Meng Yao. When did he arrive? His features trapped in a perpetual frown, scared for the one he truly loved in this lifetime.

Then, Lan Zhan looked up at Mo XuanYu and saw him taking the bottle only half filled with gold... which symbolized his goodwill and generous spirit.

“Will this be enough to grant a wish, Lan Zhan?”

When XuanYu said his name like that he sounded so much like his Wei Ying, full of hope and love.

“It depends on the wish, A-Yu.”

“I reckon it’s not enough for a new reincarnation, eh?”

“It’s enough to save a life... but not yours.”

XuanYu looked crestfallen, but he persevered still.

The bottle transformed into a bag filled with money and XuanYu made his way to XiChen and left it at his feet before smiling up at his mentor and employer.

“I cannot rewrite the past, but maybe I can plan a better future for you.”

Still smiling, XuanYu slowly walked over to Jiang Cheng and said his farewells.

Then he crouched down and took Lan Zhan in his hands, kissing him goodbye on the head affectionately.

“Erase me well, Lan Zhan,” he whispered then.

Before disappearing into thin air.

***

Wei Ying had agreed with him, suggesting the idea himself.

In the end the King of Hell had granted Lan Zhan’s request and offered Mo XuanYu a second chance anyway. Since this new self-sacrifice had been fueled by positive emotions instead of anger and despair, the hell judges had considered the atonement fulfilled and put the kid’s name back on the reincarnation list.

Twenty years had past and many things had changed.

For starters, the kid’s last name wasn’t Mo anymore, but Nie. The boy had, in fact, born into Nie MingJue’s family and had lived overseas in Japan for a while before moving back to Lanling when XuanYu turned twenty. Nie HuaiSang had met him many times during summer vacations and other festivities, visiting his brother and his wife every chance he had gotten to dote on his cute nephew XuanYu.

Nie MingJue had done a remarkable job in protecting him from harm. So, by the time their little family had decided to move close to HuaiSang, XuanYu had become a well adjusted adult with a brilliant future ahead of him.

Nobody remembered him.

Or so Lan Zhan had thought.

Apparently, he had forgotten to wipe Jin Ling’s memories thoroughly. So, when The Nie family had come to greet HuaiSang’s friends YanLi and ZiXuan, A-Ling almost had a stroke out of incredulity and happiness for being reunited with his “A-Yu”. Even if Jin Ling was now older than the pretty-gege from his memories. Even if he had spent years trying to figure out why nobody seemed to remember the weird uncle living next door to his Jiujiu years back.

XiChen and Meng Yao had solved their problems and had started running the school together right after Wen RuoHan sudden and mysterious disappearance. The man had many enemies after all.

A-Yuan had grown up into a fine young man, someone Wei Ying would have certainly been proud of, working with his cousin Wen Ning at the local botanical garden while his friends still studied in university.

Nie HuaiSang had married Qin Su and opened a restaurant with her.

MianMian and Wen Qing had decided to live together and adopt a bunch of dogs just because.

Xiao XingChen and Xue Yang still lived together while Song Lan had found his way back to them after talking it out with the couple.

A-Qing was probably running some sketchy business in social services to protect kids from horrible families.

Lan Zhan was still, unfortunately, a stuffed rabbit. Following XuanYu in his new life in the most unexpected of ways. In the form of the first present the boy’s uncle had gifted him in childhood. If Wei Ying had pulled a string or two from heaven to make that happen, well, Lan Zhan himself was none the wiser. The only thing he knew was that XuanYu had always taken him with him in all his travels even if he didn’t know he could speak. Lan Zhan had preferred not to reveal his nature and let the kid have a normal childhood. Especially since he had no memories of his past as a tenant in Jiang YanLi’s house. Nor of his life as a cultivator.

Wei Ying had agreed they could wait to be reunited again. The both of them wanting to look over XuanYu for a little longer before getting their own chance at reincarnation. They had all eternity to be together again... they could definitely wait a bit more for the kid.

All was well.

Aside from the other person whose mind Lan Zhan had conveniently forgot to wipe clean of any memory of XuanYu.

In his defense, Lan Zhan had tried to make Jiang Cheng forget. But something about XuanYu must have touched him so deeply... that Lan Zhan had not been able to do much about it. The kid’s smiles and clumsy antics would always linger in the back of the other’s mind no matter how much he tried to ignore them.

Coming back from his job at ZiXuan’s firm, exhausted and vulnerable, Jiang Cheng decided to visit his sister the same day Nie MingJue had brought his family there. So he was particularly weak to the sight of a bright, soft XuanYu when YanLi introduced her younger brother to their guests.

