#my obsession with XueXiao is not obvious at all...

[babischlong-six]

Shipper Tag Game

Thank you for tagging me darling @the-marron !! I haven't even really thought about some of these questions so this was super fun <3

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore?

Looking back, probably any of my favorite ships from Rurouni Kenshin (for obvious reasons). I distinctly remember being very obsessed with Aoshi/Misao and Saitou/Sanosuke

Other than that, my many favorite ships from teen-ager-times still have a place in my heart, and if I'm struggling for something to read, I'll still peek in on their ao3 pages :)

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

Something from InuYasha probably. Sango/Miroku? Sango/Kagome? Sesshomaru/Rin? Or maybe something from Pirates of the Caribbean like Norrington/Elizabeth or Jack/Will. The thing about "shipping" is that I would absolutely love fictional relationships, but never really "fandomized" about them until I was a teenager, so I can't really say what my first real ship was, just because there were always movies and books I was reading and thinking "Wow! I wish I could see more of these two!" (Athos and D'Artagnan for instance, or Legolas and Gimli) but I was so young that romance didn't really exist for me, it was more about the dynamics

3. Your first fanfic was about which couple?

The first fanfic I ever wrote? No idea. I would be writing all sorts of horribly grammatically incorrect little scenarios in my first (very ancient) computer's notes program - and I can't even remember which of them I published on ff.net. But it was probably something InuYasha - probably just the canon pairings.

The first fanfic I ever read was SasuNaru: it was published on DeviantArt of all places, written like a filler beach episode and I remember thinking it sounded really nice to be eating watermelon on the beach together.

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of?

Not even the foggiest idea.

5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse?

Maybe? I advocate for the "ship and let ship" lifestyle and I've had people getting annoyed with me for that, complaining that what I was shipping was not canon or disrespectful to the author (once in the discord FOR lovers of that ship, mind you!)

6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently?

My rule is never say never. There are some pairings I've never seen well done, but if I do see something good, I'll be converted.

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

Fitzier 🫣

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

See, as a multi-shipper, it's hard for me to have an OTP at all. Like ever. If I like a character, I'm interested in their dynamic with lots of different characters. And even with crack pairs, if I see a beautiful fanart or a well-written fic, or even someone explaining the pair in a way that clicks for me, I'm down.

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

Not really. Canon is canon, fandom is fandom. There are a few that I've thought it would be nice if they got together onscreen/on the page but never got angry if they didn't.

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

Among many, I would say probably XueXiao. I was absolutely shocked that they got shipped at all - but then I re-read the novel and was like: "Oh. No, yeah, I get it now." Like, I'm not obsessed or anything, but I am compelled by it.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

Everything I have ever shipped in the history of ever, you mean? I love a good age-gap, or an enemies-to-lovers, or some power dynamic play, or even some angsty incest stories, or vicious hatefucking, or dub-con, or---

...You get the idea.

12. What is your favorite crack ship?

Unfortunately, I can't answer the question due to at least half of my ships being crackships. They are from completely different media? Check. They are from the same media but have never once interacted? Check. They have excellent chemistry and a fantastic dynamic but are very unpopular in fandom for whatever reason? Check.

13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about?

It comes in waves. Sometimes I'm in a sci-fi alien romance mood so I'll head over the Star Trek and B5 route (and read the same G'Kar/Londo fics or Kirk/Spock fics over and over again and cry myself to sleep.) Sometimes my friend writes something for a pairing I've completely forgotten about and I suddenly have to re-read everything they've ever written. Sometimes, I get into a piece of media and have to trawl ao3 for EVERYTHING (within certain parameters) of a certain pair that caught my eye.

14. What do most of your ships usually have in common?

Chemistry. Some kind of ability to constantly bounce off of one another - a constant give and take of meaning and expression.

Unless they can talk with/at each other for hours until they run out of breath and pass out, I'm not as interested. There needs to be banter, no matter if light-hearted or with deeper undertones. They just need to be able to talk to each other, even if most of the conversation is clever obfuscation of what they really mean.

15. What you absolutely hate in a ship?

Anything boring tbh. Oh, they're high-schoolers who are childhood friends and now they're holding hands and blushing? I don't care. Oh, they're planning a seaside wedding and nothing bad has ever happened, ever, and they love one another peacefully? YAWN. Oh, they're sitting down and having a talk about their feelings that sounds like it's come out of a the most recent therapy how-to booklet? Kill me immediately.

Give me adventure! Conflict! Chaos! Even just petty issues! PLEASE! I need these people to be doing something!

