#i mean the vibe is VERY different in mdzs

[waitineedaname]

I'm not sure how to articulate it but it's interesting to me that the two people responsible for pulling the strings of most of the cultivation world are notably weak cultivators

[tossawary]

I'm re-reading PINTWILF and was suddenly wondering: considering how dense Shen Yuan is on SVSSS, how long do you think it will take him to realize Binghe has like, feelings, feelings for him?

I think he'll have to have it spelled out bluntly for him. But not necessarily because he's completely oblivious to the fact that he and Binghe are close and affectionate with each other in a "more than friends" way? I think by the end, even when he's still gently, jokingly encouraging Binghe to flirt with women, he'll have suspicions. Or... maybe... "he'll have hopes" is the better word?

See, one of the things I personally really like about MXTX's works is that while the protagonists are a little (or a lot) romantically oblivious sometimes, they're all capable of being very clever and observant, and I get a really strong vibe that their obliviousness is actually partly denial/disbelief that they would actually be allowed to have this thing (this person) that they come to really, really want. They often can't bring themselves to look at the idea directly. They know but also can't even bring themselves to think about it, because the rejection would hurt them too deeply, and rejection feels inevitable, by the world if not by the person they love, so they might as well blind themselves to the possibility of happiness.

It's a remarkably queer element that I vibe with on a personal level. It's also just one interpretation of things. Which is why, for example in MDZS fics, we get the spectrum of Genuinely Completely Oblivious Wei Wuxian to a Wei Wuxian who is so, so in love with Lan Wangji for so long but can't fully believe LWJ would ever like him back and, more importantly, doesn't want to "ruin" LWJ with everything that he is. (I am personally partial to interpretations which lean more towards the latter. I like obliviousness just fine, I like mixes of both, but the angst of love being known deep-down, but feeling unspeakable, being unthinkable, is delicious to me. The pining is so good.)

Now, Shen Yuan is a very different character to Wei Wuxian, just as SY is a very different character to Airplane. My personal interpretation is that each of the MXTX protagonists perform this "defensive obliviousness" in very different ways, to very different degrees, and for very different reasons. (I mean, for some of them, we're dealing with "loving me back would ruin your life and I love you too much to let you do that" and others are dealing with "if I reveal my love/lust to this person and they're not open to it, they might kill me for it".)

I actually went into SVSSS (SPOILERS) feeling really wary of the teacher-student angle, but my impression of their time together as teacher and student was that Shen Yuan's feelings for Luo Binghe were genuinely platonic. And while I make jokes about Shen Yuan being oblivious to LBH's feelings for him, he had a lot of really good reasons for thinking that Luo Binghe wanted to kill him at first upon their reunion. I think any romantic/sexual feelings only started to develop for SY upon their reunion and only became fully realized even later. My personal interpretation of Shen Yuan is that he's asexual (he reads as sooo ace to me), probably gay but possibly bi-romantic, sex-neutral or sex-favorable. (Though I also think that, in SVSSS, even married to Binghe, he still probably personally identifies mostly as "straight with an exception".)

I'm losing the thread of where I'm going with this because I'm desperately trying not to write like five different meta essays here.

In PINTWILF (SPOILERS), Shen Yuan is already in a different situation to SVSSS. Shang Qinghua is SY's mentor-figure and openly queer, openly in a relationship with a demon, and SQH has at least told SY that marrying all those wives in PIDW didn't make LBH happy. I can't remember if SQH ever directly hinted to SY that LBH might be into men, but the other family members aren't exactly 100% discrete or subtle about their teasing. Shen Yuan has a lot more space to get comfortable with his own queerness and LBH's queerness, though he has a lot of internalized homophobia to get through (and misogyny, my goodness, sometimes in SVSSS I really wanted to bop him on the head for his behavior around women even if he's simultaneously mocking the sexist tropes).

But there's still Shen Yuan's self-confidence and self-image to contend against. Even when he's not mentally slotted himself into the role of "teacher" and "betrayer", he's still had the time to mentally slot himself into the role of "older friend" and "confidant". Shen Yuan seems to view himself as a kind of boring person and he likes it that way, so while he would be happy to have Binghe as a partner, he likes him so very much, he can't quite shake the feeling that Binghe could do better and so it's best not to read too much into it. He's honestly happy enough just being friends (or so he tells himself) and doesn't want to "make it weird" unless Binghe takes the first step.

[optimisticmiraclefest]

This headcanon is kinda inspired by one of the arcs from the cnovel (A precious pearl in imperial city- aka one of the funniest novels ever with the sweetest characters especially the ml fl but with incomplete translation 😭) where *spoilers* a scheme against the crown prince ml was just basically just a smear campaign with 'good prince' and 'evil prince' and funnily enough the fl finds out and pays the storyteller to make the evil prince secretly a good person and all the women from the noble ladies to the palace maids ends up being obsessed with the bad boy stereotype (the ml's mother was so confused how her absolute brat of a son suddenly got popular among the common people lol)..........

And the point I was trying to make is imagine the same thing happening in mdzs. We already know jgs was purposefully badmouthing wwx and everyone else except a select few went along with it (I loved the part in the novel where lwj publicly calls him out for being a liar) and all the yllz rumours were pretty over the top so....

Imagine the juniors holding an intervention bc none of the sect leaders changed their ways after the second siege and just writing up an actual record of what happened........with new worldbuilding and slight changes in their names of course and jl is exempt from the process after his first few disastrous attempts,

Ljy and ozz write up the most sappy cheesy version of wangxian (bc both of them give the vibes of reading too many romance novels especially ljy in yi city arc),

All the primary antagonists die in ways more brutal than canon (and even the ones who didn't die get actual consequences of their actions) bc a certain young sect leader wants to vent up all his pent up frustrations of being related to way too many evil people and attending the most tedious discussion conferences with the rest,

There is an entire section about the wen remnants bc lsz and wn (who got roped into it) want to remember all their personal quirks and their life in burial mounds fondly and safely,

All the other juniors from many many clans pitch in by 'discreet' investigations and make a patchwork of many stories including contributions by various rogue cultivators who had left the jianghu in protest of their terrible decisions when it came to wwx and the wen remnants (there is a section about wwx being a terrible flirt thanks to one mianmian)

And sure enough even with fake names and swapped genders for minor characters to maintain plausible deniability, the jianghu's tendency to be disconnected from the common people means they don't realise that a story specifically with all their dirty little secrets exposed became the most popular story in the civilian world till it was too late.

Of course nhs was the one who ended up fanning the flames bc he found the entire thing funny especially after jl ended up asking him for any useful tips to spread rumours but if anyone asks he really 'doesn't know anything at all'

The storytellers have a fun time bc mdzs as a whole is entertaining enough to earn them a fortune, the civilians realise the main characters with the dizi and qin are a lot like yllz and hgy and.......

That's the start of their new obsession with the bad boy with a heart of gold stereotype with all of the over the top yllz rumours getting twisted to fit their new favourite story and wwx would definitely find the entire thing amusing even if his counterpart has a very different personality (and tease the juniors a lot after he finds out how the story started in the first place)

[neverwalka1one]

Tag game!

So @omgpurplefattie tagged me in this, so on we go!

Last song I listened to: The 'new (to me)' song that got added to the perpetual playlist is 'Shadow' by Livingston, and it's a banger. I mean, how can you not hit repeat:

There's some kind of fic lurking in there, haven't quite figured it out though.

Currently watching: Some sort of upper respiratory thing has managed to flatten me for the week (omfg I miss Not Coughing) so I've had a lot of time to binge Netflix. I got through 'Delicious in Dungeon', which is truly addictive - I love that not a single one of them manages to match their stereotype, and the mix of impossibly cute and immensely disturbing is awesome (I'm sorry, deaths? DEATHS? YOU HAVE MULTIPLE? Have you considered DIFFERENT CAREERS?). I also watched 'Suzume', which is adorable and well-paced, along with being just drop-dead gorgeous. Finally caught up on the Fab Five, even if I did get a little... grumpy with their handling of the demisexual gal. At least the writing of the script made it sound like that was being equated to 'just very shy', which. Um.

No. Thanks. I choose to have faith that it wasn't like that iRL, and it was a post-production choice, but... eugh.

ANYWAY.

Did watch the beginning of Netflix's live-action A:TLA attempt, and while it did considerably better than the Movie That Shall Not Be Named... idk. Vibes are off. I don't think I'm going to finish it.

Currently obsessed with: MDZS/Untamed, which I watched early in the pandemic and may never escape - I have two big fics, a big bang and a reverse big bang (because I'm nuts and I'm a sucker for art) in the works, and I've _finally_ figured out how to end the big bang, WHOOT. Also Magnus Protocol, as evidenced by the weekly flailings as the episodes come out. I am currently having a mental breakdown over the fact that Mr. Bonzo is sweaty, send help. Like, so much alcohol. And chocolate. I need to forget that. And finally the Pulleyverse, because I may never get over this awesome historical/magical vibe, even as I still struggle to finish The Kingdoms (guys. Guys. Does it ever get less disturbing? Will I ever stop asking a book 'What the actual hell was that' at 1am? I thought the Eel Singers was wild, I've read a decent chunk of the Master and Commander series, I THOUGHT I WAS READY. But seriously. What the hell?)

So I'm tagging @silveraspen, @dreamingmappist, and @everythingismadeofchaos. And of course, if anyone wants to play, feel free!

[fincalinde]

lwj, for the meme?

