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I am personally attached to a headcanon that essek does not, initially, like cats. he is not, however, going to say this to caleb, which means he gets to go through a whole arc of silently and subtly (he thinks) grinding through his dislike for caleb's sake, he's going to figure out how to appreciate cats, it can't be that hard
cats, on the other hand, really like essek.
like. even in an au where their relationship wasn't built on a 100% house of lies and murder I think xue yang very on purpose would not talk about xiao xingchen to anyone else. but I do sometimes think about, if he did, the absolutely unhinged things he might say to, for instance, jin guangyao
"he's so pretty I'm going to bite his face off. have you seen him? I'm going to tear out his heart and eat it. he's so sweet to me. I want to live inside him. what? yeah, everything's fine, we're great"
jin guangyao meanwhile like
me, hands steepled in front of me: listen. I am thinking about caleb, a dom with at least some sadist tendencies, manipulated as a young man into participating in institutional torture, convinced that he is not only Bad and Evil but also Dangerous, desires control but doesn't entirely trust himself with it, associates the desire to cause pain exclusively with the evils of his traumatic history. are you listening? do you see my vision??
you, tied to a chair, trembling in fear: who are you and what do you want from me
i think all the time about how xue yang's entire conception of the world is built around violence. power is violence. survival is violence. the division isn't between good and evil or between loyalty and treachery or even between power and the lack of it; it all comes down to "you're alive" or "you're dead."
and then i think about xue yang in love, and the way that love becomes another form of violence. not in the sense that "xue yang thinks violence is love", not that at all, because xue yang isn't equating anything to love, he is equating everything to the only language he's learned to speak fluently, which is violence.
when i'm writing about xue yang's experience of being in love, i turn to violent metaphors, because those are the metaphors he has.
in general I feel like xue yang's emotional modus operandi with all feelings that are not identifiable as a very basic one is to go "huh. that's weird, not going to think about it"
like. if it's good he'll try to make it continue and if it's bad he'll try to make it stop but as far as trying to figure out what it is and what it means? nah. he's not paid enough for that
finally getting back on my "actually doing the CR2 rewatch instead of just writing fic all the time" on account of my face hurting too much for me to write.
so as I've been writing fic I'd been just being like "yeah I'll just give Essek Sending because I need it even though I know it's not technically canonical, after all he has Uraya contact the Mighty Nein on his behalf that one time"
and then I actually went back to watching c2e90 and lo and behold, two hours in we have Essek:
so then I went to check because I was like "huh am I misremembering the thing about Uraya" and 28 episodes later:
so like. why. why are you not directly Sending to them, my guy. seems like you could do that. could be an option.
unless, you know, you're scared to actually address these people directly for the first time (by your initiation) since they uncovered your retroactive betrayal.
and decide to phone a friend to do it for you. buddy.
the only saving grace here for Essek is that it does seem that she was actually on Eiselcross at some point, at least based on the fact that he says she went "back" to Rosohna, because otherwise (and this was my first thought), he used Sending to contact a friend to tell his friend to contact Jester via Sending.
which would be really, really funny.
a couple people expressed some interest in this so I'm going to try noodling on it in a more coherent fashion
The first thing is that - as other people have written about - when constructing a modern AU it is important to think about how characters in a historical or fantasy setting relate to violence in a proportional rather than literal way. MDZS has a setting where killing is more normalized than it generally is in modern society, both on a personal and a societal level.
(This is also why acting as though a fantasy villain blowing up a planet is equivalent to the concept of a real planet being blown up is silly on a level that's not just the equation of fictional and real; it's also a matter of scale in the setting or genre.)
So looking at Xue Yang's propensity for violence in canon as a way to consider how he might behave in a modern setting firstly needs to examine the ways in which that violence is calibrated to his canon setting.
It is definitely true that, even relative to other characters, Xue Yang's violence is marked as beyond the pale and extreme. So it would follow that the same would be true in a modern setting - but my argument is that it's not quite as straightforward as that, because there are certain contextual things about Xue Yang's violence that I think are important to take into consideration.
The first is to note that his most notorious act of extreme violence - the massacre of the Chang Clan - is one that occurs while he is under the protection of the Jin Sect, and he knows it. (In CQL, he gets permission from Wen Ruohan, though it's true that he never invokes that as a defense.) There is every indication that Xue Yang is thoroughly unconcerned about the prospect of getting in trouble for the massacre. Xue Yang isn't acting without being mindful of potential consequences; he's acting in the knowledge that he won't have to deal with them. The second is contextual: who Xue Yang chooses to target, and where. For instance: the people he tricks Xiao Xingchen into killing live in a remote area where he's a little risk of authority intervening. In both cases, Xue Yang is acting under conditions where he's unlikely to face consequences; where his violence is, if not considered acceptable, then something he can get away with.
Xue Yang can be reckless, but that recklessness is tempered by a very strong survival instinct and a recognition of what he needs to do in order to stay free and alive.
So then, to carry this into a modern context, particularly in a setting with a state-sponsored police and a defined legal system: I think that consciousness of the risks he'd be taking with acting violently would be even more acute, particularly because it's likely that he would be existing in a state where he'd come into contact with the legal system early for more minor crimes. Connected with that, there's the fact that the tolerance/acceptance of authority for violence outside of warfare or state acts is significantly lower, so any shielding he might have for acting violently illegally would be much thinner. Xue Yang is aware of the extent of what he can get away with, and "what he can get away with" is less, under a modern legal apparatus, than he could in the decentralized jianghu with its ad-hoc justice system.
When I say that I think Xue Yang's violent tendencies would be tempered by the existence of a modern legal system, I'm absolutely not saying that it's out of respect for that system. (I would hope that'd be obvious.) And I'm not saying that a modern Xue Yang wouldn't still possess violent tendencies (I think he probably would). I just think he's highly motivated to consider the context and targets for his violence in such a way that would keep it much less visible and extreme than it is in canon. There are still acceptable targets. But he's not going to kill a whole family. And I actually think he's likely to stop short of murder in general.
I don't think Xue Yang ever had a specific moment where he was like "I don't want Xiao Xingchen to learn who I am, because it would ruin our life together and I'm enjoying that life." I do think he was planning on telling Xiao Xingchen at some point (otherwise what's the point of the stunt with the fake fierce corpses, if not to have something to ruin Xiao Xingchen). But he just kept finding reasons to put off finishing off his epic revenge, and putting it off, until finally he just kind of. stopped thinking about it.
and this means that when the truth does come out, he is genuinely surprised by the fact that it is not the fun and satisfying experience he used to imagine! he's not enjoying this actually!!!
pictured: a guy not having the good time he expected
I think in the moment, consciously, he mostly attributes this to the fact that it wasn't up to him that it happened (thanks, Song Lan), but deep down, on some level, he's also very suddenly realizing that actually this isn't what he wants anymore, and having to come to that conclusion while what he did want is actively falling apart.