This has been very fun!

I'm tagging @elemental-queen-writes @polkadotcravat @bobafvcks @themurdochmemesteries AND anyone who wants to do this!

[veliseraptor]

The CQL scene where XY smugly (and dare I say, kind of hornily) watches XXC very efficiently slaughter fake fierce corpses and then smirks wider as XXC walks back and their shoulders barely brush is. Such a choice. So hot and full of tension. I'm a goner. I love CQL's direction choices so much. I wish more people focused on this aspect of their early dynamic, yes xuexiao's later emotional attachment is beautiful but THIS phase of fascination and moral friction and ambivalence and obsessive animosity is so incredibly sexy and interesting. Which is why I loved that 'care and keeping of an unexpected captive' fic.

oh absolutely, it's a real "we fucking on the murder tableau tonight" kind of moment.

I have my differences with CQL, but for the most part the decisions in Yi City, particularly the ones that make the xuexiao of it all feel even more obvious, are ones I'm pleased with. Xue Yang being horny for Xiao Xingchen killing people is particularly choice.

because he is! he absolutely is. and I agree with you, that post I made recently about how I'm not a fan of "love at first sight" but I am a fan of "obsession at first sight" is 100% Xue Yang to Xiao Xingchen (and, tbh, Xiao Xingchen to Xue Yang but he's less obvious about it). Xue Yang at this point is basically playing the "what can I get Xiao Xingchen to do, how far can I push him, heh heh heh this is very fun and entertaining" game and honestly that phase of things is what makes the later emotional attachment so juicy.

particularly because I'm pretty sure Xue Yang never consciously transitions out of that state of mind, he just sort of drifts away from it into "what can I get Xiao Xingchen to do (sexually), how can I mess with him (in significantly less sinister ways), heh heh look at me conducting my excellent sneaky revenge plot except with no determinate end date actually)"

but yeah. fascination and moral friction and ambivalence and obsessive animosity + attraction - not even in the horny sense, necessarily! more in the "I want to study you like a bug" sense, at least a little - absolutely, yes.

and I absolutely love the idea that Xiao Xingchen killing people does actively turn Xue Yang on. it's sexy on like six different levels okay, some of which are "he'd be sooooo upset if he knew what was happening right now but he doesn't and I do!!!" I think that particular brand of dramatic irony in this situation is a kink Xue Yang didn't know he had until right now.

[10holmes]

author self-rec game - tagged by @lady-of-the-lotus thanks for the tag! 💕

Rules: list the five favorite fics you’ve written, then pass it on to five other writers.

Puh... Basically this is me just tagging about every fic I've written so far, considering a lot are more on the nah side of things, but let's see 😂

1. Time is Our Worst Enemy

Recently I just recommended this fic to my super amazing and precious reader @impossible-stardust and realized this is - if maybe not my best or most popular - definitely my all time favourite XueXiao fic that I've written so far 💕

Basically it is me going: "The Yi City Arc didn't hurt enough - Let's make it even more heart-wrenching!" #peacewasneveranoption #IdontwantpeaceIwantproblems

2. Now That I See You

This fic is really dear to me because it is the most extensive one I've written so far and I spend like every spare minute thinking about it and plotting (if also often not always writing... #writerstruggles)

While watching the deleted campfire scene and seeing XY making heart-eyes at XXC and also his puppy-eyes during their final confrontation, I thought: "Gosh, what if XXC could have seen his expressions and had really had the time to understand and reflect on XYs story and past? And what if XY was more aware of his feelings sooner and less vicious & shaped by his past? This definitely would have changed things!"

Thus, this fic was born featuring a XXC, who still has his eyes, and a XY who's amnesiac after the assassination attempt. And, yes, I do take the slow in slow-burn very seriously here.

3. Fate is a Wicked Thing

Way before descending into danmei hell and becoming a Xue Yang apologist, I was an avid Loki stan and Lokane shipper and also very pissed with how his character was done dirty by Marvel. So I thought Screw canon! and went to write a canon divergence where the Infinity Stones are sentient beings and two of them always form a pair and they bond with their hosts and the pairing also extends to their hosts. So now we have Loki bonded to the Tesseract and Jane bonded to the Aether, which are a pair, and thus the two of them also find themselves suddenly developing feelings for one another and then having to question whether these feelings are influenced by the Infinity Stones or maybe their own after all...

Regrettably, I haven't finished or updated this in years as my interests and obsessions have shifted...

