#probably I will end up writing a fic with the lan xichen one. not gonna lie

[kanene-yaaay]

one day i will sit down and actually write all the mdzs tickle headcanons I have and then it will be all over for you guys (<3)

For the moment tho:

Lan Zhan taking his sweet time to copy all the rules of the Lan sect in Wei Ying's back. Sitting on his legs with a book in one of his hands and the other holding one the softest brushes he has, movements precise and serene as ever as he keeps his strokes the straight as possible with his husband squirming and trashing non stop under him, giggling and snickering all the teases and provocations and begging and promises he can imagine. Lan Zhan huffs in a light kind of exasperation when another character gets crooked and he has to put his book down to take the damp, fluff fabric he brough just for this and srubs the paint before he can continue. Wei Ying's laughter get just a tad more hysterical, quickly descending back into high pitches giggles as Lan Zhan dutifully goes back to his work, lips twitching into a soft kind of smile reserved just for those moments. He dips the brush in the ink and continues, almost hipnotized by the way his lover's laughter and reactions changes with every new character, but he refuses to get distracted.

There is still 2,000 of rules left to copy, after all.

~~

And since we're talking about the Lans and everything. No one can convince me that Lan Xichen is NOT simply the biggest tickle monster that ever existed. I can perfectly picture him walking calmly, kind and calm smile on his face as he follows his next prey, reminding them that it's forbbiden to run in the Cloud Recess when they realize what is about to happen and are caught in between running away anyway - not the smartest choice, he will catch you anyway even before you can blink - or staring him with wide eyes while trying to back away - also not the best choice, he is getting closer and the antecipation is a killer - OR just accept the fact that their fate is going to be a very giggly and tickly one in a few minutes. Full of teases and smiles and kind words and a sweet 'thank you for expanding my collection with all of your lovely reactions'

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “���光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[wangxianficrecs]

Follower Recs

~*~

Hello Mojo, hope you're doing well and that you had a good break! I wanted to signal boost the MDZS May Diaspora event collection on AO3, and point out my favorite fic from there: 归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home by dragongirlG! It's both tender and bittersweet and it features such mature writing. The author got some hate for it when it initially got posted so I wanted to counter that and give it some love instead! [Who would do such a thing?!  @dragongirlg-fics I’m sorry that happened to you, and here, have *so many hugs!* I’ll try to do a thing just for the diaspora event, but meanwhile, I’ll just treat this as a follower rec.]

归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home

by dragongirlG (M, 8k, wangxian)

Summary:  The destruction of the Yin Tiger Seal does not kill Wei Wuxian; it ages him instead. He takes shelter in a cave expecting to die, but instead he lives, slowly learning to embrace life with each new day.

Thirteen years later, a young man with a Lan forehead ribbon stumbles into the cave. His name is Lan Sizhui.

~*~

Hi Momjo!!! I recently read the most *adorable* fic, and I loved it so much that it dragged me out of seclusion (read: social anxiety cave) to rec it. It's called 'Covered in Bees' by ScarlettStorm in which the Cloud Recesses is an apiary, and Wei Wuxian has suddenly found himself host to a swarm of bees. ~ @akyra-talanoa

Covered in Bees

by ScarlettStorm (T, 8k, wangxian)

Summary: “Cloud Reccesses Apiary,” says a toneless, deep masculine voice, with zero question in it. Wei Ying doesn’t care, because whoever possesses that voice is probably going to come save him from bees like a fucking hero while wearing like, a suit of armor. That’s what you wear to catch bees, right?

“I have like, so many bees outside my front door right now,” he says, mouth running out ahead of him before he can even begin to think about reining it in. “It’s like a sandstorm of bees out there. There are so many bees. I got out of my car and there were just bees and I don’t want these bees. Do you want these bees? Please tell me you will come get these bees. I can’t leave my house and I have enough food for maybe a week but then I’m gonna have to learn how to cook dry beans and no one wants that, especially not me.” Wei Ying runs out of air, takes a breath, and belatedly adds, “My name is Wei Ying. Hi.”

Or: The beekeeping AU that no one asked for.

~*~

Hi, you are a bless to this fandom. Your blog feels like a library, so thoroughly arranged and always within hand reach. [Thank you, wow!]  Recently, I was going through Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn is a Wēn tag and came across a fanfic, it has 3 chapters till now and is so intriguing that i thought to recommend it to you. I don't know if I can recommend or if you have already checked the story, The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon by Devipriya. I am in love with this story. I hope you will enjoy it too, do check it out

The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon

by Devipriya (T, 7k, wangxian)

Summary:  Wen Wuxian, the essence of who he is, he is a naughty child, a prankster, an enchanting dizi player, a graceful dancer, an irresistible lover, a truly valiant warrior, a ruthless vanquisher of his foes, a man who left a broken heart in every home, an astute statesman and kingmaker, a thorough gentleman, a righteous individual of the highest order, and the most colorful incarnation.

He has been seen, perceived, understood and experienced in many different ways by different people. Different people saw different facets of who he is. For some, he is God. For some, he is a crook. For some, he is a lover. For some, he is a fighter. He is so many things.

But the phoenix, seen from the eyes of time was just a playful man. A man who plays with his awareness, with his imagination, with his memory, with his life, with his death. An individual who does not just dance with somebody. He dances with life. He dances with his enemy, He dances with the one he loves, He dances even at the moment of his death.