To Lan Zhan’s absolute delight, Jiang Cheng immediately bowed down to a scary looking Nie MingJue and asked his son’s hand in marriage.

Yes, grovel to this precious boy and learn your place.

XuanYu only tilted his head at that weird man bowing to his parents and smiled.

His laughter ringing up to the sky, where Wei Ying was still listening.

From where he would have kept watching.

[I worked so hard on this please reblog]

[kobato means “little dove” I thought it was cute since XuanYu is a magpie! + I wanted MXY a chance at life and for once this is a reversal-sacrifice from WWX’s part and I think it’s neat.]

[JC would be 43 or so... which yikes. but this is all I could do. I don’t like huge age gaps but at least everyone is a consenting adult, okay?]

[the thing that started this was like “what if LXC was an only child and LWJ did not reincarnate bc he’s still in the afterlife or something? then the entire thing escalated so...yeah.]

now I will cry for ages. I worked so hard on this good god D:

#mdzs #cql #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs/au: clamp #mdzs/au: kindergarten #mdzs/au: kobato #mdzs/au: modern #mo xuanyu #jiang cheng #the forbidden crack! untamed prompts #RAREPAIR ALERT #I AM TRASH I WILL SHIP JC WITH A ROCK FOR ALL I CARE #xiyao #tw eating disorders mentioned #wangxian #yucheng #chengyu

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cesare-and-raistlin · 5 years

Text

The Untamed/MDZS Spoiler Review

Book rating: 3.5/5 Drama rating: 8.5/10

This is going to be a comparative review of the novel and the live-action drama. I started with the drama, and watched about 25 episodes (all that were available at the time) before I started reading the book. I finished the book at around the time episode 38 came out.

So both my viewing and reading experiences were directly impacted by me consuming both versions at the same time, which is why I don’t think I can write a review that isn’t about comparing the two.

Overall, I’d say I like the drama better. The main actors’ performances, Xiao Zhan’s in particular, played a large role in that. But neither work was perfect, and each had their respective strong points.

First off, I think I have to make it clear that Wei Wuxian is my favourite character (which is good, since he’s the main character). This is important for this review, as I will take into great consideration how each version treated him, his story and his arc.

I usually separate my drama rating into two: I give a maximum of 5 points for objective quality and 5 points for personal appreciation. But I had to cheat here. The most The Untamed could have gotten with that system is a generous 7.5/10, and that feels somewhat wrong for a drama that made me feel so much.

The Untamed is probably the first longer Chinese drama that I watched where I never felt like there were too many episodes. Even The Rise of Phoenixes and Guardian, which I both love, had filler that could easily have been cut. But this drama was almost never boring and mostly stayed focused on the main characters, and with 50 episodes, that’s really impressive.

Dark Wuxian

The best thing about the novel for me was probably how delectably gruesome it was. The drama was only PG-13—and I’m being generous—, but the book was R-rated in every aspect. And while the sex scenes weren’t especially my thing (more on that later, unfortunately), the violence was unrestrained in the best possible way.

I love villains. I really do. And while Wuxian wasn’t exactly a villain, every single one of his villainous scenes was just marvellous. I think he has a body count of about 6,000 in this book. Six. Thousand. His Sunshot Campaign moments were some of my favourite, especially the scene where Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng finally find him after searching for him for three months. The way Wuxian dealt with Wen Chao was extremely gruesome (after all, he made him eat his own legs), but it was sooo satisfying.

(Please don’t come out of this review thinking that I’m a sadist. This kind of events in real life would absolutely horrify me. But this is fiction. And I enjoy my fiction best when it’s ruthless.)

Dark Wuxian, as I’ve been calling him, is definitely my favourite aspect of the book. We don’t get enough of him, but what we get is amazing. Wuxian is a morally gray character. On a D&D spectrum, over the course of this story, he goes from chaotic good to chaotic evil to chaotic neutral. He does good things, he does bad things, he does selfish things, he does selfless things. He’s a complex character.

But it seems that the drama decided that no, Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be a bad person. At all. The only really reprehensible thing we see him do (and even that is debatable) is killing a few dozen Wens and torturing Wen Chao (in a much less gory way than in the book, but I can live with that). From the moment after he comes back to Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng, he is somewhat… muzzled. The book has him digging out corpses and using zombies to fight in the war, while the drama opted for the much less morally ambiguous “smoke ghosts” that aren’t ever really explained. There were no giggling zombie girls serving him tea either, which I also feel is a shame.