Not the Lan bro I was expecting but here goes!

a song that reminds me of them

This doesn't remind me of him because I wouldn't want to ruin it for myself, but I can imagine a sad montage of interregnum LWJ set to I Am Stretched On Your Grave. Anyway, my proper answer is Frostrósir by Eivør. It's in Faroese, which I do not speak, but I pinched something from here:

Each sigh from a lonely soul Every word that was formed without sound Now seems like a frostbitten affair Dressed in the guise of lifeless flowers

what they smell like

We have an answer to this in canon and it's sandalwood, so I don't have much to add.

an otp

I mean, it is the central point of the novel. But even aside from that, LWJ is consistently only ever interested in WWX. I'm not saying he shouldn't be interpreted as gay, but I am saying that even if he is gay it's secondary to his actual sexual identity which is Weiyingsexual. I'm not treading any new ground here.

Personally I don't find Wangxian interesting, but I at least believe they love each other and are compatible in the sense that they are both selfish in slightly different ways that mesh well for their own private universe. Not so great for others in their orbit, but part of that is authorial fiat so I try to be fair about what I hold against them.

I don't think CQL successfully executed the changes it made to Wangxian in having them click and partner up from the beginning, but I do think it was necessary to at least attempt to rebalance the relationship. In MDZS, WWX genuinely does not reciprocate LWJ's feelings in his first life beyond a very deeply buried and not particularly inevitable spark. His first life is really centred on his relationships with JC and JYL and they are the tragic 'romance' (in the traditional sense). LWJ only gets upgraded during the second life. Kind of awkward to do your sweeping romance if it isn't a romance in the 35+ episodes of flashbacks, so I don't blame them for trying. And I do like the Colin Firth vibes WYB brought to his LWJ.

a notp

Aside from not finding the idea of LWJ with anyone else convincing, let me take the opportunity to pettily sideswipe at Chengxian and shoving LWJ in to make it what? Wangchengxian? Is that what it's called? Either way, nooooooo thank you. You can't get much more fraternal than WWX and JC's idiot bickering, and even if they weren't such classic stupid boys together, JC and LWJ loathe one another with the kind of loathing that does not give way to a rendition of I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face. (Incidentally, in the original stage version Eliza walks out on Higgins never to return, and it is awesome.)

favorite platonic/familial relationships

Obviously it's his relationship with LXC (and by extension LQR?). Just absolutely fascinating. Their rapport is very sweet, as is LXC's protectiveness and gentle trolling. LWJ is not a particularly good didi, but LXC both doesn't notice and doesn't mind.

Actually, someone once made a meme for me in relation to this, let me dust it off and drag it out:

More seriously, though he was also raised with harsh discipline, in comparative terms LWJ is the spoilt baby of the family. As is often the result when we encounter morally rigid characters in MDZS, he is also in many respects hypocritical. Clearly I have a lot of negative things to say about him as a brother to LXC, but I'm not interested in demonising him and what's really interesting about it is that by and large this uneven dynamic works for the Twin Jades. Right up until it doesn't.

When LXC really needs LWJ to come through for him, he just doesn't. I'm not even talking about LWJ's behaviour leading up to and during the Temple, which is objectionable in the sense that he refuses to give JGY the benefit of the doubt that LXC extends to WWX. No, I'm talking about the fact that he bods off for literal months after LXC has just been through the worst experience of his life and lost his closest friend and partner. And I don't want to hear it about LXC being the elder and having a responsibility to take care of LWJ. LWJ owes consideration to his big brother and clan leader, even if that consideration might take a different form.

Here's a thought experiment. After WWX's first death, when LWJ has been whipped 33 times by the discipline whip and dragged himself to rescue LSZ and branded himself in drunken grief, can you imagine LXC bodding off for three months without a word to have picnics with JGY? It's inconceivable isn't it.

I didn't intend for this section to become a hit piece on LWJ and he obviously does love his brother, but in terms of actions it is somewhat of a one way street. The fact that LXC has no other expectations doesn't protect LWJ from my croc-hatted judgement face.

a headcanon that is popular in the fandom but that i disagree with

Righteous LWJ. Oh, please. In MDZS, righteousness goes hand in hand with hypocrisy, and though I doubt MXTX the human being intended LWJ to be read as thoroughly selfish, the (translation of) the text she wrote is a depiction of a profoundly selfish man. And that's not a bad thing, because his selfishness coupled with the occasions when he is genuinely altruistic makes him more interesting than if he really were a moralising ice cube with a ribbon tied around it.

the position they sleep in

Official Lan Position, and postcanon I probably don't want to know.

a crossover au i’d love to see them in

I'm going to be lazy and suggest X-Men AU again just because his secondary power would definitely be organic diamond form like Emma Frost. I don't think he'd also be a telepath, but the idea of that is funny because he could read WWX's mind and know for certain that WWX isn't (currently) into him. But as a serious answer, organic diamond form as a secondary power and then primary power the same as Alison Blaire. I see no reason why his mutant name wouldn't be Dazzler too.

my favorite outfit they’ve ever worn

I think he only has like one outfit. I'm sorry, I'm not cool enough to be able to distinguish between different varieties of plain white robes. In CQL I prefer first life LWJ because they put that massive ornament on second life LWJ's head to make him look older and taller but actually they created an unfortunate perspective effect where he just looks even shorter.

[meichenxi]

ATTENTION: MXTX BOOKS ACQUIRED!!!!!

!!!! yes!!!!! you heard that correctly!!!!!  I now have copies of TGCF and MDZS in traditional chinese, vertically laid out, plus a whole bunch of other books!!

(I have just returned from taiwan; it was by far not my only purpose in going, but I also decided to stay four days extra at the end after my friend had left just so I could go a-hunting.)

I am. so unbelievably excited. and especially because, with never having a) looked at these books in chinese, b) never having read anything beyond a few lines in traditional, and c) never having read vertical formatting, they are....readable? not with a dictionary on kindle or pleco like I’ve done before to make sense of things, but readable cover-to-cover without a dictionary at all. 

that is a HUGE step for me. reading has always been a bit of a mental block and with the traditional especially and the formatting I was very much expecting it to be a strugglebus situation and don’t get me wrong, it requires a good fucking deal of mental concentration and yes, I do occasionally run my finger down the page to not lose my place like an old person, but...I’m reading them

in the last four? three? days, I’ve read, as of right now, 68 pages of tgcf volume one consecutively (as in, just from the beginning) and over 90 pages in total (+ the pages I read for the scenes I like and skipped to). and it’s so FUNNY!!! I had honestly forgotten. I’m laughing out loud at points!! I read extremely quickly in english, and also have a terrible memory, which combines into flying through books and never having any idea what happened in them - reading more slowly I feel like I can enjoy what is going on more, and appreciate just honestly how funny the writing is. it’s hilarious. xie lian is such a moron (affectionate). ‘next time, if you have to throw something, throw me and not the food, ok?’ what a loser!!!! what a guy!!!!! 

so, 68 pages in, now for an honest appraisal of where I’m at.

first, formatting. 

 the vertical layout - look, going to be honest, I kind of hate it. I’m not used to looking up and down and feel like I’m bobbing my head, and it makes scanning a line more time-consuming. on the other hand, I can feel a massive increase in speed and comfort from even when I started three or four days ago, so I think it’s a matter of practice. I noticed also that when I went to the bookstore I still have the completely hilarious and useless habit of tilting my head to look at the books. the titles of which are written vertically. 

second, traditional. 

I am reading a lot slower than I do in simplified and horizontal laid-out texts, which is not surprising. the traditional is the biggest stumbling block definitely - but it’s not as big actually as I would have thought. I’ve been picking up frequent very different characters with two or three repetitions; not enough to internalise them and read them as seamlessly as in simplified chinese, but enough to look at them, even when it’s a little jarring, and go ‘oh, that means this’ in my head. I have found that I tend to subvocalise more with a) the increase in very different traditional characters, and b) the difficulty of the text. when there are simple conversations or directions I don’t subvocalise at all, which I consider generally speaking to be a good thing as it improves your speed of reading. when there’s a lot of mid-frequency fairly different characters (i.e. ones that I have picked up in these few days but aren’t common enough to be every two lines, and that I still very much have to think about), I subvocalise a LOT. when the characters are ones that I think I probably don’t know in either traditional or simplified, or there are a lot of very confusing descriptions, I don’t subvocalise at all, even if I could by phonetic components. I just - vibe. which brings me onto the next part. 

reading traditional - the brain feeling. 

I CANNOT describe how strange it is to read traditional and how wonderful an organ the brain is. it honestly feels like magic. if you’re still reading at this point and I’m not just shouting into the void, you probably know that I can’t handwrite in chinese to save my life - what that means practically for character recognition is that you could ask me to name the components of a character I see 100000 times a day and I couldn’t do it. it’s all subconscious. I have NO memory or understanding of what radicals are used where at the best of times in simplified chinese, and it’s all done via The Vibe. 

this is EVEN stronger in traditional chinese. I have not really ever deliberately learnt or consumed any media in traditional apart from a few characters you commonly see written or appeared when I have done a little bit of Classical chinese, like 馬，為，無 etc. I also got up to about halfway through the hsk1 course on skritter for a while on one of my endless attempts to learn how to write - so that gave me characters like 歡，對，甚麼 and so forth. in total that’s....still not that much. the VIBES I get when reading, though - incredible!!!!! I see these characters (not just ones with components that are predictable in traditional forms, but fairly or very different ones) that I have no memory of ever seeing before in my life and go, oh, that feels vaguely like this one. and then I look it up and I’m right. 

some of these are things of course are not objectively difficult - if you know the two components, you can go, oh, those are the two traditional versions of the components and so stuck together is the traditional character. but since I don’t consciously know the component parts off the top of my head of more than about 12 simplified characters (rip), this feels like utter magic. I have also been guessing quite a lot based on context and radicals.