4. Down in the Black Sea

Are you even truly pan (or bi) if you haven't got a weird obsession with pirates and mermaids and Pirates of the Caribbean?

So yeah, I love mermaids, I love pirates, and I love the idea of combining that obsession with XueXiao. Thankfully I stumbled upon @memequeen1127 's fic collection and got permission to continue her opening chapter for what is now also one of my most beloved fics!

It's about XY, a mermaid hunter, being saved by XXC, a white mermaid of legend, with whose heart one can gain immeasurable power. So of course XY wants that power. But the growing feelings between them may yet change the tide of any ensuing betrayal...

5. Lone Wolf And His White Sheep Shizun

Take XueXiao but make it RanWan. As my obsessions shifted yet again to another pairing, but I can't quite let go of XueXiao (probably not ever again), I decided to just combine it and make it one huge obsession ✔️

But be warned: Updates are very slow for this one... #sorry

And now, I'm excited to get to know your favourite personal fics!

@bao-shan-black

@onlyonewoman

@unfortunatelycake

@the-ineffable-arvari

@zishustits

And anyone else who sees this and wants to join in 🥰

[cenedrariva]

tbh i think i would be less interested in xuexiao if they’d had a happy ending in canon, like don’t get me wrong i would have loved to see a story about xy and xxc working through their issues together and getting a happy ending, but i wouldn’t be obsessed with creating stuff for them if that had happened (and as a side-plot in a story that’s really about wangxian, they didn’t really have the space to explore how xuexiao could end happily)

a great deal of the appeal is the fact that it’s a tragedy. xy and xxc and sl, all three of them having lives interwoven since they were young, repeatedly causing each other joy and pain and crafting their own tragic endings, it just makes you sing if only, if only...

if only song lan had held his temper instead of lashing out at xxc...

if only xiao xingchen had been a little less trusting...

if only xue yang hadn’t tricked xxc into killing...

but the natures of their upbringing, their personality flaws and weaknesses, their shared history, it all just comes together into this perfect storm of misery that none of them escape

and the thing that makes it really tragic, in my eyes, is that their strengths and personalities are actually complementary. songxiao is obvious, we get plenty of canon evidence for how they work well together, but adding xue yang to the mix can balance them both in this really interesting way.

for xiao xingchen, xy is a grounding force, someone who wouldn’t judge whenever xxc is or acts messy or imperfect, and they make each other laugh, too. he also helps protect xxc from his own naivety, and he would certainly object if xxc tried to sacrifice parts of his body to help others.

for song lan, xy would add chaos and messiness to his life, drawing him out of his colder persona. he wouldn’t allow sl to get too serious about anything, and he would certainly call sl out if his temper got away from him. plus xy would introduce some shades of grey to sl’s morality, get him to look at the reasons someone commits a crime and not just the crime

and for xue yang, he’d be on the recieving end of respect, kindness, and affection, things that he’s been starved of all his life, compensating for their absence by obsessing with vengeance and murder. he would be delighted to belong to someone, to have someone get angry on his behalf or attempt to defend him from danger, even if he doesn’t really need the help anymore

they could have been happy, all three of them, if only...

[zhuhongs]

Okay so I just rewatched the yi city arc bc I'm unwell and I wanted to feel smth and oh my god.. forgot how much I loved cql bc like.. u can tell the writers and cast put so much love and thought into their roles.

Like every day I question why the writers and whx choose to portray xueyangs obsession with xxc as romantic rather than like vengeance. Bc in the novels its p clear xy just hates xxc and wants to torture him more bc hes fucked up and mad that xxc messed up his plans with the chang clan and overall looked down on him. But in cql his obsession with xxc is the closest he feels towards love and it's very obvious the writers wanted to show that.. like the way they showed his breakdown. It was so creepy like I fucking hate xuexiao but its undeniable that xy cared abt xxc in his own fucked up way. Xxc ofc hates him.. end of story. But it makes it so interesting yet still.. I question.. why they did that. I'd either way its fascinating to watch. Likes it's awful but you literally cant look away that entire sequence. From xy cleaning xxc wounds to setting the table for two of them to the two near kisses.. it was so well acted and it makes song lans killing of xue yang so much nicer.