To taste an essence of who is Wen Wuxian, be with me in the journey of exploration, NO! playful exploration of life of a playful man.

~*~

Hi! Thanks for running this blog, it's helped me find so many fics. For your next follower recs post, I wanted to rec "This love like a flood, a fire, a fear" by natcat5. Its summary is vague (which I suspect is why it isn't better known) but it is a beautiful retelling of canon from LWJ's POV with slight canon divergence. I love the author's characterization of him and the prose is gorgeous. It is easily my favorite fic in the entire fandom, and I don't say that lightly. ~ @nyanja14

This love like a flood, a fire, a fear

by natcat5 (M, 57k, wangxian, lan wangji & lan xichen)

Summary:  “I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong.”   - Lemony Snicket

~*~

i came to this ask to rec this baseball one called "Waiting for Spring" by thievinghippo on ao3. It somehow made me care about baseball soooo 'nough said ~ @scifikimmi

Waiting for Spring

by thievinghippo (E, 131, wangxian)

Summary:  “It is a well-known fact across the major leagues that one does not smack Lan Wangji’s ass.”

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. Everyone smacks everyone’s ass in baseball. It’s how the game is played. Lan Wangji does not get to be exempt from this most sacred of baseball traditions.

Wei Wuxian will make sure of that.

Or, a Major League Baseball AU

~*~

hi mojo! i wanted to rec Something Good by boxoftheskyking (a loose sound of music/canon divergence au) and also MDZS: The Golden Engine by iffervescent (immortal wangxian modern au where they gotta solve a mystery and save china, featuring jiang cheng/lan xichen)

Something Good

by boxoftheskyking (T, 43k, wangxian)

Summary:  "That Wei Wuxian, you know he used to be such a promising cultivator. Head Disciple of the Jiang Clan, can you believe it? You see, juniors, the punishment for traveling the path of demonic cultivation. No golden core, not so much as a whisper of spiritual power."

As a punishment for real and imagined crimes, Wei Wuxian is sentenced to work at Cloud Recesses as the lowest of servants. When a surprising reassignment lands him with eleven children to care for, everything changes again.

A Sound of Music AU

MDZS: The Golden Engine

by iffervescent (E, 82k, wangxian, xicheng)

Summary:  In the modern era, immortals Lan Zhan and Wei Wuxian return to Gusu. New evil and old friends + new friends and old evils.

~*~

Hi Mojo! First of all let me just tell you that you are amazing and this blog is like a gift from the gods! Bless you and your endless patience and hard work. [Oh, thank you so much!]  I know that you have just accepted follower recs and I have missed miserably but I still wanted to write and bring attention to a writer by the pseudo Xiao_Hua on ao3, I think they are quite good and I just recently found the account with so much content. If you do have the time to check them out, I'd rec catfish, my fox or the red ribbon.

The Red Ribbon

by Xiao_Hua (M, 21k, wangxian, TGCF crossover)

Summary:  Wei WuXian died but not before saving HanGuang-Jun and A-Yuan, leaving so much more behind than just his ribbon.

My Fox

by Xiao_Hua (E, 13k, wangxian)

Summary:  Once he headed to YiLing that all changed for him. His priorities have been mingled with and ordered in complete disarray even without him noticing as he was left heavily influenced by a creature.

Or one where Lan WangJi is a dragon-spirit and he finds his mate in the form of a fox.

Catfish

by Xiao_Hua (E, 15k, wangxian)

Summary:  Wei WuXian has a common sense that believes it has a nine-to-five job while Lan WangJi finds that incredibly hot.

Or one where two catfish realise that neither of them truly catfished.

~*~

Hi Mojo i'm recommending this amazing fic it is called song of joys and regrets. it's a time travel AU it's amazing. And your Blog is a Godsend Thank you! [Aw, you’re so sweet!]  ~ @highgoddess

Song of Joy and Regrets

by HelloKitten (not rated, 59k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary:  The Archery competition at Qishan this year has hit a snag. As the Sects face the wrongs perpetrated by their future selves, Wei Wuxian finds himself adopted by half of the cultivation world who are determined to save him from himself.

Baby Wangxian suffers. Adult Wangxian's job here is done.

"I'm starting to see a pattern to all his plans..." "Do they all involve him being bait?" "Yes" came deadpanned responses.

~*~

Here’s a 2021 Reverse Big Bang entry, in time for Father’s Day; [Oops, my bad, sorry!]  Under a Blanket of Black Wings, by ChaoticAndrogynous (#31398395); LWJ, recuperating from the 33 lashes, tells A-Yuan a series of fairytales about a heroic monster and the brave little boy he befriended. Vampire! WWX (in the framing story as well as the story-within-the-story); happy ending.

Under a Blanket of Black Wings

by ChaoticAndrogynous (T, 19k, wangxian)

Summary:  Lan Wangji tells A-Yuan a bedtime story about a beautiful monster and the brave little boy who was his friend. Thirteen years later, the monster returns.

~*~

Hello Mojo! Have you read ‘Key Differences’ by Pupeez4eva? Its a MDZS!WWX meets CQL!WWX and its really good! [It’s on my list!]