I also know I probably HAVE seen some of these characters before at some point, I just don’t remember. nevertheless. it feels amazing, especially with the ones that are not predictable and are totally different. it’s a very bizarre experience. the coolest part though is the ability to remember new characters without looking them up or ‘learning’ them - a large majority of the traditional characters I can know recognise have genuinely been learnt over the last three days. if I see them for a second or third time - they’re mine now. and that is very cool and comes with practice and NOT anything innate blah blah because when I first started, I remember looking at characters over 20 times and still not being able to remember if I had even SEEN them before, let alone what they mean. so that ability has improved a huge amount, and I think reading and learning new words within the context of that book is mostly to thank for that. 

(not really relevant to any of the above, but reading in a foreign language is so interesting, because you really notice the vocabulary the author uses again and again and again more than in your native language. for instance, mxtx is constantly saying 这下. also 莞尔 as a word for smile - xie lian is CONSTANTly 莞尔一笑 . those are the two I’ve noticed a lot so far.)

overall then:

there are plenty of individual words I don’t know, but it’s usually clear what they mean in context, and when I know I’m reading a description of someone’s elegant fingers that's all you really need to know. none of it has affected my reading experience enough to make me physically put down the book and open pleco. 

I haven’t needed the dictionary for anything so far that I can’t get from context or memory of what happens. this means that I am Reading It Reading It, as opposed to Pleco Reading It or Kindle Reading It. which feels like a huuuuuuuuge milestone and difference and you know,,,honestly tearing up a little bit!!!!! because it’s so cool and I never thought I’d get here!!!!!! 

----

with all of that in mind, my plan for reading these is just...go from cover to cover with the first volume of tgcf, but let myself - since I know the story - jump around to read and re-read the bits I like reading. I want to get at least through the first two books of tgcf before I try to tackle any of the other books that I have bought. I’m not stopping to learn vocab really without the dictionary as most of it hasn’t been necessary so far and would interrupt the reading flow, but sometimes if there is a word I have seen 238290 times I will. I have only done this a few times, however, so I think for pulling vocab from this book I will have to do it separately - i.e. choose a passage I like and write down all the vaguely useful / fun words I don’t know. 

I have also got mdzs. now. the thing here is that...I love tgcf, but I’m not as precious about it as I am about mdzs. I have also NEVER read mdzs in translation because I have hated all of them so much, so I want the first time I read it to be as smooth as I possibly can, and to get as much impact and beauty and *shakes fist* as I possibly can. so...I might put it off for a while, maybe another 6 months or so whilst I improve my reading and traditional recognition skills. we’ll see. I don’t want to dip into it in the same way, and I feel like I want to use tgcf as training wheels first. we will see!

updates soon!!! big excite!!!!!!

[silvysartfulness]

Obviously sxx for the ship ask game though I suspect you got another asks about them already bc, well, *gestures vaguely* they are the ship (as they deserve to be). Maybe specifically the songxue side of it..?👀

Do I ship it?

Yeah, I guess you could say so.

What made you ship it?

I mean, I watched the Yi City arc and there it was? The XueXiao side of it had me ugly-snot-crying like a baby and I drew my first piece of fanart a few days later. And then, like, another week later I was like "Actually, you know what, adding Song Lan back into this mess makes it even better" and yeah.

That was 300k and lots of art ago. 🥲

What I like about the songxue angle of the ship specifically is the hurt, the mutual hate and blame for their shared loss, and how all those complicated feelings translate to a deeply unwanted understanding. In a world that forgot and moved on without the Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze long ago, who else will understand the tragedy, the unbearable the grief of his death? Song Lan and Xue Yang are bound together from their very first meeting - as enemies who ruined each others' lives, as master and slave, as broken companions in a deserted ghost city for endless long lonely years - and that bond is cause for both bitterness and an odd unspoken comfort. Whatever else the other is... he's there.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

The yummy emotions of all that trauma, and how their different personalities will both contrast and reflect each other! At their worst, they can hurt each other like no other by stabbing right at the very most vulnerable spots. At their best, they can bring unexpected qualities out in each other; Song Lan's steadiness offering Xue Yang a sense of stability and security he'd never ever admit to wanting but yearns for all the same, Xiao Xingchen tempering Song Lan's black and white and rather judgmental nature with mercy. Xue Yang's irreverence and humour bringing out something more relaxed and, dare I say it, fun in Song Lan that he wasn't even aware he'd been missing, and allowing Xiao Xingchen the selfishness of simply being human, loved for simply being human. And Xiao Xingchen offering the other two a bright light, his love and his stubborn belief that maybe the world could be something better - even if they have to build that world themselves, no matter the blood, sweat and tears it will take.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I have realized the SXX fandom is divided into groups with some very different takes on the characters (mentally I refer to them as the twitter crowd and the tumblr crowd) and I personally just don't vibe a whole lot with the former..?

In some cliques, there's a great fondness for mean dom Xiao Xingchen, or just Xiao Xingchen as a diva/sadist in general, and I just... really don't vibe with that take on his character. I'm glad others are having fun with the stuff they write and draw! It's just very much not for me. So I presume those fans would feel similarly about my interpretations of the characters. Don't know how much of an unpopular opinion that is, but there's certainly a difference of opinion, so I'm happy for those people to do their stuff over there, and I'll just sit over here and smoosh the blorbos together my preferred way, and we can all be happy out of each others' way. ♥

If you take a step back and look at the MDZS/Untamed fandom in general, I guess the unpopular opinion would be the Problematic shipping of these characters in the first place. The problematic, messy elements of it of course being exactly what makes it good. 😊

Thank you so much for the ask! ♥

[fleur1005]

YiZhan fandom interviews!! 003 @OldObsess/overthinkingthis

I am so thankful that not only she accepted this interview, but accepted it with eagerness! 🙏 I was actually very excited about finally being able to talk to her because one of my first fics I read in this fandom was hers (and is my favorite to this day) and it was rec’ed by none other than Ren 😆 Now you can imagine what fic that is lol, but I digress. So without much ado… here’s Tee, aka @OldObsess!!!

▪️ Please, tell us about yourself. How you like to be called or how you go by in this fandom and how long you’ve been in the swamp.

i respond to a lot of names in this fandom, it's all good. on twitter, i'm @oldobsess... if i could do it again, i'd probably pick a new handle, but i had never used twitter before this fandom, so didn't know what i was doing! my first screen name was "too old to obsess over 💚❤️" and then sometime later i decided that there was no shame in being an older fan, so i changed it to "never too old to obsess over 💚❤️" 😂

on ao3, i'm "overthinkingthis" — i deliberately picked a different handle entirely because i had never read or written fics before, and wanted to keep my fic activities separate, like a secret side thing. that did not last long. again, shedding the shame!

on tumblr i'm "overthinkingyizhan" but i'm new to tumblr so there's not a lot going on there yet.

fandom friends also call me tee, and that works too!

how long have i been in the swamp? i watched cql in march 2020... my family watched it first, and i had no interest in watching with them until i saw xz's face. i literally asked, "why is that man so beautiful???" i watched the entire series twice, read mdzs a couple of times, and then one day i was listening to wuji and thought, "are the actors singing this as a duet?" i googled them, was horrified by 227, amazed by yibo's dancing, and then started mainlining the official bts and all the fan analysis videos on youtube. i was so charmed by how happy they looked together, but i'd never shipped anyone in my life before, so wasn't sure what to make of all the shippy stuff. i came to yizhan twitter in april 2020 to find out what happened to them after weibo night (aka "divorce night"). what finally threw me into the pit was seeing video of yibo looking teary in a ddu clip from the first taping after 227... i remember thinking, "oh my god, he really loves him."

wow, i'm rambling. let me let you ask your questions!

Ooh, I’m loving your story…! You could keep going and I can keep listening/reading it… 🥹🥹🥹

So it was the first time you shipped someone???

yes, this is my first and only fandom! i was very lucky to find really good friends in the fandom when i came to twitter, and they have been such good guides. that's one of the reasons i love what you're doing with this project (and i very much vibe with your "omg how can i organize all this information" panic because that's how i ended up on ao3!) i could go on, but let me answer your next question:

▪️ Where are you most active/ favorite place to dabble in fandom-wise? (Twt, tumblr, ao3, pixive, privetter, etc)

i'm most active on twitter as @oldobsess… i've posted more works on ao3 than i ever expected to, and i have a tumblr that i hope to use to archive more of my collected fandom candy if i ever find the time

▪️ I’ve also been very fortunate to be in friendly fandoms, but being this your first, were you surprised by the toxic side of it when you found out?

yes! i mean, because i learned about 227 right away (it had just happened when i started watching cql in march 2020), i learned about antis very early on. i don't really understand why anyone takes the time to hate a character or celebrity when they can spend that time on the character or celebrity they love, but sadly, i know now that there are people who do that in every fandom.

i was also very surprised that dynamics is a thing some people get very worked up about, especially with an rpf ship where no one has any idea what people do in private. i've tried to be more mindful about it now that i know it's a thing, but i wish everyone could assume more positive intent when it comes to this particular topic. personally, if i see or read something that isn't my thing, i don't stop to comment and i don't like to do callouts in public. (that's what private chats with friends are for!) instead, i scroll on by or use the back button. i don't like to give fandom wank more exposure by posting about it publicly. there's enough negativity in the world as it is — i don't need to add to it!

i'm also aware that as an rpf shipper, i have to be careful about where i do my screaming. i don't do it on posts by official accounts (whether in comments or qrts). also, i follow a fair number of solo accounts because we share a love for either xiao zhan or yibo, but i am careful not to say shippy things on their posts... i think that's basic courtesy, because they're entitled to do fandom the way they like. if i don't like the way they do it, i scroll by or i can block if it's really something i don't want to see. some solos block me, and i prefer they do that than to say unkind things to me.

basically, i try to follow the golden rule... how would i feel if something said X to me? i feel like i've had a relatively drama-free fandom experience by following these guidelines. fandom should be fun, so as long as you're not hurting anyone, you do you!

