Not!fics - Tumblr Posts
The Crew are amazing because somehow they actually work, as a group, but individually they‘re a train wreck. Thanks, @antebunny!
April 27: games
A sequel to archer and bridge, an identity porn extra of a modern cultivators Olympic sports AU.
Note: this is from the perspective of an NB OC named Elaine Chao who uses they/them pronouns. I did this because 1) the number of NB people I know has exponentially increased in the past year, and they all use they/them pronouns so I wanted to make myself familiar with using they/them pronouns to refer to a single person. I chose the name Elaine Chao because that’s the name of Mitch McConnell’s wife and I think I’m funny.
Elain Chao is taking a class on cultivation, which is a new class offered at their university and also not very popular because cultivation is supposed to be a dead practice now just used as a sport. So it was expected to have like five students, max. The professor is an expert when it comes to the culture and history of xianxia, and now decided to also offer her skills and knowledge on cultivation, which she is also an expert on, despite having previously just taught the history/culture of that era. Then suddenly at the last minute, the class gets six new students. Initially, this isn’t the weird part. With an eleven person class, the students interact somewhat, but for a while all Elaine could tell you was their names.
Soon enough, their professor goes on a tirade about the international cultivation competition. She hates it because 1) it makes a mockery of the original purpose of cultivating, i.e. night hunts and defeating monsters oh and also war, and yet it still 2) puts the lives of the competitors in danger. Not in the way that sports usually do, in that there’s a risk for injury which can sometimes be permanent, but the competitors are all world-class athletes and generally don’t come to harm. But in an active, monsters-are-trying-to-kill-you sort of risk that has led to severe/permanent injuries recently, but no (recent) deaths. And the professor hates that the lives of these teenagers and young adults are so blatantly being put in danger for entertainment. She also hates how gamemasters pass their roles to their kids, who are usually competitors themselves, and so on. So the professor rants about the international tournament and these competitive cultivators and how much she dislikes it.
Then she mentions the last international competition, which everyone has heard of just because of how wrong it went.
The recent competitions have been rife with controversy anyway; there was that whole thing with gamemaster Wen Ruohan where he was favoring his sons and almost got the other competitors killed, and usually the other gamemasters would vote him out but Jiang Fengmian (and his wife) passed away from disease recently, and Jiang Cheng was his nominal replacement since it was assumed that Jiang Cheng would be too old for competition by the time Jiang Fengmian retired, and Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were skipping that year’s competition anyway because of jfm and yzy’s deaths, but then Jiang Cheng was dragged back to vote Wen Ruohan out. That all worked out in the end, because the Wens were just removed from the competition.
But last year’s competition was the final nail in the coffin. Basically, one of the gamemasters (Jin Guangshan) rigged the game for his own purposes. Since Jiang Cheng was still competing, Jin Guangyao was chosen as the new gamemaster. When only five contestants were left–the same five as the previous years–the monsters suddenly stopped dying and their time-out flares suddenly stopped working. This maybe would’ve worked except that Jin Zixuan was surreptitiously warned at the last moment that the game was rigged in his favor, and immediately told the others once he found them. Then they realized that they were stuck in the arena with monsters that wouldn’t die and no way to get out. They had a collective come-to-grace moment in which they realized “hey maybe putting our lives on the line like this isn’t healthy or normal just because it was what our parents did”. (Meanwhile, the other two grandmasters are panicking because their little brothers are out there jgs I’m going to wring your neck–) Then Wei Wuxian goes “actually I think I can control the monsters using ~demonic cultivation~” and the others go “it may be against the rules but we’ll back you up”. So that was last year’s competition. It was even more controversial because Wen Ning died as a consequence. His sister, Wen Qing, the best cultivating doctor in the world, who has treated all of the competitors in the past, literally hit the ceiling. She treated the five returning contestants and then promptly quit. That would be a problem because there’s no other doctors willing to treat all the cultivating contestants after a competition. But the bigger problem comes when Wei Wuxian, who should have gotten first place, gets banned from competitive cultivation for breaking the rules. They try to award first place to Lan Zhan, who promptly refuses and also vows to stop competitive cultivation because they banned Wei Wuxian. Then they try to award it to Jin Zixuan who refuses because he doesn’t ~deserve~ it and he’s wrecked with guilt that all the others went through this just because his dad wanted to make him win (and also wanted to kill the others). They go to Jiang Cheng who takes one look and goes “you’re kidding, right” and everyone knows that Jiang Cheng is suffering from an inferiority complex due to Wei Wuxian constantly upstaging him but Jiang Cheng is like “if you think I’m going to take a first place prize when I should’ve been fourth and you’re robbing not only the first three but also my brother by banning him from the game that almost killed all of us just because you think I have some stupid complex then you have another thing coming and also fuck you.”