Key Differences

by pupeez4eva (T, 6k, wangxian)

Summary:  “I don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian said, while his alternate self continued to stare at him with almost a look of hurt in his eyes. There was longing in there too, which Wei Wuxian would have easily recognised if he paid enough attention. “How could you not get together, after everything. What even went on in the Guanyin Temple if you didn’t confess?”

“The Guanyin Temple,” Wei Ying repeated incredulously. “You’re asking me if I confessed at — honestly, a lot went on that day. It was a life and death situation. There was no confessing.”

Wei Wuxian stared at him, appalled.

(Wherein Wei Wuxian ends up meeting an alternate version of himself who, much to his horror, never married Lan Wangji. Obviously he has to do something to fix this).

~*~

Hey Mojo i would recommend this fanfic if you already haven’t, it’s called “ take me back to a time “ by DizziDreams. It’s sooooo good

take me back to a time

by DizziDreams (T, 144k, wangxian, 3zun)

Summary:  Wei Ying has a lot on his plate right now.

It’s finals week -- which isn’t so bad. He’s never had to study much to do well in classes. But that just means that things are that much more tense with Jiang Cheng, who, as far as Wei Ying can tell, only takes study breaks long enough to glare at Wei Ying where he sits on the couch playing video games.

It’s not studies that have Wei Ying stressed out. It’s everything else. It’s the recruitment for the research trial he’s coordinating. It’s jiejie and her impending marriage to His Royal Douchebag Jin Zixuan. It’s the volunteer work at the palliative care facility. It’s Wen Ning’s worsening condition. It’s Wen Qing working herself thin to care for her brother and Wen Yuan. It’s the way Wen Yuan never seems to have enough food.

So, yeah. There’s enough on Wei Ying’s plate already, meaning it’s not entirely welcome when he comes home and finds a man standing in his bedroom. A man in extravagant white robes, a ribbon tied around his forehead, long hair gathered into a topknot, fist clutching a sword at his side, who asks him, “Where am I?”

~*~

Idk if this has already been rec’d (I’ve been off the grid for a while now), but there’s this absolutely incredible fic called Restitution by an anon on ao3 people should definitely check out!

this one?

on restitution

by Anonymous (M, 78k, wangxian, jin ling & wei wuxian, lan sizhui & wei wuxian, WIP)

Summary:  When Wei Wuxian regains consciousness, he is in a bed. A real, proper bed, not the slab he called a bed in his cave in the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Cheng is glowering above him.

Wei Wuxian doesn't die during the siege of the Burial Mounds. Rather, he is captured in secret and confined at Lotus Pier. Things change accordingly.

~*~

Hi momjo! I feel like every time I come to your blog there's twenty more new and amazing fics for me to read. Thank you for everything you do for this fandom!  [Thank you, sweetie!  And yes, I think there ARE 20 new fics every day out there in the fandom.  It’s amazing!] Today I come bearing my own rec to you. I've recently read this and it's IMO one of the best fics out there. It's called Lapsteel by carriecmoney and it's a modern stormchaser AU featuring country songs and coming home. ~ @manaika-chan​

Lapsteel

by carriecmoney (T, 42k, wangxian)

Summary:  Now and then, I think about you now and then...

It's been thirteen years since Wei Ying ran for the prairies, leaving behind a family in shambles and a secret on the Pacific wind. What happens when the storm he swirled catches up to him?

Modern AU with country music star Lan Zhan, stormchaser Wei Ying, and shared crossroads.

~*~

[memorydragon]

It wasn't a dream, it turned out.  Either Lan Xichen had just woken up from a decade long nightmare, or he was suddenly and inexplicably in the past.  He wasn't sure which theory he preferred.

If he was cursed, there was no one he knew who could have done it.  He'd been in seclusion for months, only seeing his brother or uncle on occasion.  Wangji's husband was the only one who might have managed such a feat, and despite Lan Xichen losing his temper at the Guanyin temple, Wei Wuxian hadn't seemed to harbor ill-will towards him.   But here he was, in the Cloud Recesses before it burned down, not allowed anything remotely sharp in his rooms (sword included), with both his brother and Uncle hovering constantly after his breakdown.  Whenever he tried to speak of the coming war or other things from the future, they looked at him like his wits had been lost on a nighthunt.  

So since I’m typing this monstrosity up before continuing writing, I thought I’d post little tidbits as I get to them?  It’s been a while since I’ve actually posted anything, so like... we’ll see how it goes.  I’m pretty sure no one is actually following me for potential Mo Dao Zu Shi fic, but hey.

Anyway, I might actually use bits of this part for a summary if/when I ever actually post anything.  Spoiler alert 1:  He’s suddenly and inexplicably in the past.  Spoiler alert 2: It’s most definitely his brother-in-law’s fault.  Really, who else has a ton of good intentions and history of those good intentions blowing up in everyone’s faces?

I’ll probably be tagging this Time Traveled and Traumatized (not an actual title for the fic, but very apt for a working title, I thought), so if you want to block, that’s the tag to go for.  It features Lan Xichen being Even More Traumatized so that he can get the Most Hugs and Gusu Trauma parties galore.   It’s also currently written to 89 pages in my notebook and only just now finishing the Cloud Recesses arc.  Yeah, it’s gonna kill me.  But damn it, the scene I want to write is at the end, so here I go.