I very much share the same opinion about how to handle 🐜.

Now that you bring up the topic about the dynamics, I think it’s a cultural thing b/w Asian countries and Western countries. They simply have different backgrounds of how they came to be and have very different view points. They can’t really be compared. But I still love both styles.

▪️ What was your first motivation to start writing/ drawing about them?

before this fandom, i never read or wrote fic! and i had no idea rpf was a thing! to be honest, i was a little weirded out by the idea of reading or writing fic about real people. 🙈 but then after spending hours chatting about ggdd candy with my first fandom friends, i felt completely overwhelmed by the need to organize everything they were sharing with me. (also remember that the pandemic lockdown had just begun, so i was going a little stir crazy and needed something to do with all my restless energy.)

one night, we were musing over when ggdd might have first gotten together, and one of my friends told me that a significant minority of cbxg (chinese ggdd shippers) believe they got together BEFORE cql. i demanded to know more about this theory, and after countless hours of drowning in candy from 2017, i decided i had to write a fic with this alternate timeline or i would lose my mind.

i opened an ao3 account and started posting "we are made to love" in june 2020. https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669283/chapters/59612737 i had no idea what i was doing! i just wanted to write something about all the candy for myself and to amuse the three fandom friends i had then. 😂 but then what started out as "maybe i'll write 15k on this, 20k tops" turned into a 20-chapter, 83k work that took me six months to post in full.

i swore all along that i would write that one fic to get it all out of my system, and then never write again, but that did not happen. these two beautiful and talented individuals are just too inspiring! i've created or co-created over 50 works since then, but wamtl is still my best-known work.

sorry, these responses are just so long! renren was so much more succinct... please feel free to tell me to shut up hahah

No, I won’t cos I’m enjoying this way too much myself 🤭

▪️ How many fics/ fan arts have you written/ drawn so far? Which one is the one that you’re most fond of and why?

i've written 45 fics (including two drabbles that i drew art for, and one anonymous work). i co-wrote an additional eight fics with friends. i also posted two works (a recipe and a knitting pattern) that were part of an art/fic collab that i did with some creative fandom friends.

i don't know how to answer this question (about what fic i’m most fond of)! i've been asked before, and my answer changes all the time. it depends on my mood, and also on what it means to be fond of a work. sometimes a fic is bound up in the feelings i had when i wrote it, or who i was writing it with or for. if you asked me what fic of mine i would most want to reread, that would also depend on my mood. do i want to laugh or cry?

i am really fond of "talk to me," which is the fic i HAD to write after i saw an article about a japanese man who rented himself out as a "rental-san" to keep lonely people company... i was absolutely seized with the idea of writing yibo as a "rental-ge," hired by xiao zhan to listen to him talk about a boyfriend who keeps breaking his heart. it's also a wholesome t-rated fic, and soft getting-together fics are really my jam.

i'm also very fond of "lying in the dark (no sunshine)," which is my angsty break-up/make-up fic. it's based on the movie "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind," which is one of my favorite movies. i am also in love with the concepts of memory and forgetting, and this fic is a long meditation on those themes.

i'm really cheating now, but i am super fond of my tattoo and tentacle aus ("under my skin" and "wrapped up in you" ) because i wrote them with and for dear fandom friends, and so both were so much fun to write. when i re-read them, i think of these friends, and the warm feelings i have for this fandom.

Ooh, I’m glad you mentioned “Wrapped Up in You” cos it’s been one of my first fics I read when I came into this fandom and was rec’ed by none other than Ren and it’s one of my fave fics for so many reasons! 😆😆😆

*screaming* i cannot believe that you joined this fandom and read TENTACLES right off the bat 😂😂😂 i love that! 🐙

▪️ What’s your favorite trope to write/draw or a new one that you want to try this year?

"established relationship" is my most common "additional tag" for my fics! i just adore writing yizhan all soft and secure with each other, even if they're sharing insecurities or bickering. to me, they fit together like puzzle pieces, so no matter what i put them through in the story, when i get to the parts where they're settled and happy, with all the trust and fondness that comes with that, the writing feels effortless.

among the projects i want to finish these year is a getting-together rom-com, a sci-fi au, and a fairy tale! occasionally i think about writing more "canon" fics based on real-life candy that they throw out there, but i also feel like i've written so many of them already, and i have a lot of other ideas i'd like to try to write.

oh, i should say, since this is supposed to be a guide for baby 🐢, i've dumped a ton of links to candy in the endnotes to a lot of my fics, especially wamtl and the fics in the "extra chapters" series. since i started writing fics as a way to organize my thoughts and the fandom candy, i actually do continue to revise the endnotes as i come across new sources (and if links go dead, i try to fix them). ideally, i would post all these links to tumblr so people don't have to go to my fics to find the links, but there are only so many hours in a day!

Wow, I’m amazed at how organized and prolific you are!

▪️ Are you bjyx, zsww or lsfy? Is this dynamic important to you?

i would say i am lsfy. i do not care about who does what physical act. i do care about characterization, and to me, that is completely separate from how the characters have sex. if a fic is written well, and the way yizhan is written feels real to me, i don't care how they have sex (or if they do at all).

one of the things i've really enjoyed about writing yizhan fics is that because they are both men, i don't worry about gender baggage the way i might if i were writing a m/f fic. i have the freedom to flip things around to fit the story and i don't spend emotional energy worrying whether having a character cook, cry, or apologize — or bottom — is gender-coded. honestly, i spend enough time irl worrying about race and gender, so i like that these are not issues i need to think about when i write yizhan.

so yeah, at this point, i have written all possible dynamics (and with tentacles, you really can do everything, everywhere, all at once 😂)!

i do try to tag my fics for dynamics (the actual sex act, not for vibes or characterization) so that people who *do* care can find what they want to read. i'd rather that someone who cares a lot about such things is able to avoid reading a fic of mine that doesn't suit their tastes so they don't feel compelled to write me a nasty note (also, readers, don't do this. there's a back button for when that happens).

That seems to be a very important issue in this fandom, they even have names for each dynamic. That a first for me and it was another thing that surprised me as a new 🐢.

▪️ What’s your most fave 🍬? Have you written about it? Where do you get your 🍬 sources?

i don't know if i can pick a favorite candy! like renren, i love the tattoo cpn, and so i wrote an entire fic about them having tattoos ("under my skin," in which xiao zhan is a tattoo artist and yibo is an idol who meets xiao zhan and suddenly wants to be inked all over his body haha).

i am fascinated with kadian, which is a kind of number language that's popular in china. i honestly thought it sounded far-fetched the first time i was introduced to it, but over the course of the years i've been in this fandom, i've seen enough evidence to know that kadian is real and yizhan use it (for example, 520 means "i love you" because the chinese numbers read out loud (wo ai ni) are a homophone for 我爱你, or "i love you" — may 20 (5/20) is a nationally-recognized couple's day in china for that reason)... yizhan (and all of their endorsements) post at 8:05 or 10:05 frequently because those timestamps represent their birthdays. there are many examples of different codes in wide use in china that have shown up in yizhan's various socmed posts... and there there are all the 18s (一八 sounds like yibo) and 3s (三 sounds like zhan).

i do incorporate kadian in nearly all of my fics in some way (and there's a whole chapter about it in wamtl), often because i’ll have yizhan post not-so-secret kadian messages to each other over weibo and oasis.

i even embed kadian codes into the word counts for nearly all of my fics, i'm that obsessed.

twitter followers know i post about kadian a lot too!

my first fandom friends have been such excellent sources of candy... @ShirasagiS @VenOceanofStars were the ones who spent hours talking to me about the candy that cbxgs had unearthed when i was writing my first fic. they helped me so much with translations (translation from chinese can be so difficult, especially when it's xiao zhan who's posting... he loves the word play and can get very literary in his wording).

other good accounts to follow to stay on top of weibo/oasis posts, endorsements, past appearances and such are @wxyzybxz @bjyxiaos @bjyxnoa @sunhuas

i also follow some solo accounts... although they don't *intentionally* deliver candy, they always have great content about xiao zhan and yibo.

candy also comes my way through chats with friends!

i'm not on tumblr much, but i like UntamedConnotations and AccioVictuuri for roundups of candy that aren't captured as well in tweets

Wow, thank you for sharing with us so generously your sources! I for one am very grateful cos I didn’t know several of them.