But, then again, I can live with that.

What annoyed me the most, and something for which I cannot forgive the drama, is the Nightless City battle. Forget how poorly executed the whole thing was—I’d given up on this drama’s technical quality long ago. I can accept bad CGI. I can accept incompetent editing. I can even accept odious music. What I will not accept, however, is Wuxian to be absolved of his every fault by making someone else the author of the massacre and the reason for Jiang Yanli’s death. The greatest thing about Wei Wuxian is that is he not blameless. But that’s what the drama made him, and I’m absolutely bitter about it. The drama’s Wuxian doesn’t lose control: control is taken away from him. He doesn’t pay the price for his overconfidence. Jin Zixuan dies at Qionqi Path, not because Wuxian’s instincts and PTSD get the better of him and make him lash out like a cornered dog, but because someone intervenes. His sister dies, but it’s not his fault. And this is really frustrating me.

The book asks this question: Can someone who does bad things be a good person?

But the drama doesn’t, because the drama doesn’t allow Wuxian to be bad.

Also, we’re supposed to accept that Su She was talented enough to overpower Wuxian at the technique that he himself invented? And without owning the Tiger Seal? You’re kidding me, right?

Storytelling and Authenticity

One of the major changes in adapting the novel to live action was the decision to spend 60% of the story in the past storyline, something the novel was very concise about. The events presented in both versions are generally the same, but the drama greatly expanded on the material that it had, and let me say, this was the best thing they could have done. Making most major characters meet at the Cloud Recesses? Genius move. The characters had time to build relationships, something they didn’t always have in the book. It was necessary, notably, to establish a connection between Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning and Wen Qing before the YunmengJiang massacre, so that the rescue wouldn’t come out of nowhere, something it kind of did in the novel. The relationship between the three Yunmeng siblings was explored in detail, making their later tragedy several times stronger and more painful. Though Wuxian stayed the main character the entire time, the drama also gave a POV to other characters, most notably to Lan Wangji, which was a great improvement to the book, where Wangji is a POV characters for maybe two scenes. While I’m never a fan of not having Wuxian’s prettiness on my screen, we do needed to see scenes like the attack on the Cloud Recesses or Wangji’s punishment with our own eyes. Getting these moments through exposition only would have made for weaker storytelling.

And weaker storytelling was what we unfortunately got with the novel. This is not the right story for a one protagonist only third person limited point of view. Especially when that one protagonist is dead for 13 years, 13 years during which many things happen. Wuxian gets reincarnated, and now needs to know what has been going on when he was dead. Being limited by the narrative style that she set herself, the author was forced to deliver the exposition in huge chunks through the Empathy spell, occupying several chapters each time and thoroughly boring me in the process. This could have been delivered organically with additional POV characters, but the book went the route of the exposition dump.

To be fair, similar exposition dumps are also there in the drama. But they do not feel as much out of place, as the drama made a point to show us scenes with and about the concerned characters beforehand, Jin Guangyao in particular. He was an already well-established character long before he became a major player in the story. Which certainly wasn’t the case in the book.

Something that is easier to do on screen than on paper is the everyday gestures of the characters. Things like Jiang Cheng rolling his eyes at everything that Wuxian does, Wuxian holding his flute Chenqing the same way one would do a sword, the Yunmeng bros playfully hitting each other at any given time, Wen Ning looking at everything with puppy eyes, the ducklings junior disciples using exaggerated fighting stances, Wuxian and Wangji’s eyes crossing every time one of them decides to do something.

You can, technically, put all of these, every instance, in a book. But by writing something, you draw attention to it. You not only make it important, you also make your main character notice it. Which is why writers don’t include every single move their characters make in their book, since most aren’t necessary to the story, would feel repetitive and would distract the reader, or would make the protagonist more observant than they should be. The beauty of film, however, is that you can include these details, as much as you want, without directly drawing the viewer’s attention to them. There are many ways to do this; wide or crowded shots are some examples. These seemingly unimportant details were extremely useful in accomplishing what seemed to be one of the drama’s main objectives: they made the whole thing feel sincere. Character quirks and background interactions work wonders at making you feel like the people on your screen are real and not just played by actors. The relationships between the characters felt so much more real and made me feel so many things that the book didn’t. While I wouldn’t go so far as saying that the book characters felt stale or artificial, the drama definitely added another layer of authenticity.