A general note: I’ve lived in China for years now, but I’m still a foreigner who will get things wrong.  Please do let me know if I do end up fucking up culturally, because it’s certainly not intentional. 

Second note: Lan Xichen is ace.  It’s my fic and that’s how I’ve decided to roll.  You don’t like it, please block the tag.  Though if you’re follow me and you don’t like ace fics, that’s probably on you by this point.

Also, I think I’m going for a very, very different Lan Xichen then a lot of fandom seems to write.  Mostly going to be a Frankencanon of the novel and donghua, with a few details of other canons thrown in based on personal preference (example: I love a tiny, fierce Wen Qing from the live action, just because).  Don’t expect regular updates on this, as I’ll just be posting as I’m typing and will eventually go back to Writing Mode which is writing by hand.  I also won’t post any actual chapters until I’ve completed the whole damned thing, because that’s how I roll. 

This is mostly just something new I thought I’d try. Is it promoting?  Is it just me sharing bits to keep my sanity?  Will it Ever actually be finished?  Your guess is as good as mine.  But enjoy?

[the-untamed-obsession]

Can you do if ever.. JC + LXC and WWX + LWJ and last but not the least Sizhui ( I enjoyed the part 2 of the fic ) having a fight with you but they make it up to you?

GUESS WHO’S GONNA DO THIS FOR ALL THE OTHERS 🥲 THATS RIGHT! Me ^w^ anyway I hope you like it💖 I REALLY enjoyed writing this!

First Fight P1!

Sizhui:

You two rarely argue, it’s a blessing. But when you do, it can be mildly intense. 

Usually, your arguments always consist of you worrying about him and him thinking you’re underestimating him.

Your first argument was just that. You were worried he would get himself killed if he wasn’t careful. He got upset and assured you he’d be fine but you didn’t let up, practically begging him to stay with you. He got angry because he thought you didn’t believe in his abilities.

It was pretty intense. You two weren’t SCREAMING at each other, but you’d gotten pretty loud. 

You two didn’t speak to each other for about 3 days. Your friends hated it and you often went to Wei Wuxian to complain. He helped ease your worries, claiming Sizhui was more than capable and you had nothing to worry about. 

Both of you met up and apologized. You apologized for making it seem like you didn’t believe in him while he apologized for yelling at you and getting angry. 

Jiang Cheng + Lan Xichen

Never. You three usually never argue BECAUSE Lan Xichen is usually there to stop you. Without him, you two would probably argue quite a bit. But they’re always small meaningless arguments. Nothing ever serious.

If the two of you were left alone, you would only have minor arguments. Mainly about you telling him to lighten up since he often came off really strict, even though he was clan leader. They were never concerning and he often got over them rather quickly. 

Your first argument, between all 3 of you, happened because of this diplomatic mission thing. Both of them had to go to a nearby clan and try to build a healthy relationship. They wanted you to attend but you were nervous. Unfortunately, the argument got quite heated very quickly. There had been a huge misunderstanding. You were too scared to attend but both of them thought you had been ashamed of your relationship. Jiang Cheng got angry while Lan Xichen fell silent, unable to say anything. He was human after all and he couldn’t stop every argument. 

It was pretty intense. You and Jiang Cheng were screaming at each other and Lan Xichen tried to stop it but somehow got caught up and started arguing with you too. He did try to defend you as well, which in turn made the argument between him and Jiang Cheng for a minute. It wasn’t pretty at all, instead it was rather explosive.

You three didn’t speak to each other for at least a week. It was so bad that Lan Wangji had to step in, trying to help every way he could. He talked to his brother, while Wei Wuxian talked to you, and attempted to talk to Jiang Cheng.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji came to you to figure out what really happened since Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen refused to talk further on the matter. While you talked with the two, you quickly figured out everything was caused by a simple misunderstanding. You met with your boyfriends not too long after the talk and explained that you were never ashamed of them, just nervous because you’d be up against so many officials. You weren’t a noble by any means and you didn’t want to look bad on them. Of course, they assured you that wasn’t the case at all and that they loved you no matter what anyone thought. This became the main reason you three worked on communication, such a terrifying argument came from such a small misunderstanding.

Lan Wangi + Wei Wuxian

Arguments are not only rare, but pretty unheard of. Wei Wuxian doesn’t often take things to heart, so he’ll just get over something quickly, while Lan Wangji doesn’t argue. You also don’t let things get to you, so anything that COULD be a potential argument can’t ever come to be. You three are just good at communication. 

If you were to have any type of argument it would probably be related to Wei Wuxian’s ability to just start conflict. He’s pretty good at it and usually doesn’t think before he taunts someone. 

Your first ever argument was pretty stupid but it turned into a catastrophe very quickly. It started with you saying you wished you could’ve seen his swordsmanship back in the day. Wei Wuxian explained that he chose not to use Suibian after he’d given up his golden core to his sworn brother. Your experiences with Jiang Cheng were less than desirable so you’d always had a deep dislike for the man. You’d offhandedly mentioned that giving his core to Jiang Cheng was a waste and it would’ve been better if he’d kept it. Of course, this was one of those things Wei Wuxian just couldn’t let go, so it quickly turned into an argument. It got worse and worse and when Lan Wangji tried to stop you two, both of you spewed out some less than nice things at him as well. So he inadvertently ended up getting pulled into the argument too.