▪️ Open topic: hot/latest topic of the boys and/or fandom.

the latest hot topic!? i think it has to be yibo's new song, his performance, and his many, many posts about them! it's ticking all the boxes for me... a GORGEOUS, heartbreaking song, a beautiful and emotional performance, and a tidal wave of posts about it, with kadian, possibly hidden messages, and yibo looking incredibly handsome.

just today, he posted pictures of himself in a hoodie with a rainbow logo and his ever-present 🦴 necklace, and combined with a song and performance that already feels like yibo baring his soul in a way we haven't seen before, it's just SO MUCH and i am just in awe of how comfortable he is in his skin, how unapologetic he is about who he is... and how safe and secure he must feel to be able to shout all this out. i realize i could be completely deluded, and that none of this has to do with love, or that maybe he loves someone who isn't xiao zhan, but after all that i have seen over the past few years, i'm not sure how else to harmonize it all if they aren't szd. if nothing else, it makes me so happy to imagine that they've really found a love like this with each other, and for me, that's been the joy of being in this fandom (especially these last few years, with all that has been going on in the world).

anyway, i like to tell people that i fell into the wangxian pit because of xiao zhan's beautiful face, and that i tripped and fell into the yizhan pit because of yibo's lovesick face. everything about yibo's "like a sunshine" song and performance is just making me even more emotional about them and the epic romance that i see between them, and it brings me so much joy.

▪️Now that you bring up about the the 🦴 necklace, do you think the necklace is actually XZ’s gift? Does it really have a 王 engraving on it? Do you think the 🦴 necklace some kind of statement?

i'm not sure if it's really engraved with a 王... but i think the 🦴 is (1) a gift from someone special because yibo wears it so frequently... you only come back to a piece of jewelry that often when it has great personal meaning... especially when you are someone who wears fancy accessories for work all the time. it has shown up in inappropriate times too, like under a period costume on set, when he's not supposed to be wearing personal jewelry... that tells me it means something very special, because he just won't take it off. and (2) i think it's from xz because he has called yibo a puppy (gouzaizai), there was that time yibo's co-star from LoF said in a livestream that he can't call yibo gouzaizai because he's not xz (which tells me that other people know about xz using that term of endearment)... also xz has called yibo clingier than jianguo (comparing him to a pet), so yeah... i think it's really only xz who could give yibo a 🦴 necklace 🥰

could it be another person? i guess if i am wrong about them being szd, it could be someone else... but to me that would mean he's in a relationship with someone else. i have jewelry that other friends have given me that i wear on occasion, but the pieces that i wear all the time are the ones my husband has given me.

In between this answer and the next question, we both became a crying mess remembering the beautiful and meaningful dance performance of Yibo’s LtS at the New Year’s Gala, till we regained our composure, lol

▪️ How did you come to meet your good friends when you first started out in fandom?

when i first came to twitter in early april 2020, i really didn't know where to start. i wasn't a twitter user, and i'd never done the fandom thing before. i lurked for awhile, following solo accounts (at first, just xfx, because i was really worried about how xiao zhan was doing... it was still very early after 227). i stumbled over ventus's (@VenOceanofStars) posts, and spent a few long nights scrolling her posts of old candy. she noticed that i was liking literally hundreds of her posts, and dm'd me to ask me "how old is too old to obsess over ggdd?" and that's how we became friends. 🥰 she introduced me to @ShirasagiS and the three of us spent a lot of time just talking about ggdd and c-ent generally, since they are fluent in chinese (i am also asian, and although i've been perpetually trying to learn chinese, it's been a slog!)

i also found @BjyxObsessed because i thought her pinned tweet was hilarious and it spoke to me (back then, it was all about the shock of falling into this shippy pit as an older fan), and because i am not a shy person, i slid into her dms and forced her to be my friend. 😂 she introduced me to the world of rp fiction, and her sweet and funny fics were among the first i read (in any fandom!)

that's generally been my pattern... i see people around who might share an opinion or a demographic (a lot of my fandom friends are older fans with families and irl jobs) and i might dm them to see if we click. sometimes we do, sometimes we don't (and that's okay!)

when i finished posting wamtl and realized i was not done writing after all, i helped put together a discord server with some other writing friends, a place where we could encourage one another as we prepared for an upcoming fic exchange that we were all participating in. that was a great way to make friends... gathering around a common creative interest, be it writing or art or maybe just yelling about the boys.

some of those writers have since moved on, and some new writers have joined... it's sad when friends go on to other fandoms or to other interests, but i'm told this is a natural ebb and flow of fandom, and so i've learned to roll with it and keep making new friends.

somehow, nearly five years after yizhan started filming cql together, new 🐢 still find their way here, and i like to think that that's a testament to how beautiful and real their story feels.

▪️ Okay, I have the exact same question. How old is too old? Because I regard myself as one of the older 🐢 age-wise. I was VERY relieved to see several 30+ or 40+ in fandom 🤭

well, i don't like to tell people how old i actually am because i feel like putting a number on it might make people wonder if they're too old (if they're older than i am)... i prefer the mystery! but yes, i've been told that my saying i'm an older fan makes other older fans feel more comfortable with being here, and that's nice to know!

i do have readers and followers who i know are older than i am, and i think that's awesome!

▪️ Lastly, a piece of advice for newbie 🐢, please!

i would second renren's advice to respect the boys, their business partners, and their co-stars/friends and don't write shippy things on their posts. think of the golden rule before you hit "send" on things... how would you feel if you were yibo or xiao zhan and people were yelling shippy things on your work projects? for that reason, i try to keep my nonsense within this fandom bubble... i don't hashtag with their names, and i don't interact with solo accounts unless i *know* they're tolerant of cpfs.

the other thing i would say is to spend your energy positively. being excited about yizhan's projects and their accomplishments does not mean you have to trash someone else... that's a really bad look, and can only make trouble for them (and especially don't do that if you're using them as your profile picture because it reflects badly on them).

finally, don't evangelize. if people see what you see and want to find out if they're szd, they'll find their way here. arguing with people and trying to "prove" to outsiders that they're together is bad form... remember that we really don't know anything. i might personally feel they're szd, but if other people don't see it, i respect that too. THAT SAID... if they trip and fall into the pit the way i did, i'll do what i can to make them feel welcome so they can enjoy a positive and joyful fandom as i have!

END

[afsosville]

Here are the Calamity Shen Jiu headcanons>>

There’s going to be some ATLA references so be warned.

PIDW is a cultivation setting where demons and humans are the prevalent races, whereas TGCF and MDZS feature ghosts instead of demons as the entity that cultivators and gods exterminate. I’m gonna have to actually do some worldbuilding so I don't have plot holes like Airplane bro.

Luo Binghe's reign over the realms was like a forest fire in the eyes of the heavens. That is one of the reasons why they never interfered with the demonic emperor's tyranny until the very end and let the wheel of fate run its course. To extinguish the current world for a new one to come to life in its place. The human realm is preserved, while the demon realm no longer exists. Demons, demonic/spiritual beasts, and the like have long since died out/were killed or very few of them remain. There is now an abundance of ghosts, spirits, and undead corpses (and everything else that is native to TGCF) as a result of the grave amount of deaths and mass carnage in PIDW. The undead weren't as big of an issue until now. Luo Binghe wiped out the demon population almost to extinction and a good chunk of the human population, cultivators and civilians alike. 

Soooo guess what type of creatures run rampant now? Ghosts!!! Demons become a distant thing of the far past. Come centuries later after a change in the Heavenly dynasty and Jun Wu happened, so did the rise of ghost kings to replace demon lords. 

Ghost kings cultivate all their (resentful) energy themselves to reach the devastation level. They go through their own trials and tribulations, like Mount Tonglu, to become ghost kings. Compared to heavenly demons, whose power is simply given to them at birth, ghost kings are definitely the more powerful beings imo. Not that heavenly demons can't cultivate to become more powerful, but seriously, you think smn who came fresh outta the kiln is smt to scoff at?? 

See, now we have an actual green calamity that is a devastation, not whatever sorry excuse of a calamity Qi Rong is! (Love that green gremlin too tho, but please!) Shen Jiu takes on a different name, and wears darker shades of green, and black. He has Earth centric powers and is an elemental calamity like He Xuan. Think of Earthbenders from ATLA but OP. He’s moving mountains and can create peaks, valleys, canyons, and is responsible for earthquakes with the highest magnitudes. Just hurling landmasses with abandon and slicing through the Earth like no one’s business. Lava/glass bending is also in his domain. Speaking of which, it would be cool if Shen Jiu was the one making the terrain and lanscapes move on Mt. Tonglu, and can also talk to the mountain spirits. He can also give sentience to Earth golems and lava monsters. If Shen Jiu’s ghost king design gives off Kyoshi vibes then I did smt right. I believe Shen Jiu should have access to lethal war fans no matter the AU. Kyoshi controls the elements with her fans, and I’m making that Shen Jiu’s thing too. He can also see through his Earthbending abilities like Toph can.

Fighting a ghost king that can use the very ground you walk on to kill you is terrifying, yes. And worse, you're not safe anywhere, and there's another calamity that rules the goddamn oceans. 

I wanted Shen Jiu’s hair crown to look like a halo for no other reason than making it look like Shen Jiu is mocking the Gods. Plus it looks pretty. He doesn’t have eyes bc, one was plucked out by Luo Binghe ofc, and the other one was burned by the acid in the water prison. I imagine that whenever he talks, his voice echoes in a haunting way and he doesn't even make the effort to move his mouth because he's using his qi to project his voice. Bro doesn’t have a tongue. As for the limbs, they’re made out of stained glass that he managed to temper/regenerate in the kiln. 