The drama was better at portraying Wuxian’s conflicted emotional state in the events from his return from the Burial Mounds to the Nightless City battle. Of course, it’s to be expected, as the drama spent way more time in the past storyline than the novel did. But by deciding to spend more time with the Jiang siblings, it was also able to depict the way Wuxian’s behaviour changed and how his new physical weakness affected him in a way that wasn’t present in the book. Wuxian doesn’t possess a golden core any longer, and he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. But there are things he cannot fake. Two scenes in particular come to mind. In the first, Wangji attacks Wuxian suddenly, and after barely blocking a few blows, a shocked Wuxian just closes his eyes and waits for the sword to kill him. He used to be one of the best swordsmen, but without any spiritual energy, he now knows that he cannot win a sword fight against Lan Wangji. So he closes his eyes and accepts his imminent death with a painful expression on his face. In the second scene, Wuxian tries to reconcile with Jiang Cheng after an argument, but his brother shoves him the second he touches him. Wuxian falls on the ground, and stays there. The look on his face is a combination of shock and hurt, as he comes to the realization that even playful fighting with his brother is now out of his grasp.

These scenes were a great addition by the drama. Not only did they succeed in adding tension to the characters’ relationships, they also successfully teased Wuxian’s lack of golden core. In the book, this reveal doesn’t entirely come out of nowhere, but you also really needed to pay attention to every detail to guess it. The drama plays a different game: while it is still perfectly possible for less attentive viewers to be surprised by the later reveal, the real emotional pull of the subplot has now become “When will the people who love Wuxian discover the sacrifices that he made?” The fact that the mystery is easier to guess for viewers simply manages to make them more invested in the eventual reveal and how it will affect the characters. And the reveal itself is… *kisses fingers* delicious.

Adaptations Are Hard

In adapting the book, the drama succeeded in many things, several of which I’ve already mentioned. But too many times to count, it also failed to stand on its own.

This isn’t a drama that was ever going to be 100% faithful to its source material. Because of China’s censorship laws, it had to change a lot of things to be able to air. Of course, the gay romance was turned into a bromance (although it didn’t dupe anybody). All the R-rated content was turned into PG-13 appropriate. Undead Wen Ning was made kind of alive in the drama (reminding me of how Chu Shuzhi was a zombie in the Guardian novel but a perfectly alive dude in the drama). Most walking corpses were replaced by black shadows, and were only used by villains. (China really doesn’t like undead characters, guys.) It has been brought to my attention that Wuxian’s toned down evilness may also be a result of adapting to censorship, and if that’s the case, it makes me both more annoyed and more understanding of what the drama did.

However.

When you change something from the source material, whatever the reason is, you have to think about what the implications of your changes are. Which the scriptwriters of The Untamed clearly didn’t.

“Wei Wuxian has been killing indiscriminately since the Sunshot Campaign!” No he hasn’t.

“I’ve fought 3,000 people before, I can take 3,000 of you now.” No you didn’t.

“Sect Leader Jiang, don’t forget that one of the main powers that surrounded the Burial Mounds was you.” That siege never even happened.

Over and over, the drama changes things from the book but doesn’t adapt its later scenes to fit those changes. This results in a succession of lines that feel out of place and incongruous.

In a similar way, they have Wuxian be reincarnated into his old body instead of into Mo Xuanyu’s body. And I get it. I understand why. Your lead actor may very well be the best thing about your show, and giving him up midway through would be a pain for several reasons. BUT. They kept the whole thing about people not being able to recognize Wuxian until the Koi Tower sequence when he unsheathes Suibian. Even though he has the same jaw, the same hair, the same clothes, the same voice, the same basically everything that he had before his death. I guess the drama realized that pushing this farce with Wangji wouldn’t work, so they dropped the whole series of scenes where Wuxian tries to make Wangji believe that he’s Mo Xuanyu. It still doesn’t redeem how senseless other scenes are. In the book, Jin Ling frees Wuxian after Jiang Cheng caught him because he genuinely thinks that Wuxian is Mo Xuanyu, whom he knows personally and probably doesn’t want to see get tortured. But in the drama, he frees Wuxian because…? Jiang Cheng has seen Wuxian’s face and has stated that it’s him, so Jin Ling shouldn’t have any reason to doubt his uncle.

It’s an adaptation. It’s alright to change things. But guys, the changes have to make sense!

Did anybody proofread the script? Nobody?

The Technical Stuff, or Me Shitting on This Drama for 700 Words Straight

If what you’re looking for is competent filmmaking, then I would suggest you look elsewhere.

But if you want an interesting story, sympathetic characters, poignant relationships, and themes of what is right and what is wrong and all the gray areas in between, then go ahead!

— Me, August 15

So.

