with the release of a certain bird adeptus approaching i cannot stop thinking about Foul Legacy befriending an adeptus
you're one of the younger adepti, a solitary, curious bird hidden away in some distant mountain that rarely ever receives visitors, even from the most determined of humans- most mortals are unaware of your existence entirely, but you don't particularly mind. you've never been one to demand worship and total respect, even if living alone on your little mountain can get very quiet from time to time. Cloud Retainer- or Xianyun as she's going by nowadays- and her two daughters occasionally visit, but that's all the traffic your home ever receives. it's fine- you're content tending to your garden and practicing your magic and making little packets of herbs for Xianyun to distribute amongst your fellow adepti.
you're fine. you're not lonely at all.
the other adepti have told you bits and rumors about the ground splitting open, leaking dark, stellar energy from its roots, but you don't quite believe them until you get to witness it for yourself, wings flapping open in surprise when there's a crack and a rumble and suddenly a beast twice your height emerges from the earth- your plants are utterly ruined, and you let out a cry of despair. the monster shakes its head to dislodge the dust and dirt, before turning its one-eyed gaze towards you- but it doesn't attack or even act threatening in the slightest, merely approaching slowly and sniffing the air around you. it suddenly notices the plants and the distressed look in your eyes, and the beast sits back on its haunches, letting out a low, apologetic whine. you're not a vengeful adeptus, though, and silently allow the creature to stay as you tidy up the garden.
his name, as you learn, is Foul Legacy.
in a way you're both oddities, him with his Abyssal traits and you with your incomplete human disguise, feathers standing out on your cheeks and a tiny pair of wings still on your back- it's one of the main reasons you don't venture into the city, along with your hatred of large crowds. one day of company turns to two, then to three, then a week and a month until Foul Legacy is essentially living with you, following you around and helping you with your daily chores. needless to say Xianyun is... not happy when she finds out, but she begrudgingly allows it, saying something along the lines of "one's third child needs to make more friends anyways". and when the eventual time comes that Foul Legacy does depart, he leaves you with a lick on your cheek and a purr, his way of promising to see you again.
so it's by no coincidence when you finally perfect your shapeshifting skills and step foot into the Harbor for the first time, that you meet a man with ginger hair and a playful grin that you've never seen before, but looks so familiar all the same
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maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)
it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.
mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.
it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.
it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!
the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.
and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.
it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.
he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...
...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.
there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.
but doesn't that prove the point?
wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.
jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.
jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...
do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.
"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.
that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.
that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.
of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.
with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?
jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.
of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.
i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.
if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.
is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.
however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.
this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.
this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".
of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.
to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.
wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.
for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.
that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.
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Delusions (Patreon)
"Could I have your hand, sir?" Max didn't move, which Dexter was, sadly, getting used to.
"Sir?" Max jerked, then turned and stared at him, lost and blank. "Your hand, please."
Max's hand lifted shakily, and he laid it gently in Dexter's upturned palm. Dexter gave a quick and quiet "thank you," then turned it over in his own hand, observing him closely.
Too closely - his knuckles were rough and his fingernails were dull and cracked in places. His once-soft, not-a-day-in-his-life-subjected-to-hard-labour hands were now, already, toughened and split and scarred in places, especially the heel of his palm. He turned it over again, this time to stop looking so intensely. He had only wanted to give it a cursory glance to begin with.
"Do you know what I see, sir?" he asked as conversationally as he could manage, running his fingers along Max's abused flesh. He seemed to be at least half paying attention, his eye gazing down between them, and he'd occasionally twitch, encouragingly Dexter thought. He seemed to want to curl around him, then stopped and shook, his hand squeezing into a fist. Dexter coaxed him back out, encouraged him to hold himself lightly.
"What do you see?" He was almost startled by Max actually continuing their conversation, that happened so rarely now, shaking and quiet as it was. He took a deep breath, was he really going to do this?
"I see a hand, with five fingers." Max remained quiet, though his brow curled, and a guarded look came into his eye, though he still wasn't looking at Dexter. He felt a pang of guilt, but he had to try. "What do you see?"
Max's eye unfocused and began to water. He looked up, but not enough to reach Dexter's gaze in return, instead staring through his chest, and he felt just as hollow and empty as he must look to him.
"Do you take me for a fool, DAX?" Quiet and as close to angry as he'd heard since they'd been here.
No, not angry.
Betrayed.
He swallowed down the stinging lump at the back of his throat. He had to put on a brave face, had to keep his composure if he wanted Max to get better. That was the only thing he wanted, more than anything.
"Of course not, sir. Genuinely, what do you see?"
Max pulled his hand away and turned his body, his bandaged side facing Dexter. Shutting him out, pointedly. Dexter's empty hand curled into a fist, he was no better.
"Please, don't..." Max took a shallow, shuddering breath, and several beats before he spoke again, even quieter. "Don't ridicule me." Dexter could hear his breath catch, and he wanted nothing more than for this all to just stop.