Bc that's what song lan shouldve had. Like it's so fucked up to know that this is what couldve been in a way. Like we see what xxc life was like during his time at Yi City and tbh all I could think was that this is what songxiao deserved. It's obvious by the way xxc brings sl up, that he still cares apt about sl and he wants to be with him. But hes also resigned that sl said what he said so he will respect sls wishes even tho he still has feelings. But he will carry on and be happy where he is bc thats all he can do. BUT THE VIEWER KNOWS THAT SONG LAN IS LOOKING FOR HIM. Like Song Lan was the one who was supposed to have that domestic life with xxc. He was supposed to be with xxc forever until xy intervened. Songxiao are the real star crossed lovers of the series and the real tragic couple bc they never get a do over. And it's so clear that li Bowen portrayed song lan with so much love. Like I didnt notice it initially but wow.. he rlly tried to give nuance to song lan who honestly was a very flat character in the novel. I rlly have to commend him for the way he brought song lan to life bc mxtx sure as hell didnt do any of that. Like the urgency when he learns A-Qing has seen xxc. The way he hesitates to answer her and like dwells on what hes done. Idk I just rlly appreciate lbw for that. Also I just love this show sm and I keep coming back to it. Every time I watch parts of it, i take away smth i didnt notice.

[silvysartfulness]

1, 6, 13, 20 (I'd probably ask more but I can't scroll much farther without forgetting the numbers I wanted to ask ^^; )

Ah, thank you for asking! ♥

1, 6, 13, 20 (I'd probably ask more but I can't scroll much farther without forgetting the numbers I wanted to ask ^^; )

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Oh. Wow. Okay. So, I'm old as balls. When I was a wee lass, there was no internet, so internet fandom culture wasn't a thing. My first villain crush was a character from the children's show I watched when I was about 4 (the beginning of my mother Being Somewhat Concerned.) I think the first real thing I got really genuinely into was Phantom of the Opera at about age 10, again, pre-internet.

My first internet-era fandom thing was Mozenrath from the animated Aladdin series. Back then, the internet was so small that if you created a website for something, you were about 50% likely to be the first to do so. Mozenrath's creator at Disney actually wrote me through my Mozenrath fansite, saying how stoked he was to see such a site existed.

Those were very different times.

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

This is actually interesting, because being aro-ace, the whole concept of shipping was something that only occurred to me very late on in my fandom career? Before that I had only really latched onto singular characters, not ships.

Also, fair warning to new followers - all my ships are problematic. You won’t find healthy ships here. Dead dove do not eat. Please unfollow if squicked.

I think Vexen and Marluxia from Kingdom Hearts may have been my first real OTP, and tbh, I still love them a lot. Inhabiting that headcanon space is like pulling on an old, comfy sweater, all well-worn and cozy. (Vexen-Marluxia-Larxene def an OT3 there)

I... think the next fandom one was La Volpe/Cesare from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood? It wasn't at all as intense an obsession, but I did make a bunch of drawings for it.

I was kinda into Loki/Tony Stark of MCU fame for a while. Not really to the point I created any content for it, aside from gift art for my wife's fanfics.

Jasper and Lapis from Steven Universe was another of those ships I really liked the destructive chemistry of. I didn't read any fic, but I did draw a pic or two for it.

Somewhat low-key shipping Shadow Weaver and Castaspella from SPOP, but again, not really into the fandom itself, and never created any content for it.

And. Uh. In case it's not glaringly obvious, I currently live in Yi City and ship Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen with an optional side order of Song Lan very hard. Like. I don't think I've created this much content in such a short time for a fandom since Kingdom Hearts, some 10-15 years ago. So. You know.

13. Any NoTPs?

On the whole, I'm very liberal with my ships, albeit a very, very picky reader. My spoons for reading are very limited these days, so unless something’s exactly to my tastes, I won’t read it.

But if the characterization and chemistry is spot-on, I'll consume almost anything, even if it goes against the configuration of my OTP.

I do find certain aspects of SongXiao a bit off-putting, if completely to do with the fandom's approach (acceptable purity couple in contrast to the clusterfuck XueXiao) rather than the canon characters themselves?

But overall, not really. I'll try anything once.

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking?

I think that would be SongXueXiao! I loved the XueXiao dynamic from the very first time I watched the Yi City arc, but it did not take long at all to decide that adding a Song Lan all the way into the mix was a lot more fun than a boring either-or love triangle.

And apparently, I'm slowly slipping into XiYao teritory, maybe? I somehow managed to overlook Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao almost completely on my first time watching the series, but he is increasingly growing on me the more times I watch it. Honestly, his and Lan Xichen's chemistry echoes a lot of what I find attractive about XueXiao, so it's not really surprising I'm getting more into it now that my brain has processed the first couple of watch-throughs and can actually start putting bits together in better detail.

We'll see how far it goes. :)