labseraph - Tumblr blog

labseraph · 48 minutes

Text

When ogres travel, they do so in human shape.

They hate doing this. They think it’s beneath them. But they do it anyway.

The Vicomte Graoul de Saucisson – and this is another thing about ogres. Ogres as a species are nobility. There is no such thing as a low-born ogre. There is always room in the ogrish peerage for another vicomte, another prince, another branch to tie to the rotted tree – strode up to the chateau in human shape. The roses in the garden shivered as he passed by. The huge, high doors opened by themselves and he walked through them without a shift in his stride.

When the doors slammed shut behind him, he moved to shrug the shape off his shoulders like a coat.

Then he saw the woman.

He froze. He stared. She stared back.

He slowly pulled the shape back on. “Who are you?” he asked.

She looked mildly appalled. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing in my home?”

“Your home? This is–” He stopped. He reconsidered. “I am the Vicomte de Saucisson,” he said. “I’m looking for the Marquis de Pamplemousse. He is a… colleague of mine.”

“Oh,” she said. She could’ve looked more abashed. “I’m sorry, monsieur, he’s never mentioned you before. You must be here to share your congratulations, of course, I can fetch him right away.”

“He’s never mentioned you either,” the vicomte did not say. “Of course,” he said. “Congratulations. What about?”

She looked surprised. “Have you not heard? Monsieur, the curse on my husband has been lifted.”

He stared. His lips started to form the words “What curse,” and then there was a sound like a horse falling down a set of stairs and a man he had never seen before wearing the marquis’s clothes came barrelling down the hall.

“Vicomte!” said the man with the marquis’s voice. “My human friend! The curse has been lifted, and I am a human once again!”

He was slightly out of breath when he reached the woman. He clasped her arm and grinned at him with manic desperation. “This is wonderful news! You must be here to share your congratulations!”

“Lie like hell,” said the man’s eyes.

The vicomte stared. “Oh!” he said. “My – human friend! Human once again! Words fail me. After all these–” (there was the slightest hesitation) “–years?”

The woman put her head at an angle and narrowed her eyes at him.

The man walked up, still grinning like a rictus chimpanzee, and clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, of course! Darling, me and the vicomte are going to have a manly one-on-one conversation while he shares his congratulations, as we human men are wont to do.” And then with a strength that could only be ogrish, the marquis pulled the vicomte by the shoulder down the hall and into a drawing room.

When the bolt of the lock clicked into place behind them, the man wearing the marquis’s clothes visibly sagged.

“What the hell,” said the vicomte.

“You should’ve sent word ahead that you'd be coming today.”

“I never do.” He gesticulated and tried to conjure a single question out of the swarm buzzing in his brain. “What the hell is going on? Who was that? Why are you pretending to be human? What curse are we talking about?”

The marquis groaned and crumpled into a chair. As he did he shifted out of human shape, clothes magically tailoring themselves to contain his ogrish form. He looked a bit like a moose crossed with a wolf.

“I had a moment of weakness.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a stroke?”

“I got married.”

“And that’s another thing–”

“Graoul, please.” He sighed and put his face in his talons. “Last winter a merchant broke into my home. He stole one of my roses, and in exchange I asked him to send me one of his daughters to be my bride.”

The vicomte nodded. This at least was a sacred and recognizable ogrish custom, and he did like to see the old ways in practice.

“And it was fine! It was perfectly lovely. She’s a wonderful woman, but one night I decided to put on a human shape to change things up in the bedroom, and she lost her mind! Started talking about how I was clearly an enchanted prince and that her love for me must’ve broken some curse and turned me human again! I had no idea how to tell her otherwise, and now I’ve done it for too long to back out.”

The vicomte stared. “Sorry,” he said. “You decided to turn into a human to spice things up in the bedroom, and that was the face you chose?”

The marquis growled. “If I knew I was going to be wearing it for the rest of my life I would’ve gone with something better.”

106 notes · View notes

labseraph · 1 hour

Text

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.

45 notes · View notes