I’m thinking… that the name Shen Jiu gives himself is Shen Heishan, meaning dark mountains. Probably. This would be a reference to the burning of Cang Qiong. Also alludes to his Earth-centric abilities.

The death of Yue Qingyuan was what killed him. He swallowed the shards of Xuan Su, and had become a wrath the moment he died. I wanted this to parallel Hua Cheng, when he became a wrath ghost when he saw Xie Lian be pierced by a hundred swords -> Shen Jiu became a wrath when Yue Qingyuan was pierced by ten thousand arrows. 

Shen Jiu is called Jaded Night Shatters Heaven because, just shortly after the kiln, he started a massacre on the current dynasty of gods, under an ethereally lit emerald night sky. I know it was originally White No Face who did the killing and that fact is so cool. Like imagine just slaughtering every single god in existence and rebuilding heaven itself with their fucking remains. On top of taking over as heavenly emperor and fooling all the gods that ascended afterwards??? Absolutely insane. That's pretty much it. I want to see a calamity who’s known for slaughtering a dynasty of gods, and well this AU is about Shen Jiu so let him do it. 

The whole heavenly bridge incident with Bai Wuxiang happened 500 years prior (making Shen Jiu about 1500 years old currently, and the 2nd eldest ghost king), and it was during the events of PIDW and Bingge taking over the two realms did Bai Wuxiang plan on killing all the gods in the middle of all the mayhem. Too bad Shen Jiu got to it first. Bai Wuxiang was silently killing the gods Shen Jiu didn’t in the background. Shen Jiu was just killing indiscriminately in a blind rage, while Bai Wuxiang wanted to kill everyone methodically. Shen Jiu’s resentment is aimed at the heavens bc well, where else? The already charred human and demon realms? Or the third realm that watched the suffering run its course and did nothing to prevent ruination from happening? 

Piggybacking off of Levemetal’s idea, Shen Jiu would be a recluse, not wanting to be involved on any matters involving the ghost realm, and least of all the heavens. He made his point all those centuries ago lol. Yes, everyone keeps their distance from all the ghost kings, but Shen Jiu’s name provokes a whole other level of fear. 

As for weapons, I don't have anything concrete other than the war fans. If Shen Jiu has a blade, whether it be a daggers, a sword, or a scimitar/sabre, they would be forged when Shen Jiu coughs up the shards of Xuan Su. He would imbue the shard(s) with resentful energy to transform them into the blade. 

He could also use chains to fight. The chains are the same ones that held him up when he was being tortured in the water prison. I'm applying the same logic here with Xie Lian's Ruoye. His silk bands became sentient because it was drenched in Xie Lian's blood when it was used to tie him down while getting stabbed a hundred times. Xie Lian's parents also used it to kill themselves and Xie Lian *tried* to kill himself with it and it somehow got cursed with all that death qi/energy. Similarly, the chains from the water prison became poisoned by Shen Jiu's resentful qi, and it allows the chains to do what they want and have a mind of its own. 

And that's it!

I already have an AU with Shen Jiu in MDZS, so ofc I had a TGCF one backed up somewhere too.

*Slaps this onto the table*

GHOST KING SHEN JIU !!

A friend of mine also has a Calamity Shen Jiu AU of their own so check it out too! @levemetal

I'll rb with the headcanons later, but first, fics>>

Tales of the Five Calamities by FakeAlice

No Prayers for the Gods by Otno

To a Life (Never) Forgotten by Orphan Acc

These 3 were the only 3 I could find, like Calamity Shen Jiu is such a slept on idea fr.

And his Calamity title? Jaded Night Shatters Heaven

Here's more content abt Calamity Shen Jiu I posted a while ago as well if you've got the serious brainrot that I do>

[ddanmeissu]

i need someone i can yell at about my very niche tma au ;w;

(see me playing fast and loose between tma lore and mdzs canon under the cut wheeee~)

this is part headcanon, part drabble, all-around mess. just dont think too hard about it please

the classification of each entity isn’t fully documented yet, smirke’s 14 doesn’t exist, but each major clan has a specific fear that called their founders. there are also some entities haven’t been identified yet so a lot of fears bleed into each other 

they’re still cultivators here. they’re cultivating fear.

golden cores are the physical manifestation of your connection with your god within your body. the more you feed it, the more connected you are to your patron, the more powerful you become.

each clan is a powerhouse to a specific entity but their disciples can be touched by multiple entities (and honestly, i cant make everyone a slaughter avatar) only the sect leader needs to be fully devoted to their fear god

Gusu Lan = Beholding, Qinghe Nie = Slaughter, Yunmeng Jiang = Hunt, Lanling Jin = Stranger, and Qishan Wen = Desolation

wei wuxian was once heavily touched by the hunt. his mother a famous Huntress and rogue cultivator and his father a servant and close friend to the sect of The Everchase

jiang cheng’s Hunt core is slightly weaker but its fine because they are of the same pack. they are partners, brothers in everything but blood, and will hunt down anyone who dares to hurt the other.

jiang yanli isn’t an avatar, not marked by the hunt but touched by the Hive, manifesting more on the love/belonging and family aspect rather than the filth aspect

i have more Thots about the family aspects between hive/hunt and how they are both very possessive on who they call their Persons but expresses it different ways that mirror jyl and jc but that’s for a different post

during their time in the cloud recesses they meet a quiet watcher who wwx immediately zones in on him as his new “prey”.

lan wangji is silent and knowledgeable as is expected from a disciple of the beholding, but there is a certain chill around him that other eye avatars do not have

wwx stalks the poor boy, pounces on him whenever he manages to catch him alone, and is just a general disturbance all-around.

he does not feel the Eyes that sometimes watch him when he is alone.

lan xichen does not need the beholding’s power to see the way his brother looks at the young hunter disciple. he is pleased to feel the cold surrounding the jingshi has lessened. shufu seems perplexed and torn.

wwx’s also has his eye on jin zixuan, the pompous plastic peacock that’s engaged to his shijie. he isn’t actually allowed to hunt him down so he settles on dismembering the lifeless mannequins that he uses as servants.

(playing with the timeline here) they get kicked out when a text is destroyed within the Library Pavilion even though it was just a pornography book (any kind of knowledge is still knowledge) and even though it was lwj who destroyed it (the eye had punished him severely for that).

the desolation!wen are attempting to bring The Scourged Earth into the world. they burn down the cloud recesses “in the name of ‘cleaning up the place’ so that it would be ‘reborn from the firelight.’” ( - directly from the mdzs wiki)

the xuanwu of slaughter is an ancient manifestation of, well, the slaughter and cannot be reasoned with.

(”Lan Zhan, can you See anything?” “No. My connection with The Beholding has been greatly severed.” “Oh. well.. Uh, it’s kinda foggy in here huh? Here have my outer robe, you look kinda cold.” “…Mn.”)

lotus pier burns and jiang cheng loses his core. wwx asks flesh!wen qing for help because only an avatar of the flesh (the boneturner, though that isn’t its name yet) is able to carve open another avatar long enough to take something out and place it somewhere else.

jiang cheng immediately becomes a fully-fledged avatar using wwx’s hunt-influenced core. it manifests as strong bloodlust against the wens, fear of being seen as weak prey by the other clans, (and later, hunting down wwx and other end-aligned cultivators.)

wwx gets thrown in the burial mounds. he is dead for three whole months. and then he wakes up.

his hunter core is gone but that’s fine. he is alive not because he wants to but because he has to. when he is awake, he calls upon the dead to exact his revenge. the wens are defeated and everyone is in frightened awe of the new being that he has unwillingly become. when he is asleep, black tendrils of death plague his dreams. He relives the horrible memories of his own and others’ deaths. sometimes he can feel someone watching him but cannot see them in return.

wei wuxian is alive but he is not part of jiang cheng’s pack anymore. he does not follow them out on hunts anymore, doesn’t even bother to stay within the residences. he isn’t part of their pack anymore, abandoned their patron for something else more powerful, and for what? he feels resentment brewing inside him. resentment and fear.

wwx knew not to trust the polished and waxed faces of the jins. all the wen remnants are non-avatars, barely touched by anything other than the fear the jins had instilled by themselves. they do not deserve this cruelty, to be both entertainment and livestock for the rest of the cultivation world. it is true that death comes for everyone, but wwx will not let these people die at the hands of these strangers.

the wens become touched by the End during their stay in the burial mounds. wen ning, with flute music playing in his head, wins an archery game against Death and finally wakes.

 one day a cold mist surrounds yilling when wwx takes a-yuan out on a stroll. He loses him but finds him again clinging to a man in white robes that looks like he wants to disappear. wwx feels himself smile brightly at the sight. (”lan zhan! it’s so nice to see you again! It’s been so cold out today but luckily it’s warmer now!” “Mn.” “You really blend in with the fog with those white robes of yours. it’s okay though because i’m sure i can find you wherever you disappear to!” “Mn.”)

qiongqi path becomes a massacre of plastic mannequins and not!beings. the smell of death and manufactured flesh fill the air like an offering to his unwanted patron, and black tendrils surround wwx and his assailants. It blinds him and he can’t see it, can’t control it, can’t stop it as jin zixuan is pierced through his chest and falls to the ground, dead.

the clans are outraged. they speak in fear of him, they hear of his power over life and death and that he, like the wen fugitives by his side, is trying to bring about his patron into the world. they call for an attack, a bloodbath to take him down once and for all.

and a bloodbath it is. the entire cultivation world against a one-man army. fear rings high in the air and all the Entities are well fed in the aftermath, the most satisfied: Slaughter and (paradoxical to their intent) The End.

later, much later, when the siege is over and nothing is left of his anchor other than a small child marked by death, lwj accepts the punishment lashes and then goes into cold seclusion. the jingshi is completely covered by clouds of fog. no one can See him, the elders only get a debilitating headache when they try to pry too hard. not even lxc, who has become the Eye’s most devoted avatar, can know his brother’s whereabouts. only lan yuan seems to able to navigate through the dense gloom.

the world moves on

jin guangyao’s wide smiles are not conspicuous within the plastic faces and painted lips within lanling jin. If his limbs are too long or if his smile a bit distorted or if he disappears through a bright yellow door and doesnt come back then no one makes mention of it.

