if you think i will ever, even for one (1) second, get over their outfits in this picture, you are wrong. https://twitter.com/hourlyjc/status/1335313209822244864

the black that wei wuxian has been wearing more of is complete, consuming now. no more soft blues, no more soft anything. he's standing further apart, further separated than ever.

yet there's purple, not something dark, but a bold, sudden contrast that almost seems out of place.

it's bold and clean, the only way he can do colours right now, clean like his thoughts and his resolve. it cuts starkly through the black at his waist, at the center of him and nowhere else, as if cutting into his sense of self and his destiny instead of becoming part of it.

the purple isn't close to his chest--this isn't allowed to be about heart, not today.

it's at his belt. he sees this plan as the thing holding everything together right now. at the center of action where you put tools, hang tokens. it's something to *do* not something to *feel.*

he has only a touch of red--a single cord; he hasn't given up his passion and his vibrancy entirely but for this moment, they aren't what he's made up of. this sacrifice comes from love, as well as everything else, but he isn't passionate about it. just desperate. hard. resolute.

and he's cloaked.

this is the worst lie he's ever told. this is the biggest secret he will ever have, that he will be desperate to keep past the end of the world and into his next life, no matter what happens.

this is the first time wei wuxian has ever worn purple, and the only time he ever will. it's wrapped tightly around the place where his golden core sits.

wei wuxian wakes up and puts on the colours of the jiang sect, of jiang cheng, as if to mark himself. as if to say, "yes. now that you need it, this part of me is yours."

he never thought he belonged to them until he turned part of himself into an object to own and give away.

OH NO I HAVE ERRED UNFORGIVABLY he is absolutely wearing that same purple close to his chest *as well as* his middle. it's even lined with white--one of the few times we see white on him that's not a student uniform, and the first time we see white in combination with his black.

apparently it IS still allowed to be a matter of the heart as well, lined with the pure, uncomplicated nature of his intentions because to him, this is utterly simple. i'm not actually sure if that makes it any better. i think it just makes me more dang sad.

meanwhile, we have jiang cheng, wearing something equally as drastically different from anything else he has or will wear. which is saying a lot, with him, since he has such dramatic outfit changes throughout. he has quite a range.

this is one of his simplest outfits. simple and straightforward. only two colours--black and white.

he's not well, he's not thinking clearly, and this is the only thing he's clinging to right now. there's nothing complex or layered about his motives.

it's either the only time or one of the only times we see jiang cheng with any black. black is wei wuxian's colour. not only is he pretending to be wei wuxian here, but he's absolutely trusting in him. his shige can fix anything, even this, and he truly believes that.

the white has two aspects, and on the outside it's an off-white, very nearly a shade of gray, overlaying but not covering up the black. he's pretending to be something he's not, and his lie is as ill-suited to his character as his outer garment is ill-fitting on his form.

but the white closest to his chest is pure, and he probably doesn't care too much about the nature or quality of the lie that he's telling to pretend to be wei wuxian. he's desperate. he doesn't register this as potentially wrong. wei wuxian doesn't need this, after all.

additionally, the lie that runs deeper than jiang cheng's own perceived deception here is wei wuxian's, and in that, jiang cheng is innocent. a victim, even, to some extent, having absolutely no choice in this.

there is no purple. jiang cheng cannot align himself with lotus pier or the jiang sect right now.

theoretically, he could, because wei wuxian should have always had that right. but he never did, so jiang cheng cannot while he pretends to be wei wuxian.

further, what jiang cheng is doing right now is not exactly *for* the jiang sect. he cited being unable to take revenge for his parents as one of the last things that could have kept him tethered to life, but that's not his sect, and even that is not really what this is about.

jiang cheng's sacrifice was for wei wuxian, pure and simple. more pure and simple than wei wuxian's in return, in my opinion.

his bid at recovery is as much for wei wuxian, as well, as it is for himself and for anything else. for simply being able to be alive again.

he can't think past that. he already sacrificed everything. his home and almost all his family are gone. he could die, or he could listen to wei wuxian, and live for wei wuxian, and believe wei wuxian one last time, and try. so he is.

the only tie at all to anything else is zidian, still on his wrist. which, they're both idiots for letting him keep that if he was really supposed to be disguised as wei wuxian here.

he's still clinging to zidian even though he doesn't have any spiritual power to use her with.

(as my bro pointed out: "no! this is my mother's weapon! i won't put it down!" because are you really living if you don't draw more heartbreaking parallels between jiang cheng and his nephew?)

also he's still wearing his fancy hair piece instead of like a plain ribbon or something because jiang cheng is just really bad at being wei wuxian even when he's trying. and he gets away with it because he doesn't actually have to be wei wuxian here.