"Sir, I didn't-"
"I've had enough of that." He shook his head stiffly, the action strange and wrong, like he had forgotten how. He stilled, his head turned even further away. "More than enough."
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At First Glance Part III
Fanfic Inspired by: https://www.tumblr.com/eternalremorse/751163260305342464/seb-x-mc-coded?source=share
1.1K+ words
Chapter 2 <<<||| Chapter 3 |||>>>Chapter 4
...At Feldcroft
The Feldcroft home visit went worse than Sebastian expected.
Not only was his uncle rude to him and rash when he destroyed the shivelfig he brought for Anne, Solomon completely embarrassed him in front of his best friend. Anger and shame filled him like never before and he found himself leaving the house before he could make things worse.
Since that’s all he could do when he went home apparently.
Sebastian kicked a few weeds here and there, walking away from that house he was forced to call home since he was six. He hated his uncle. He hated it here. He hated the fact that he told MC to give him a moment when she went looking for him. He could only watch from the corner of his eyes as she nodded back with an “okay” before she made her way back to his uncle’s house where hopefully Anne could do damage control.
Because apparently all he could do was cause chaos whenever he came home.
And all he could hope for was that MC would still be friends with him after this embarrassing episode. The last thing he wanted her to see him was weak as he held back his tears from the angry and hurt he felt whenever his uncle would act like this.
Then when she came up to talk to him, it seemed as if his worries were for nought. She was worried for him. While he had to explain how Solomon was like this all the time, how he was the only one who still seem to care to try to find a cure for his sister or at least make her current state better, MC never saw him as less, glanced at him as a misfit that everyone –even Ominis– did.
MC saw him as himself.
As a brother trying to save his sister.
Sebastian wasn’t hesitant to take her to the place where it all happened. Hoping that maybe she would be able to find something he couldn’t before. Nor was he hesitant to attack when he spotted Ranrok’s loyalists.
The two quickly shifted into their dueling stance when they partnered up, knowing this time there was something bigger to lose than pride here. It was here that Sebastian could finally let out all his frustration, his hurt, his anger at the very beings that caused his life to spiral downwards since Anne was cursed.
He tried to keep his best friend close to him, but soon the number overwhelmed them and they were split. Emotions powered his magic.
Sebastian wasn’t going to lose another loved one here. Not again.
It was here where he was also reminded who he was fighting with as he saw her Ancient Magic be put on display when he took down the last of his attackers that surrounded him.
MC’s eyes glowed a bright blue as she called down lighting on the commander who refused to yield, like some goddess out of a story book. The goblin commander still stood and continued to fight, but Sebastian saw that lighting blue flash of light again –the same one from he saw during that troll fight– strike the red-glowing goblin commander. He glowed purple.
A blink later, he was gone.
Nothing but ash in his place.
So awed by her display of god-like power this time around, he didn’t even notice the goblin behind her until she was wacked in the head with a frying pan and collapsed.
While Sebastian didn’t have god-like power, he had enough magic in him, enough anger to confringo the menace to death before he ran to his friend, hoping he wasn’t too late.
“Please be alive, please be alive –oh thank th’gods ye’re still breathing!” He heard himself say as he rolled her onto her back. There was a goose-egg swell that already started to develop on the side of her head.
It was a heavy reminder that for as much of a goddess in human form MC was with her Ancient Magic powers, at the end of the day, she was still human.
MC could still be killed.
Sebastian didn’t know what to do other than hold her, watch her breathe as a reminder that she was still alive. It wasn’t until she woke up that he felt all the tension leave his body like a ghost no longer processing him.
“Se-Sebastian?” She said as she opened her eyes, blinking at him.
“I’m here. How are you feeling darling?” He sniffed, never more grateful than the fact that she was alive.
That she was still here.
Sebastian didn’t lose her.
“I feel like I got wacked with a pan.” She groaned. Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh, the nerves finally getting to him.
“Good tae see that you’re still up tae make jokes. And tae remember what happened.” He said as he gave her space to slowly sit up, arms ever ready to catch her in case she fell.
“If I’m doing down, I’m– shite. Sebastian are you okay?” She said.
“A’m fine. Why dae ye ask?” He said, unable to stop the Scots accent from slipping into his posh English speech anymore.
MC frowned as she placed her hand on his cheek and wiped the tears he didn’t realize was there. “You’re crying.”
Sebastian couldn’t help himself as he pulled her in for a hug, inhaling her citrus orange perfume in, listening to her heartbeat as he laid his head against her chest. Listening to her breathe.
It was the most wonderful sound in the world.
“Ah thought ye died.” He cried as he broken down.
Her arms surrounded him, rocking him as if he was a little boy. Holding him like the six-year-old boy in him needed when his parents died.
She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. He thought with each breath as she rubbed his back, soothing away a nightmare he didn’t want to re-live through again.
Never again.
…
Chapter 2 <<<||| Chapter 3 ||| >>> Chapter 4
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