So next year’s competition is canceled. Suddenly, these professional athletes have nothing to do. The five of them sit down and say “maybe we should learn more about our supposed profession” since the only reason they survived was because of Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation. Jiang Yanli brings up the university class, and the next thing they know, all six are enrolled in the class.
When Elaine overhears Wei Wuxian needle Jin Zixuan about something to which he responds “that was years ago!”, they can’t help but ask, “do you know each other?” And Wei Wuxian glances nervously at the professor and says “we’re…uh…family friends!” (That brick wall Lan Wangji is glaring at Wei Wuxian because he doesn’t like lying, but Elaine can’t tell because Lan Wangji is a brick wall. In more ways than one). Basically, while they didn’t have any intention of hiding, Wei Wuxian panics when he remembers how much the professor hates competitive cultivators, and everyone else gets sucked into his lies because of him.
And then it all comes spilling out: Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli are siblings, Nie Huaisang is high school friends with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian is dating Lan Wangji (and that much was already obvious from the very public pda), and Jin Zixuan is Jiang Yanli’s fiancé, and his family is friends with Jiang Yanli’s family, which is how he knows the siblings from earlier. It also comes out that all six of them aren’t regular students at the university, they’re just taking this class in particular. Their answers aren’t particularly enlightening, and Elaine doesn’t understand why they’re being so dodgy on the question. Well, if “dodgy” means Jiang Cheng snapping “none of your business” and Lan Wangji staring at you until you walk away nervously.
This is how Elaine gains perspective on their classmates. Jin Zixuan is an arrogant rich prick who can’t last a conversation without mentioning how much better he is than you. Jiang Cheng would be cool (and maybe even cute, Elaine notes) if he wasn’t perpetually angry, even with the people he supposedly got along with. He’s polite enough with strangers but any personal comments and he acts personally offended. Wei Wuxian is nice enough, but he’s also an annoying troublemaker who’s always late for class, and has the social skills of an agoraphobic lobster. He constantly inserts himself in conversations and gets on the professor’s nerves. Well, the professor appreciates the questions and knows that Wei Wuxian is actually interested and also really really smart, but. Nerves. Lan Zhan is handsome, and a model student, but that’s about all Elaine can say about him. He has the emotional capacity of an old shoe, and rarely offers more than one word answers, as if talking is beneath him. The only exception is Wei Wuxian, and that’s a whole other can of worms, because Elaine cannot for the life of them figure out how those two are dating each other. It’s clear they’re the most in-love couple to ever being in love, but that doesn’t answer the question why. And how. And what. Nie Huaisang is nice enough. He actually has some social tact and can hold a conversation, but he also has zero spine and isn’t interested in anything but art and procrastination. Elaine doesn’t understand why he’s even taking this class. He’s not in uni anyway, why is he here.
The only acceptable person is Jiang Yanli, and that’s because she’s a human person with actual feelings. She’s always nice, but knows that her siblings are not, and she has interests besides ??? and none. She actually goes to university and is majoring in political science, which is how Elaine learns that she is a debate champion, and already managing a business left to her by her recently deceased parents. Elaine brings up their parents once and then Jiang Cheng the aggressive angry grape starts yelling and Wei Wuxian turns downright vicious all cold and dark and Elaine never brings it up again. So Jiang Yanli is the only one that Elaine actually likes/considers a friend. The only thing is that Elaine cannot understand why she associates with the people that she does. Siblings are understandable, but why is she engaged to that rich brat Jin Zixuan? The terrifying thing is that Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian agree with Elaine and think Jiang Yanli could do better, and Elaine knows this because they’re so vocal about it. Like are they trying to ruin their sister’s engagement? Actually maybe they are.
So that’s Elaine’s university class experience.