#Also is is just me or do XY and A-Qing give off the vibe of internet nemeses?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Master manipulator vs Master manipulator

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[gloriousmonsters]

How'd you think a Xue Yang raised A-Qing would have turned out? Let's say that aroundish the same time he was recruited by JGY, Xue Yang finds an A-Qing whose been horribly beaten up/mutilated by some sect member for stealing and goes 'fuck it, apprentice' and adopts her.

I do like the timing here bc (a) I feel like a xue yang who just got a new job would be the xue yang most likely to also be like 'sure, free child' if his interest was piqued by a beat-up kid, (b) xue yang is so young back then... babies adopting babies... it gives me slight wen kexing and gu xiang vibes (c) the picture of xue yang turning up to his second day at work like 'hey a-yao, i scraped a kid off the road the other day, what do you feed a kid?' is amazing

also placing xy taking her in around that time, a-qing's definitely learning demonic cultivation, which is fun to think about! It would be interesting to work with a genuinely blind a-qing (I think an actual bodily mutilation is the thing that would make xy more likely to take interest in her, due to... similarities) especially since I could see her being reliant on xy during the time she figures out her new disability being something that would make it harder for her to run for it when she figures out there's a lot of murder happening. she obviously is a morally grey kid, but she's very much not okay with murder in canon, and clearly you're not going to hang out with xy too long without getting over that. (one way or another. sometimes without knowing it)

so... thinking of around the time we meet her in canon, a-qing raised by xue yang would be at least passable in demonic cultivation, although I still see her as being a bit uncomfortable with using it herself; way more misanthropic, an even more pronounced difference between acting sweet in front of people and viciously cursing them out behind their backs; using that misanthropy and a grudging protectiveness she's formed toward xy as justification for any murder she needs to do.

tbh, I say grudging but I feel like her and xy's relationship would be one of those where they're constantly bickering and she insists she hates him but she'd completely lose it if he was hurt, and he might get a bit murderous if anyone hurts her. He's put effort into this kid now! Do you know how hard it is to get a good assistant? (don't read into the fact they pass themselves off as brother and sister at inns sometimes we DON'T care about each other or consider each other family this is CONVENIENCE ONLY). they're amazing at running cons together if necessary.

That's all I really got; though, I'm definitely not the one to expound further on the idea, since it's not a section of canon I think about a lot anymore, but it would be interesting to imagine how the XXC incident would work if it was xy and aq as a unit that encountered him.

[blackteaaddict]

Do you happen to know how old are Xuexiao in episode 10? We know that Xue Yang is younger but the timeline from the novel is different so... I can't really tell.

the short answer is: no, I don’t know, I’m pretty sure it’s not stated anywhere in cql canon how old are xue yang or xiao xingchen. (I don’t think we even got the information about xiao xingchen leaving the mountain at 17? I think it was only in the novel) (I’m not even sure that we ever get any information about the main characters ages??? cql timeline is a huge huge mess anyway....)

I guess the only solution is to take the few bits of information from the novel that we have and build your own headcanon on that. but ugh cql timeline and character's ages are a thing that can give you a headache if you'll think about it for too long... but fear not! I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time thinking about it and I'm more than happy to share my thoughts on this topic.

so from the novel we know that: 

xiao xingchen left the mountain at the age of 17

xue yang is younger than xiao xingchen (it’s not specified how much, but some people have put a great work to sort out the novel timeline and character ages and actually it seems like that age difference isn't very big? it seems to be somewhere around half a year, no more than a year?)

so based on that information I would say that the plausible age range for them in ep10 would be:

16-18 for xue yang

17-19 for xiao xingchen

when it comes to my own preference I definitely don’t headcanon them as young as 16 for xy and 17 for xxc because I don't vibe with their meeting happening so shortly after xxc left the mountain. 

and while 17 year old mass murderer xue yang is a truly delightful concept, in my preferred personal headcanon their ages are 18 for xue yang and almost 19 for xiao xingchen because I headcanon that xxc spent almost two years in the regular world before the chang massacre happened (listen, he deserves to spend over a year with song lan, considering they will never have a chance to be together again. also making the time songxiao spend together shorter than that feels really disproportionate in the stretched cql yi city timeline? (hey, fun fact: in cql xxc spends more time sad and alone than with xy or sl. actually I should call it the sad fact))

so if I want xxc to be almost 19 then xy is 18 (celebrating your 18th birthday with slaughtering a few small sects and taking revenge for your childhood trauma seems pretty neat too)

(I mean, of course you don’t have to stick to the half year age difference and still have 17y.o. xue yang while xxc is almost 19, but I prefer to keep that around half a year age difference between them. honestly, when I watched cql for the first time I had no idea that xy was supposed to be younger, I assumed they were roughly the same age? and I'm still having a hard time seeing a bigger age gap between them, half a year seems just right for me.)

(a little bit off topic: I headcanon song lan to be a year or two older than xxc because that's the impression I got on the first watch and yeah later I learned than li bowen is 6 years older than song jiyang. and it shows I guess...)

(hmmm it seems like a-qing is the only one of the yi city crew about whom we get any age information. but this is only the assumption made by juniors, so I headcanon that cql a-qing was a bit older than 16 when she died, she just looks really young. like, if she was 14 when she met daozhang, then spent some time travelling with him plus 3 years in yi city it would make her 18-19 during her death)