No one also notices the webs above them hidden in the high ceilings of lanling jin nor the tiny spiders that skitter around the gossiping servants, spinning and weaving threads of thick silk around them.

it takes years for his brother to come out from the fog and lxc nearly weeps at the knowledge that The Lonely had not forsaken another member of his family. still, lwj has changed. there is a certain chill around him now that persists wherever he goes. though he has always been silent since childhood, his silence now is cold and unfeeling, eyes faraway as if not seeing those around him and only floating through the days. He is not completely alone though and that is enough to alleviate some of xichen’s worries. 

time abates some wounds but certainly not all. there is still an empty cold pit in lwj’s chest but it does not bleed as freely as it did 10 years before. Before, he would have readily disappeared into the fog when the elders comes to look for him, now he chooses to disappear from the cloud recesses and absconds into night hunts. he goes wherever the chaos is, seeking (but not willing to hope) that he might find something that can stir the deadness in his heart.

tbc ?

[elvesofnoldor]

humm i may have gone unhinged and finished watching all 23 episodes of mdzs last night/early this morning (ok i didnt finished ALL of them in one day. it was from episode 8 to episode 23 and i started watching 2-3 episodes a day a couple of days when i was trying to compare and contrast it with the untamed, and well shit started to hit the fan starting around episode 10 and i just kept going until the very end lmao) 

[cqlfic]

fragmentary anamnesis

link to AO3 AUTHOR: besanii (@besanii) Not Rated, 2706 words, 1/1

RELATIONSHIPS: Lan Wangji / Wei Wuxian BLURB: wwx works at a tea shop in the afterlife

SUMMARY:

He’s seen people like him before. He’s watched them all: lost souls still tethered to the world, searching for something that had been denied them in life and they now seek in death. They wander the earth day after day, year after year, century upon century, until they can no longer remember the reason they linger. And then they come here, to this little shop of his stuck between life and death, and he ushers them back into the cycle of reincarnation.

(or: Wei Wuxian works at a tea shop in the afterlife.)

creator chose not to use archive warnings, reincarnation, chinese mythology & folklore, mutual pining, memory loss, character death, angst with a happy ending, afterlife

[link to all bookmarks]

[!] also on tumblr: part one and part two

[irrealisms]

i was going to put this in the replies but then it got long lmao. anyway: yes!!!!! this is part of why i recommend tgcf to people who enjoyed mdzs/mdzs to people who enjoyed tgcf (my recommendation of svsss to anyone is much, much more qualified, but i do recommend it to people who are interested in mxtx novels generally speaking, because of the interesting commonalities there and how you can see her first forays into writing about the same themes she will return to again & again)--i'm going to use this post to expound on svsss a bit because it's haunting me it's the one you're not reading--just look at this quote from svsss:

“That said, demons are naturally gifted with spiritual strength, far more so than humans,” he said. “If their strength could be used for good and was dedicated to the righteous path—to the common people—then how could that not be a good thing?”

this is not actually a central recurring thing in svsss but it stands out to me so starkly because it's--so clearly the groundwork for the themes of both mdzs and tgcf?

and then ofc there's the thing of like. all three of her protagonists get canceled on twitter* and mob mentality/the way a crowd idealizes and demonizes someone in turn is a central theme of all three books. another svsss quote:

He’d done nothing at all to warrant a fall from grace like unto a hundred-floor skyscraper toppling in a single night, nothing to warrant being chased down and beaten by the masses. But everything was different now. The problem was that all of the indistinct smears on his reputation had massed together. [...] As things that seem to be perfectly aligned by pure coincidence accumulate, people no longer take them to be coincidental.

which is! very much the same sort of thing you could say about wwx or jgy! and while #xielianisoverparty is a bit different in terms of vibes it's still clearly the same sort of thing. i mean, look at that metaphor: a fall from grace like unto a hundred-floor skyscraper toppling in a single night.

there's also more general things-- all three books are very concerned with homophobia, with toxic masculinity, with cycles of revenge and abuse, with the ultimate emptiness of revenge, with scapegoating, with abuse both on the micro/interpersonal level and on the macro level of societal structures that enable it, with suicidality and self-hatred, with gay love as a positive (even salvific) force, with the way that suffering and ~oppression makes people worse out of fear and desperation; svsss is imo somewhat less concerned with class and war than the other two but "less" is not "zero" and tgcf and mdzs are very much about classism and the horrors of war; etc!!

it's also interesting to look at the differences--they're all concerned with different types of abuse (mdzs is largely about familial abuse, svsss is largely about sexual abuse, tgcf is about a secret third thing), they all do some level of slash-typical feminizing of male characters but they have very different things to say about it, mdzs and tgcf are engaging with the specter of the sexually predatory gay man in a very different (and imo less ~problematic) way than svsss does--but the differences in how they look at and handle certain themes are particularly interesting to me bc they are so fundamentally concerned w the same themes. reading more than one of them is rly fun and interesting imo bc you really do get a sense for what things mxtx is broadly concerned with and keeps coming back to, what her opinions are, what she has to say through her fiction. it's really good i really like mxtx novels :D you handshake me (loves to juxtapose)

It is in fact really really interesting how many of the things TGCF is macerating on are the same things that MDZS is, and from what ik abt SVSSS things that's also interested in. MXTX is truly writing for herself her dick and the six specific thematic narratives that haunt her

[cqlfeels]

In which I am overindulgent and make a(n incomplete) list of MDZS+ characters and the Tolkien characters they would love if they read and enjoyed his books*

* This isn’t to say they would get along with these characters if they met, just that they would like them as readers

Yunmeng Jiang

JYL: I mean, hobbits as a group, just in general. Particularly loves Rosie Cotton as portrayed in the book. (Might have cried reading Beren and Luthien, but only because she was going through A Lot at the time)

JC: It’s Boromir, but he feels like that’s the wrong answer somehow so he chooses Fingolfin and that also backfires because now everybody thinks he’s broadcasting his daddy issues when he just wanted to be the guy who stabs Morgoth

WWX: Doesn’t have a favorite when he’s young, but the older he gets, the more he appreciates Maedhros, for philosophical reasons. Has a crush on Glorfindel and doesn’t realize his experiences aren’t universal, which makes for Interesting conversations with other fans

Gusu Lan

LXC: I know the common fandom opinion is Elrond, and I definitely agree, but I think he’d also like Finrod. Depends on which book he’s reading, really

LWJ: Will not admit to liking anyone because he won’t lie, and the true answer is Feanor and he finds that mortifying. Caveat that the same instinct that gives him his canon YLLZ kink does make him prone to overreacting to like 90% of thirsty Sauron fancontent, which is something WWX found fun back when they were teenagers

LSZ: Throughout canon, from toddler all the way to the last scene, it’s Bilbo. Post-canon he suddenly loves Elrond. For reasons.

LJY: Gandalf for his dialogue. Developed a sudden passion for Beren As The Best First Age Hero the instant he noticed JL is a Turin fan (His favorite scene is the starving in the forest interrogation from The Hobbit, though)

Lanling Jin

JZX: Thingol Has Done Nothing Wrong Ever In His Life

JGY: If anyone asks, Barahir. Secretly? Rian.

MXY: Also Maedhros but for very different reasons than WWX. Has read every h/c fic on AO3, but also every dead dove, and at this point doesn’t remember what’s canon and what’s fanon

JL: Turin. (“Because he’s cool!” he will say to LJY, but it’s actually because he misses his parents) Also a huge fan of Huan as a concept

QS because I can: Indis, but before she had read HoME it was Legolas. People tend to find that confusing.

Qinghe Nie

NMJ: Men as a group, Theoden and Hurin in particular - you’re gonna die, but do it right

NHS: He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know! If pressed, he’ll say Finarfin and it’s like, 75% true

Qishan Wen

WQ: Morwen, but she vibes with what Rivendell is trying to do

WN: Should be Sam, but he imprints on Fingon once he reads the Silm. WQ wishes he liked literally anyone else.

Bonus Yi City

XXC: Nienna, but he’s been known to Contemplate several characters

SL: Imrahil (Also: strict book purist, and a huge Gimli fan - these things are related)

XY: Doesn’t actually like Tolkien but ships silvergifting. Finds the fall of Numenor hilarious as a concept despite having only skimmed the Akallabeth

AQ: Honestly? She thinks Gollum is delightful

[nyerus]

I just finished TGCF, and I'm kinda "confused"...I enjoyed it and I love Hualian, but.... One of the biggest issue I have with TGCF is... What is Xie Lian's motivation? What drives him to move forward in the story? What is even the whole story's purpose?