You and Wei Wuxian refused to speak to each other and Lan Wangji found it kind of hard to try to help you two, he was upset and hurt too. After three days, the anxiety set in for all of you. You three had ALWAYS be together and so not talking for three days was just odd. It became harder to sleep and time felt like it barely moved during the day. 

Eventually, you all caved and quickly went to find each other. The first thing you did was hug each other and start profusely apologizing. Then you all sat down and talked it out. Wei Wuxian understands why you and Lan Wangji would harbor negative feelings for Jiang Cheng, but at the same time he still loved and cared for his sworn brother. You agreed that you may have been a little bit upset, but you would try to respect him regardless. Jiang Cheng had been through a lot, so his feelings were also valid. You and Wei Wuxian also apologized to Lan Wangji for hurting him when he was only trying to help. He immediately accepted your apologies and added he understood you were both just angry and would never mean to say such things. You three definitely spent the next week trying to make it up to each other.

[veliseraptor]

2020 Fanfiction Round-Up

I do one of these every year! And have since I think 2016. Can’t break a tradition even if it’s been a clusterfuck of a time and filling this out was in some ways an exercise in remembering the ways I have failed myself as a writer this year. 

But oh well!

Total Year-Long Wordcount: I’ll post the final final number tonight after I finish the writing I want to do this afternoon (and plan to do this afternoon), but it’s currently 451,803 words written this year. Guessing I’m going to land somewhere around 453,000ish. (AO3 claims a higher number than that but that’s because it is counting the entirety of fics where I posted chapters this year.

This year I wrote and posted: I wrote a fair number more than I posted (there are five fics finished but for various reasons unposted on my hard drive) but based on Tumblr I posted 78 posts in my fic tag, which, not including chapter specific updates and three sentence meme answers (but including at least two Tumblr-only longer fics), probably comes out to about 60 or so “full length” fics that saw the light of day in 2020.

Overall Thoughts

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? 

Well, I wrote more than I did last year, which is sort of a surprise to me (all things considered) but also maybe not, because I was doing a lot less of most other things that could’ve been occupying my time, including two hours daily of commuting. 

But still less than I did in 2018. Which is fine.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? 

Lord, I don’t know. It depends on when you ask me. Lately I’ve been in a bit of a “I hate everything I’ve written ever” state of mind, so that makes it sort of hard to do any kind of...reasonable assessment. 

I know I’m proud of With Absolute Splendor but I have all these reservations about it and I can’t reread it for the most part because I always notice new things I wish I’d done differently. I feel pretty good about efforts in a common cause but something about it still makes me cringe, which I suspect has to do with my general self-consciousness. I have a hard time feeling unreservedly proud about...anything I wrote this year, really. 

I feel like the closest I get is maybe nor autumn falter which I am pretty pleased with and also which does hurt me a lot personally. Or I did end up overall pretty pleased with what came out of By Proxy.

But also the more I look at this question the more I start hating all my own work, so...guess this is kind of coming at a bad time.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I mean, I started writing in my first non-English fandom in many years, and specifically one where I was trying to engage more with the cultural background of the setting (in a way I wasn’t with, say, Death Note, when I was writing Death Note fic). So that was a risk. And I learned that it’s very stressful and there’s so many ways to make mistakes and I am, in many ways, a coward. But also I think I’ve learned a fair amount thanks to a lot of very patient people on the internet, so...there’s that.

Otherwise...I mean, I got ambitious with a few projects this year (the Big Bang fic and With Absolute Splendor stand out), but I’m not sure how much I really tried new things. 

I feel like I had to fight myself a little on writing straight up bad sex for By Proxy - I planned on it being hot, and it really wasn’t. It was mostly just miserable. Which made for a better fic, but was a new experience for me as far as ‘I thought I was going to write porn and that isn’t what I wrote.’

From my past year of writing, what was….

My most popular story of this year: 

By far, With Absolute Splendor. In fact, it has now become my second most kudosed fic of all time, behind only fuckin Life in Reverse. So like. That’s a thing.

(It is still less than half as many as Life in Reverse, but for context Life in Reverse has been around for going on eight years.)

Most fun story to write: 

Most fics where I feel like “I’m having so much fun writing this!” also go through a “oh god I hate this it’s terrible” phase which makes this sort of hard to assess. But I did have overall a lot of fun writing Mutual Friends despite all my frustration with the canon-wrangling I had to do to make it work in my head. 

But also I feel like both Retributive Justice and Embedded were in different ways deeply iddy fics that were just fun to write. That actually goes for a lot of the Whumptober fics. That was a very self-indulgent month. Excited to do it again in February (hopefully, if I can write things in a timely manner at all).

Story with the single sexiest moment: 

I feel like the beauty of your repair might be my personal favorite smut I posted this year, but I think my personal favorite that I wrote is in the big bang fic nobody will see until January. 

I feel like most of the sexiest moments I’ve written this year are in the porn fics I’m going to start posting in January also. But just generally I feel like the beauty of your repair is the sexiest thing I wrote and posted.

Most “Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story: 

I mean, I Come With Knives is definitely up there. It’s not that wrong or anything, but it got pretty intense in some ways I wasn’t expecting. Mostly in how much blood got involved, which was actually more than I’d had it involved in a sex thing before! Kind of surprises me that I haven’t previously done more with bloodplay stuff but. Well. First time for everything!