This is not well-made television.

Like, at all.

Ok, so the costumes are pretty great. The different clans are easy to distinguish while never seeming cartoonish, the details of each garment are exquisite, and, let’s face it, Wuxian black robes simply stole the show. The weapons were really pretty. Some of the tracks from the soundtrack are actually quite nice. There are a few beautiful visuals. The main leads’ acting was good.

But I’m sorry, I have no more nice things to say.

The cinematographer obviously didn’t know how to frame a shot. Camera angles were often awkward or downright useless. The camera moved amateurishly, enough to bring the production values down by itself. Chinese drama reviewer Avenue X has dedicated a significant part of her Untamed review to the problems with this drama’s photography, and since she knows what she’s talking about way more than I do, I’ll leave a link to her video here: X

The editor didn’t know how to edit a scene. It was mostly apparent during fight scenes, with their weird cuts and incessant fading to black for no reason, although I don’t think that I could call any scene of this 50-episode drama “well edited.” Even my favourites. The best ones are just passable.

The editing and cinematography aren’t necessarily bad because of a lack of budget, which we know was a problem with this drama. You can make simple but great content with a small budget. No, they’re bad because the people responsible were not competent.

The two directors themselves don’t have the best track record. The Legends and The Plough Department of Song Dynasty are not well-made dramas in any way. Even Secrets of the Three Kingdoms, on which director Cheng Wai Man worked, was great because of its script and its characters but was brought down by its underwhelmingly average technical craftsmanship.

The sound mixer didn’t know how to juggle the diegetic music and the soundtrack. You know, when you have a main character who fights with a flute, maybe, just maybe, don’t use the tracks from the soundtracks that have flute in them in his scenes. There are many points during the drama where I could hear flute music but had no way of knowing whether that music was diegetic or not, if Wuxian was really playing or if it was part of the soundtrack. Wen Chao: “The flute! The flute! Is it the flute?” Wen Zhuliu: “It’s not. It’s the sound of the wind.” [Meanwhile in the background: flute music.] At this point of the story, Wen Chao is clearly deranged and Wen Zhuliu acts as the voice of reason. However, as the audience, we can hear the sound of a flute. Is it part of the soundtrack? Is Wen Zhuliu in denial or lying to Wen Chao? Is Wuxian playing for Wen Chao’s ears only? There was no need for this scene and others like it to be so confusing.

Most of the secondary actors didn’t know how to act. Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo were mostly great, particularly once they got used to each other better, and I can name a few actors whom I think did a really good job (Xuan Lu who played Jiang Yanli and Liu Haikuan who played Lan Xichen) but most others were passable at best and horrible at worst.

The VFX artists were just lost all the time. Though I will say that the black shadows created by Wuxian usually looked pretty cool. But they had neither the time nor budget to make this CGI-heavy show seem realistic in any way. Is this a surprise? No. I’m used to Chinese web-drama CGI by now. And I actually appreciate that The Untamed made some efforts to have practical effects when possible. They still looked bad (that giant dog was absolutely terrible), but they could have been so much worse if they had been computer animated. At least they tried.

We Need to Talk About Wangxian, I Guess

The drama’s version of Wangxian is amazing. It’s soft and romantic and heartfelt and authentic. And the fact that it’s technically supposed to be a bromance doesn’t take anything away from it. Nobody in their right mind watches this show and thinks, “They’re just friends.” Where Guardian still tried to (unsuccessfully) pass Weilan as bros, the people who made The Untamed were all *wink wink* with the entire relationship: having Wuxian and Wangji call each other “soulmates” and gaze at each other like the two idiots in love that they are, holding hands, being overprotective, and even including a damn montage of them falling in love. (How this drama still hasn’t been cancelled in China is an absolute mystery to me.)

Book Wangxian is… something else.

In the drama, Wuxian and Wangji become friends rather fast. And while Wuxian still has some moments when he believes that Wangji is there to put him down (“Lan Zhan, I’ve always known that we’d end up in a fight to the death”), he mostly understands that they’re friends. Book Wuxian, on the contrary, still believes that Wangji is out to get him well into the present storyline. And let me be clear: both versions work. They carry very different emotions, but they work. Until we get to the romance.

Because in the book, Wangxian kinds of happens out of nowhere.

In the novel, Wuxian suddenly goes from “Lan Wangji hates me and I need to get away from him” to “Is homosexuality contagious” to “I really wanted to sleep with you!” (in front of his damn nephew, may I add), and that’s fine, in theory. But the transitions in between those changes of heart aren’t really there. 99% of the story is told from Wuxian’s point of view, and I still came out of the book not really knowing why he likes Wangji. That’s kind of a problem.