Like when you read Harry Potter, you know immediately that Voldemort is the bad guy and he must be defeated. Or in SVSSS, it was clear since the beginning that Shen Yuan's mission is to fix the "Proud Immortal Demon Way" if he wants to survive......

Am I missing something here....? Cause it's very different from when I read the other 2 books by MXTX....(For me : MDZS > SVSSS > TGCF)

Sorry if I'm wrong in trying to say what I mean...I did not mean to rant negatively here...Thanks if you want to answer, feel free to ignore it....Also, thanks for your hard work in this blog....

Hello there anon, and thanks for stopping by!

So I think the structure of TGCF can lend itself to the feeling of "what is the narrative's purpose," but to me it was pretty clear and so I think I can walk you through what I felt while reading!

So TGCF unlike a lot of other stories we may be used to starts out in media res -- much like MDZS, and I'll come back to this later -- and we are dropped into the story near the end of Xie Lian's classic hero's journey. Everything in the beginning parts of it have already happened. We get glimpses of these past moments in books 2 and 4, namely his "call to adventure" and "growth" in book 2, followed by his "ordeal/crisis" and "transformation" in book 4. This is why he can seem a bit aimless at the start of book 1 -- because he is. He's sort of between phases here, because he hasn't fully overcome his "ordeal" or "atonement," or reached his "apotheosis." The details or order of these phases can be debated, but the point I'm trying to make here is that Xie Lian not being at a recognizable start of his hero's journey can make his narrative seem aimless -- but in the grand scheme of things, it's not actually aimless. He's a vastly different person than he was when we are shown where he started out, so we as readers know that many things have already happened. We just aren't shown in full detail, and only ever privy to the most crucial/important parts. This can be off-putting to some readers, while others flourish with the unknown. It just depends on the type of things you enjoy!

The story itself is actually pretty similar to MDZS. Main character returns after a long absence, just kind of wants to vibe in all honesty, but is thrown into a series of messes. These happen to actually be related to the big bag at the end, whose identity the main character is trying to find out but has little information to go off on, due to machinations beyond his knowledge or control. He is assisted by an extremely capable love interest who knew him in the past, and due to that, is presently totally in love with him. As each successive plot point unfolds, the bigger picture of who's holding all the strings at the end becomes clearer. After the big bag is stopped, the hero's previously tarnished reputation is somewhat salvaged, and they have their peaceful happily-ever-after with their love interest. They also go on to do what they want to do post-canon, now with a home to return to after each adventure. Though they didn't cause (or want to cause) vast systemic changes, they still triumphed over forces of "evil" and made way for progress.

MXTX seems to really love this type of overall structure, and I think she did a masterful job using it twice but making the stories so vastly different, yet enjoyable on their own merits! (Also I think for this reason, Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian would be great friends haha!)

Xie Lian's motivations were also very clear to me throughout the novel. As a young upstart, he has lofty goals of ascending to godhood and doing the most he could to help others. He get this very, very early -- too early, in fact, and it leads to his downfall, though that itself is engineered by someone vested in seeing him fail (Jun Wu). As various trails and tribulations are thrown at him, Xie Lian is at any moment trying to just keep going, trying to do the right thing even when it's not possible. This leads to a point in his life where he just breaks and after having all his hope and light taken from him, he sees no point in his own dreams or desires. He sinks into the comfort of darkness for time, but before he lets it fully take him, he finds a reason to pull himself back out -- thanks to the fragile warmth of kindness. He realizes that no, he was not wrong in wanting to help others. However, it isn't like Xie Lian, then fettered as he is, can do much but help people in an individual basis. He can do nothing but his best, and often times, his best simply isn't enough. The odds are ever insurmountable, but he knows he still has to climb, no matter how weary. Because there is nothing else he can do.

And I think that last point is very important as well. I talked about why things may feel aimless due to the structure in the begging of this answer, but now in terms of the actual story: Xie Lian himself feels aimless, because for 800 years, he has done nothing but wander and roam. What else is he to do. He's helped people however he can, but is cursed to cause more misfortune to people should he try and stay. It severely limits what he can do, but nor is Xie Lian so naive at this point to think he can solve people's problems for them if he were to stay anyway. No, that's been... stabbed out of him by now. So when the story starts, Xie Lian is pushed and pulled in various directions by the plot, and has no choice but to go along with it. (Again, this is not that different than Wei Wuxian's rebirth; plot happens to him, and he goes with it.) All the while, we also have to keep in mind that a lot of his struggle is not necessarily with the external world. A lot of it is internal. He harbors extreme guilt and trauma that he has never processed, or allowed himself to process. It weighs down his every step, and keeps him from bearing his heart to someone he knows loves him -- out of sheer fear.

From a narrative standpoint, Hua Cheng's role is to help Xie Lian overcome this internal struggle. To release him from the shackles that are made of his own guilt, more metaphorically, though he does so literally as well. From thereon, Xie Lian is able to have that moment of self-actualization and triumph over his adversary, who is who intentionally all too similar to him in many ways. It's symbolic all around, including his victory that sees a merciful end to a villain like whom Xie Lian could have become -- but didn't.

All in all, TGCF read to me much like any other fantasy novel, including character motivations. It's just that they were very personal rather than being more grandiose. The effects were still somewhat far-reaching, with Heaven now having to rebuild, it's power structure irrevocably changed, and so on. The person who Xie Lian became after all his struggles didn't want to go on to become some lauded hero. He wanted to settle down with his beloved and continue to help people in ways that still mattered, since he anyways cannot change all of society to expunge systemic ills -- Heavenly Emperor or not. He knows he can bring hope and change to people's lives, and that on it's own is worth it. More over, he let himself accept his desire to want to be loved by someone else -- something he always thought he was unworthy to dare even wish for. To have someone who loved him for who he was, and whom he could love like that in return. He learns how to want things for himself, not just what he can provide for others.

It's refreshing to read a protagonist who isn't extremely enthusiastic about the greater ongoings of the world and trying to make everything different in said world. In TGCF we get a very character-focused, personal story in which things happen as the narrative progresses. They all tightly link back to not only the protagonist's story, but the bigger picture in the end. Xie Lian still has a very, very clear motivation to put an end to Bai Wuxiang once and for all as well, though unlike Voldemort being revealed so early on in HP, Bai Wuxiang is revealed partway through. And thereon, his true identity being someone Xie Lian genuinely trusted and even relied on -- instead of just someone that was at best tangentially related in some which way -- further lends itself to his personal struggle. Even if he is genuinely afraid, he knows he cannot suffer Bai Wuxiang/Jun Wu to continue "living." So he has both a dire external foe, and internal issues to address. And, well, I think that's a pretty good plot overall!

[paradife-loft]

JGY fic self-promo for JGY day! <3

Unfortunately I don’t have any new material to post this year, but I figured I could at least do a link roundup of some of the JGY fic I’ve written previously.

This isn’t everything I’ve written involving him, but it’s basically a sample platter of either the writing of mine that I like best considering my current perspective on his character, or that I find most unique among fic that I’m familiar with overall.

---

the orchard and the soil - semi-fix-it AU for Xiyao, centered around the premise of LXC getting his own pseudo-"Empathy" session with NMJ's corpse at Jinlintai, in between JGY returning his jade token to the Cloud Recesses and the second siege of the Burial Mounds. epistemic gaps and unreliable memories, trust, grief, the question of justice, duty, and mercy, and a slanted remix of the Guanyin temple conversations (but in private this time). (M, 8k)

your kingdom built around me - an AU where acute and chronic hanahaki disease exists within the MDZS setting and all of the socioeconomic stratification it entails. Xiyao dealing with public and private perceptions, status difference, family legacies, what love means to each of them, and how to have difficult conversations with each other. (M, 15k. also note: author is insufferably aromantic and takes a very social-constructivist approach to the entire concept of hanahaki. take from that what you will.)

Worth and friends of empty graves - a pair of JGY and Jiang Cheng-by-way-of-Jin Ling relationship studies, set pre- and post-ascension to Jin-zongzhu/Chief Cultivator respectively. two disfavoured sons, the difficult emotional territory of their status as Jin Ling’s remaining family; a little bit of politics. canon-compliant, CQL timeline. (G & T, 1.7k & 2k)

Thrown Open Windows - fluffy youngish Xiyao relationship dynamic study at Jinlintai. a little bit of flirting, teasing, and navigating the newness of having a peer who truly wants to know you as a person. (T, 1.5k. if you get the Vienna Teng reference you probably already know the general mood :P)

what it was that made you weak - A-Yao can be a little gothic as a treat? CQL relationship/characterisation-based AU with a lonely JGY taking care of his successfully-controlled fierce corpse!NMJ during a vulnerable moment at night. (T, 650 words)

Due - sad, whumpy deathfic for your emotional masochism needs. even once he’s reached the inevitable end, JGY goes down fighting. (mostly) CQL canon-inspired, because I love collapsing buildings on people. (T, 1k)

Calibration - The Borgias-esque Qin Su/JGY AU, in which JGY is terrified for his son in the face of political opposition to his rise to power, and Qin Su is his loving, steadfast rock and sounding board. (T, 900 words)

Interstice - soft, sleepy Xiyao morning sex, exploring my headcanon about JGY not always wanting to be touched and some low-key D/s vibes. (E, 1.2k)

a shield for tender parts - Jin Guangyao finally has the opportunity to steal away a bit of time to be a very good and understanding xiao-shushu for his confused and tired nephew. contemplative character/relationship study set just before JGY becomes Jin-zongzhu. (T, 600 words)