I don’t think this was a year that really had any “wow, what the fuck, Lise” things in it. Nothing on the level of last year’s winner. I’m almost disappointed in myself.

Abattoir was definitely the story that generated the weirdest conversation and creepiest search questions, though, so it does get points for that. 

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: 

I feel like the writing of everyone else is spring bound was a lot of...me thinking through my Jiang Cheng feelings and specifically my Jiang Cheng post-canon feelings. 

the martyr, the victim was pretty formative in shaping how I think about both Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji and their relationship with each other. It was the first fic I wrote that really dug into them in any way, I think, and definitely one that informed how I thought about writing Lan Xichen later.

Hardest story to write: 

I was thinking it was the one that I haven’t posted yet but I did technically finish, aka my Big Bang fic, the terrible threesome fic, the massive “I’m gonna keep everyone in the Yi City arc alive” AU that I started shortly after finishing The Untamed and finished in December. So I spent most of the year writing it.

But then I was like - no, I’m going to have to go with we live until we die even though it’s technically been ‘in progress’ for five years and really kicked into gear in 2019 and I just finished it and posted it this year, because that fic was like. The culmination of a big arc in an enormous verse dealing with a whole lot of balls in the air and trying to tie up a whole lot of threads. It was ambitious and the stakes were high and it was full of plot and action which are not two of my strengths...frankly I’m still amazed I pulled the damn thing off.

Biggest Disappointment: 

I think it is better if I refrain from going too in depth on this because it would just end up as me listing a bunch of my perceived failings. But I think off the top of my head I’m frustrated by the fact that I still haven’t really managed to write a XueXiao smut fic that quite hits the spot for me, myself. I’ve written two and for various reasons I don’t really like either of them. 

Biggest Surprise: 

The fact that my Jiang Cheng fic took off the way it did. Legitimately did not see that coming! At all! I mean, I’m delighted by it but it wasn’t what I saw happening as far as “niche I’d find in this fandom” or “thing I’d write that people would really enjoy reading.”

Particularly with By Proxy. That fic got a lot more attention than I would’ve expected. 

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: 

I feel like every fic I write with Xue Yang in it tells you something about me and most of those things are things that make me, on some level, deeply self-conscious, but I try not to think about that too much.  

I feel like the most telling story is maybe we all drift sometimes because I literally wrote it out of a depressive episode about a bad brain day but that wasn’t unintentional.

Favorite Opening Line(s):

1. So it turned out that if you touched the tendons of a dead person’s wrist and channeled a little bit of spiritual energy just right, it made the fingers twitch and curl like they were still alive. (Abattoir)

2. Here’s the thing: your Daozhang is glorious when he kills. (tear out all your tenderness)

3. Turned out that a sect leader’s head came off like anyone else’s. (Unnatural Selection)

4. The first hint that anything had gone awry was the letter from Lan Wangji (His Excellency Hanguang-jun, pardon me) that simply said have you heard from Wei Ying? (some good mistakes)

5. What Jiang Cheng wanted to do, more than anything, was to go home and take a nap. (everyone else is spring bound)

Favorite Line(s) from Anywhere:

I usually keep this to 10 but because I’ve been in such a :| place about my own writing I indulged myself this once.

1. Sometimes it felt like all he had done since descending the mountain was shatter his own dreams and accumulate regrets. (nor autumn falter)

**

2. It felt like she was holding all the components of a bomb in her hands, half assembled. If she moved the right way they would stay just that: components. But if she moved the wrong way… (til my judgment day)

**

3. He should have killed him. Should have been the one to strike that blow, in revenge for Jin Zixuan and their sister and everyone else dead for Wei Wuxian’s pride. Maybe then there would not be this gnawing, aching thing embedded in his chest; this itching, unfinished feeling. Maybe then he would not feel torn in two, sometimes like he should have reached out with his other hand and sometimes like he should have struck truer and sometimes both, in the same moment. (Interstitial)

**

4. He owed Wei Wuxian more than he could ever give back in this lifetime. Forgiving him felt like betraying his sister’s memory. Not forgiving him felt like trying to walk with a thorn in his foot. He was just - stuck, caught like a demon in a spiritual net.

Jiang Cheng thought of the way Wei Wuxian looked at Lan Wangji, with warmth and trust and love, and the aching, sick jealousy he had no right to feel returned. He felt a little like a child watching someone pick up a toy he’d abandoned and suddenly realizing that he wanted it back. (everyone else is spring bound)

**

5. You close your eyes and think about how he looked back in that town, Shuanghua slicing clean through a man’s neck, opening it to the spine, and think dizzily that he could open you like that and it’d be good, as long as it lasted. (tear out all your tenderness)

**

6. When Wangji loved, he loved with his whole being, without reserve. And now he had been placed between the rock of his convictions and the hard place of his devotion to Wei Wuxian. (the martyr, the victim)

**

7. He spent a week turning the idea over in his head. Studying it like a corpse he was going to dissect, poking at it, cutting it open and examining its insides. (dead reckoning)

**

8. When the world hurt you, that was the only thing to do, after all. Hurt it back, harder, worse. Spill rivers of blood for every drop it squeezed from you.