And then there’s the sex scenes. Oh, the sex scenes.

It would be an exaggeration to say that they sex scenes of the book ruined Wangxian for me, but they certainly did nothing good for the ship in my heart.

It’s not really on brand of me to talk about these things in detail, so I’ll be brief: there is a consent issue with pretty much every single sex scene. In the very first, Wangji is inebriated and cannot consent. The very worst one, which is part of the extras, is clearly a rape. A dream rape, sure, but a rape nonetheless. And the book treats it like something, I don’t know, exciting? So yeah, after finishing the book, Wangxian was making me uncomfortable. The show’s absolute sweetness made it better, but I still have a sour taste in my mouth.

Conclusion

After this review, you may be thinking, “Wow, she really doesn’t like either the book or the drama that much.” But this is just harsh love. I have an eternal soft spot in my heart for this story. To quote my own tweets:

“I have to hit pause every 30 seconds because I love Wuxian so much my heart hurts.”

“it's so good

i wanna cry”

#the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #chen qing ling #lan wangji #that demonic fluffball

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sundaynightnovels · 5 years

Note

Happy Storyteller Saturday! To raise funds for their adventures, your OCs are posing for an Out of Season calendar! Who is which month? How do they pose? What do they wear? What props/animals/things do they pose with? Who takes the best pictures? Who is least photogenic? Whose pictures need the most editing? Who has way too much fun with it?

omg you really have the most thought-provoking questions!!! like. okay. just gimme an hour or two to brainstorm about this.(an out of season calendar though like that’s the most useless thing and i’d totally buy it)aldskjsakldjslkajdklsajdlksaj you are killing me here!!!! i don’t even know how to start gajjlskjdflk let me give this... a shot. since i only have 9 characters, some months might not be represented / two months might be represented by one character!

this is going to be quite long, so i’ll put it under the ‘read more’ tag, but y’all should read it anyway! it’s fun!! also, there’s a lot of food in it!! && chinese festivals (or something like that)!

January - February: TENGokay so january + february is basically about new beginnings right, like january is the western new year and february is (usually) when the lunar new year takes place. it’s also close to the end of winter and the beginning of spring, which once again is about new beginnings, and i think teng is all about that. he’s all about giving people chances and bringing them into his home and abode and presenting them an opportunity to start anew because he’s so full of love (which, incidentally, february is also the month of love! -- which, yknow, doesn’t necessarily bode well for teng because... he has no... romantic landscape... in sight)& teng has a lot of fun with the photoshoot! he’s not particularly photogenic and he has a dad bod (or, yknow, a teddy bear bod) but he owns it! the photoshoot is as cosy a setting he can make it, with big fluffy teddy bears all around (and he is, of course, King bear) and low tables with lunar new year snacks and scented candles and fluffy pillows. he’s just seated there, settled among his nest of pillows, wearing, garishly, the ugliest, flashiest, most ostentatious red he can find (he doesn’t have the best dressing sense, and yknow, he just has to dress in as bright a red as he can for the lunar new year). it’d be a beautiful, cosy, warm setting, if not for the fire of his clothes setting the pillows alight. he’d also probably be trying to act cool. but he’s not good at it. and he’s doing poses like lying across the pillows with a ‘come-hither’ look in his eyes while ‘sexily’ chewing on a piece of love letter with scattered petals of peach blossoms thrown over his body... so basically a little like the ‘american beauty’ cover page. it is not nice. there is a dire need to edit his photo, but no one knows where to even begin.i would advice you to tear out his pages and not be haunted by whatever he’s trying to pull. (why would you do a cosy home setting and try for a seductive pose??? with lunar new year snacks????!!! what are you thinking!!)

(for reference, photo of love letters on a white plate for lunar new year)

April: ZHEN

okay so april might be the official season where the flowers and plants bloom and everything, but it’s also ‘Qingming jie’ (which is incidentally during this period. it’s usually from 4 - 6 april). Qingming jie is basically like a chinese memorial day??? or it’s also more commonly known as tomb-sweeping day, which is when families visit the graves of their ancestors to take care of the graves and sweep the graves and place offerings at their ancestors’ gravestones etc.

and this is pretty significant to zhen because, surprisingly, she values these kinda stuffs! she is really closely tied to her roots (wherever they may be), and... well i can’t really divulge more because yknow, spoilers ~~ ... actually, are they spoilers if they’re not really explicitly mentioned in my wip?? okay nvm. still!! so yes she’s quite tied to familial bonds and kinship, even that weird relationship she has with lu, so this is kinda important for her.