And when the end came, never go quietly. (the blood in your mouth)

**

9. I would stand with you through the end of the world, said Loki’s voice in his head, and Steve’s heart wasn’t in his chest anymore, was somewhere off on another planet where Loki was lying dead in a ruined city. (we live until we die)

**

10. Was it always going to be like this? Stumbling into traps, tripping over familiar skeletons, slicing himself open on the edges of old hurts. Was there really such a thing as leaving the past behind? He still felt stuck in it, unable to move, and every time he thought he might be finally dragging himself free something pulled him back. (With Absolute Splendor)

**

11. His chest was full of poison. His throat was full of grief. And he was still a little drunk.

Jiang Cheng went to his room, sat down on his bed, put his face in his hands, and cried until he couldn’t breathe. (By Proxy)

Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:

I think the scene from nor autumn falter of Xiao Xingchen just crying his heart out over Xue Yang’s dead body would be up there.

The Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian hug from the end of With Absolute Splendor.

Okay, just gonna say it: Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao having sex by the table with Nie Mingjue’s headless corpse on it. So sue me.

The scene in the blood in your mouth where Song Lan has stabbed Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen is following the line of Fuxue to the latter. I have a very clear visual of it in my head and if I could art I’d art it.

Xue Yang with the hallucinatory Xiao Xingchen from liberate spirits, liberate souls.

Fic-writing goals for 2021:

Finish Walking Far From Home.

Maybe I’ll finish some of these MCU WIPs? I’d kind of like to, on an abstract level if nothing else.

Become a more well-adjusted human being about the relationship between my productivity and my self-worth.

[amosaicofmagic]

The Untamed Fic Recs p.1

Wangxian Post-cannon 

A collection, in no particular order, of my favorite fics that are set after episode 50. Some of them may offer a slightly different ending in regards of the time they stayed apart but all of them follow canon at least until the moment they part ways after the Guanyin Temple  

I hope you will come and meet me [rated M]

The second time Lan Zhan said Wei Ying, come back, Wei Wuxian did.

It's Only Time [rated T]

Lan Zhan! You've probably guessed who's sending you mail, but I'll go ahead and confirm that it's your friend Wei Ying. Hello from Fuzhou! It's already hot here and very wet although spring has barely started. Hope you're keeping cool in the clouds, and say hello to the kids for me. I wish you were here with me - the people here keep making fun of my accent! Write to me soon and give it to Qixuan - that's the pigeon - she'll find me. Wei WuXian

Letters from abroad.

my heart skips a beat (so my gut can feel the punch) [rated M]

“Come with me,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Wuxian finds he can’t refuse. Finds, actually, that there’s nothing else he wants except to sneak away with Lan Wangji. Is it strange that Lan Wangji knew what he wanted before he himself did? Maybe his stubborn Lan is learning to be sly after all these years. The thought makes warmth bloom in his chest, eating away some of the corpse-cold horror of the night’s revelations.

Wei Wuxian loops his arm in Lan Wangji’s and lets himself be led.

I'm Going Out (Gonna Make A Name for You And Me) [rated T]

The Chief Cultivator's Herald. Wei Wuxian is not quite sure when they started calling him that, but as he traipses through beleaguered towns and villages, as he finally starts to build the world that he and Lan Zhan have always vowed to build, he finds that he doesn't mind it so much.

He doesn't mind being anything at all, as long as he is Lan Zhan's.

Wei Wuxian goes where the chaos is in Lan Wangji's stead, and finds a home in the process.

As You Like It [rated T]

"I was just wondering what snacks or sweets Hanguang-Jun prefers with his tea."

Wei Wuxian laughs, opens his mouth, and then has the horrible realization that he really, truly, doesn't know.

It takes a moment to sink in. He's known Lan Zhan ever since he was fifteen, had saved the Cultivation world together with him twice over, is actually married to the man, and Wei Wuxian doesn't know what his favorite tea snack is.

This House of Ill Repute [rated E]

They are not rogue cultivators. Wei Wuxian is pretty clear about that. A few weeks after Lan Zhan joined him on the road, Wei Wuxian is still getting used to the new, unnamed normal when they get caught in a rainstorm and have to make an unplanned overnight stop.

Not rage but grief [rated E]

“What I felt when I saw you with her…I thought that was jealousy.”

“But it was not.”

The words could have constituted a question, but didn’t, the certainty they were infused with instead invoking a spark of irritation in Wei Wuxian. It didn’t seem fair that Lan Zhan had grasped at that truth so quickly when it had taken Wei Wuxian the better part of a week to lay it free.

Tripped at Every Step  [rated E]

Wei Wuxian knows that Lan Zhan is the same Lan Zhan as before, but also so, so different. This Lan Zhan is soft for him. This Lan Zhan has a set jaw and a steely look in his eye, ready to fight anyone who gets in Wei Wuxian's way. This Lan Zhan puts up no fronts - it almost hurts to look at him, he's so open.

Wei Wuxian looks at this Lan Zhan, and he wonders.

Wayfinding [rated G]

It hasn’t even been a full day since he's been back in Lan Zhan’s company and already Wei Wuxian knows he’s been wrong. Turns out it really is quite easy to pretend he’s content with what he has when what he doesn’t isn’t right in front of him, as steady and wonderful and unattainable as ever.

your horizon to chase [rated T]

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji struggle with their supposedly mutual decision to part ways after Guanyin Temple. As it turns out, neither of them particularly enjoys living alone.