she might have put in more effort into the photoshoot if the money all went to her instead of being, yknow, split between so many people, so instead she doesn’t put much effort into the photoshoot at all. she’d probably pose on a couch with a bunch of snacks on the table as she holds up a remote control to watch TV and her leg propped up on the armrest / on the table in front of her. all she does to take the photo is stare directly into the camera, unimpressed, until she hears the shutter click, and then she goes back to watching TV... ahem pretending to watch the TV.

or she might hold a pan up like she’s ready to pummel the cameraman in his head for suggesting that she put more effort into this fundraising, damn it!

May: JIA

i did a quick google, and May seems to have a lot of celebrations / memorials for independence movements and war stuffs and things like that, so i thought that May would be a great month for Jia! Jia’s a fighter and she’s strong and courageous and passionate, so i think it matches her pretty well.of course, Jia would put in a lot of effort to this calendar. after all, it’s earning her money isn’t it, and money is important. jia might’ve thought about freeloading off of the rest of them, but seeing their terrible efforts at the photoshoot (especially teng’s), she’d probably come to a very apt realisation that yknow, things are going to fall apart if she doesn’t help them out. since may is the month of strength, she’s going to dress as someone of power and strength! she’d go into the forbidden city for the photoshoot (no green screen for her!) or, if forbidden (ha) she might go to the heng dian TV studios to use their forbidden city set to take her photoshoot. she’d get everyone else to help. she might dress like an empress of the qing dynasty and make zhen and yu(f) her handmaidens (because the empress is still a strong position of power), or she might dress as a more iconic warrior figure like zhuge liang, though she’d have to find a different set for that because the forbidden city wouldn’t be the right backdrop for that photoshoot. if she goes with the zhuge liang idea, she’d probably march straight into the place where he had his most victorious battles and get everyone else to play the fallen soldiers while she stands tall with her sword in hand. she’d probably hire a real horse too.her expenditure would far exceed the budget and the fundraising ain’t going to cover enough to pay for all of her costs.

June: YU(M)

June is the month for the dragon boat festival! it commemorates things like fealty and filial piety (got this direct from wiki, thank you) and there are a lot of ritualistic things like making zongzi and dragon boat racing! so that’s fun!whats not fun however is yu(m) -- sorry, jun’s exact words. yu(m) is a fundamentally boring guy (jun’s words) who can’t do anything remotely exciting or do anything other than be a flower pot in the background and make occasional grunts as comments (jun’s words) so he needs something fun and exciting to at least use as a setting for him to murder with his very presence (jun’s words)

yu(m) is probably made to pose with a dragon boat. on an actual river. and made to be actually rowing the boat. and has to drag along, physically, like five other boats behind him (which is where the camera crew is unfortunately forced to be seated in). while avoiding handfuls of zongzi that is being thrown at his head (on the pretext that jun’s trying to feed the fishes). needless to say, this photoshoot is also a mess.

(for reference: photos of zongzis, which is made of sticky rice, so you should know how bad having one thrown at your head is)

July: YU(F)july is the month of harvests, and harvests are the symbol of the hardworking, and who is the most hardworking of them all? Yu(f)!!! and will she work hard for the photoshoot??? well she might if she thinks it’s important, but she probably doesn’t and thinks it’s just a hassle so really, the photoshoot is less of her posing and more of the rest of the cast pulling and dragging and tricking her into entering the studio and forcing some clothes on her (knowing zhen, she’d force her into some farmer’s garb complete with a straw hat and a shovel and hoe set while jun throws dirt at her face to make it ‘more realistic’) and then her attempting to escape while the rest struggle to take some photosthis photoshoot is a mess. there’s dirt on the camera lens (courtesy of jun’s attempt for realism) and there’s real grass splattered all over the ground and yu(f) is obviously furious but even she can’t fight against 8 people shoving her to the studio and pushing her back into frame whenever she tries to escape. she ends up looking like a very disgruntled farmer. probably because her crops are fighting back against her. probably.

August: SHOU

shou’s probably going to kill me for this but yknow what??? this calendar is a team effort and i’m not the only one putting him up for august!! the rest of my OCs are too !! guys, back me up on this!!okay so august is the month of the hungry ghost festival. ha. yes. and well, he’s a gatekeeper in-charge of tending to the veil between worlds, isn’t it?? and the hungry ghost festival is when the veil is thinner / when ghosts can pass in-between the two worlds (okay, please do not be confused, the hungry ghost festival is a buddhist thing and my story’s setting is not buddhist, so this festival / custom doesn’t exist in my wip!! in case you get excited about all the ‘crossing of veils’ talk! this is just for the ask’s sake!) so yea, basically shou seems to be a right fit for this, especially with his grim reaper garb.(shou doesn’t appreciate this comparison. he likes to think of himself as butterflies and daisies rather than creepy and ghostly) even if he doesn’t like the concept, he enjoys the shoot! he’s never been on one before! he lets himself get dressed in black robes and the overly large black hat in a setting that looks as miserable as possible, with the smoke from burning incense wafting into the studio and like food offerings for the dead scattered around him. this is the most successful shoot, surprisingly. shou doesn’t accidentally set anything on fire, except after the shoot when he trips over a candle and falls over his feet and his cloak gets singed. but other than that, it goes surprisingly well!

September: LU

september is the time for the mid-autumn festival, which is about celebrating the full moon (and shou would argue that this here, this , is the month for him!) and it’s a time of celebration and games and most importantly, food. (yeah, lu stole this month out from shou’s longing hands. for mooncakes and tangyuan and other sugary treats!!) lu basks in this as well. he acts like the master of a house, with trays of chinese desserts on either side of his seat (or what he’d refer to as a throne). behind him, hanging from ceilings, are beautifully-crafted lanterns that light up the otherwise dark night. There’s also a full moon hovering in the distance.it’d be a great photoshoot, except that lu is too busy stuffing his mouth full of food. he’s chewing on a lotus-paste mooncake while frantically trying to stuff a tangyuan into his mouth at the same time, and the soup dribbles out from the corner of his lips while his cheeks are bulging and his fingers are still trying to grab at the cup of tea sitting on the table.no amount of photoshop can save lu’s face at that very instance.

(for reference, first photo is a bowl of sweet tangyuan, second photo is a mooncake)

October: REN

so i googled and saw that opal was the gemstone for october, which could signify faithfulness. also, the western horoscope for the month of october is the libra, which is about fairness and harmony, and all of these characteristics sound like something Ren would advocate for.

he’d let himself be guided on the shoot. october is also the season of autumn, so... if they were nice, they’d let him be dressed in some really nice fall fashion clothes with the orange-red leaves scattered all around him. that is, if they were nice. instead, they’d probably put him in what they consider... modern autumn wear. which is...well. imagine american beauty again. the actual american beauty photoshoot, not teng’s horrible rendition of it that no one asked for. yes. ren fights back. he fights back fervently because like, there are probably a lot of ants in the leaves and things like spiders and webs and dirt and all sorts of rubbish and also he doesn’t want to lie beneath a blanket of twigs and dead leaves completely naked for this photoshoot!!!as with yu(f), he cannot possibly fight against the power of 8 other people, especially when the 2 most malicious ones are directing his struggle (ahem, zhen & jun, ahem).there are probably a lot of gaps in the... blanket. and a lot of physical fighting. and a lot of screaming.

the photoshoot results in something that looks more like a man drowning in quicksand rather than the glorious beauty of autumn. (it’s better that way)

November - December: JUN

because he’s the cold prince isn’t he. HA. no. he just thought it’d be the safest option. all white from the snow, yknow, so that he can wear his usual black outfit.HA. like the rest would let him off this easily.jun’s good-looking, yknow. there’s not much that needs to be done for his face on photoshoot, if they wanted to have a nice peaceful little photoshoot with pretty pictures for their calendar. they don’t even have to do much photoshop, except to slap the names of the months over his face or something. it’s easy, isn’t it? if they wanted good money, they could just stick with that, isn’t it?yea, right.

you know the white walkers? from game of thrones? those ghastly looking figures of horror with their ribcages sticking out from beneath their skin??? yea, that. somehow the rest of them decide that it’s perfectly logical to blow their budget on things like make-up and costume and expensive sets to force jun into one of their outfits (where, yknow, you cannot see anything of his handsome face at all) and pose (does he even need to pose? these people are basically frozen) while staring icily at the camera.

he doesn’t fight against their antics. it doesn’t matter. he’d already inflicted all the damage he wants to them, nothing else that they do to him can faze him.

this particular photoshoot is an utter waste of money, even more than that of jia’s ridiculously authentic photoshoot. and you don’t even get to see jun’s face!

OKAY so this was really absurdly long but yknow what?? i had a lot of fun!!!! thank you for this and omg i’m sorry if you didn’t expect this massive word dump, but i hope you enjoyed it anyway!!

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