Continuation [rated T]

“How long has it been?” Xichen asks. Wangji looks up from the tea he had been pouring. “Since?” “Since you started as Excellency.” Since Wei Wuxian walked away from him, he means. “Two summers.” Wangji says. He doesn’t like to count the time. He is not much of an artist, and he had not asked anyone to draw Wei Wuxian before he left. He thinks he has forgotten the shape of his cheek when he smiles. He does not remember forgetting Wei Wuxian last time. He does not like to count the time.

comes and goes [rated G]

"You could stay," he says.

Wei Wuxian finishes loading up the bags on the donkey and straightens up.

"I really couldn't," he says, and the wind catches his hair and plays with it. He tightens the scarf around his neck, movement unsure since the scarf is new.

"You can come back, then."

Wei Wuxian smiles, bright.

"That I can."

Beneath six layers of silk  [rated E]

While exorcising a haunting, Lan Wangji gets cursed with a brand of honesty, and is forced to speak his every thought out loud.

Something yet to learn [rated T]

Wei Wuxian is asked (under duress) to babysit a class of tiny Lan cultivators for just a few minutes. A few minutes turns into an hour, turns into two hours, turns into an impromptu literal field trip and now there's an entire class that is weeks ahead of their curriculum, their most junior disciples have apparently imprinted on Wei Wuxian like baby birds, and Lan Qiren has no one to blame but himself.

You, Asleep and Dreaming [rated M]

Wei Wuxian chuckles and starts pushing Lan Wangji's outer robes off his shoulders. "Poor Lan Zhan, subject to such earthly miseries. You must be exhausted, come to bed, come to bed."

"Mm," Lan Wangji says. He raises his arms so that Wei Wuxian can keep undressing him. His clothes will end up on the floor, but no matter. Wei Wuxian's deft hands at his belts are worth wrinkled robes.

"... Goodness, Hanguang-Jun, you wear too many damned layers," Wei Wuxian tells him after a while. "Would it kill you to stop after a reasonable five?"

--

Wei Wuxian moves into the Jingshi. They sleep together.

Come into These Arms of Mine [rated E]

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says again. Just standing there, the villain, calm and steady as a white marble pillar, spine just as straight.

Or, what happens when your soulmate asks you to part ways with them, only to reappear calling your name?

[with-my-murder-flute]

12

(Fanfic ask meme!)

12. Friends with benefits or secret dating? 

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS. I honestly believe so much in the secular romance of people who have sex and respect each other and live their own lives and just... accept each other where they’re at. This overlaps a lot with how I like to write/read about polyamory, and also about the relationships I’ve had.

There’s this Alanis Morisette song, And You Owe Me Nothing in Return, and it’s not that it’s the only kind of love I know is in the world, but it’s the only way of moving through love that’s worked for me.

Like, when I broke up with my last girlfriend, I considered our relationship a success. Because she was also my first girlfriend, and before I started dating her, I still had this deep visceral sense that nobody would ever actually want me. Nobody would ever actually want to be with me. My negative mental scripts kept hiccuping for months after we started dating, like “and nobody will ever want me (except my girlfriend???)”. It was like a record skipping.

Oh god this got long. Below: More about me and my girlfriend; my epic FWBmances in previous fandoms, and my super ambitious plans for someone who’s on friendly-fucking terms with half the CQL cast.

It was a long-distance relationship, and she’s married to other people, and she was not one of the people the universe hit me over the head about, so it was not Grand High Romance, but there was a lot of “I love you platonically and if we can make sex work that’d be cool”

So after a few years our lives got busier, which was better for both of us, BUT, it made trying to coordinate times to get together harder, and we kept missing phonecalls and trying to make it up and failing again, and we both have ADHD, and one day I realized that a) trying to make this relationship work was taking a whole fucking lot of energy for not as much reward, and b) My deep sense of being personally unlovable had shifted, over time, to the feeling that I probably could find someone else if I put myself out there.

She made my life better. She made me better. Her perspectives and experiences on things like queer activism and fanfic and community organizing enriched my personal and intellectual life immensely. Last week I had a question about cults and power and control that I knew she was the perfect person to consult with, so we spent half an hour on the phone.

I’m still really fond of the fic-sets I did in Check Please fandom, where I took a canon character who was super obsessed/hung up on his first boyfriend, and changed his life by giving him, in one continuity, a pair of lovers who provide a refuge from his toxic workplace and show him very different ways to succeed at being human and support him building a healthier (and eventually sexy) relationship with his ex,

and in another timeline, a love interest whose interests and ambitions he respects too much to demand she stay where she’s miserable for his sake, and after a couple years of being FWB, she finds a way to come back to him (in which he also has his relationship with the first two, but makes the choice not to focus on them as his primary partners, but they stay friends, and I lost my enthusiasm before I wrote about his ex-girlfriend and current girlfriend falling in love but not in a threesome way but it was gonna be awesome)

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to finish it, but the WIP I’m most engaged with right now is about an OC who was super injured during the Sunshot Campaign and ended up working in as a courtesan/prostitute since he doesn’t have magic healing and his only marketable skills left are reciting poetry and sucking dick, and then he eventually joins a dual cultivation sect and does his best to add as many of the Top 10 Hottest Male Cultivators to his clientele as possible

Which includes really weird and distant and intimate, sexual and emotional and platonic, relationships with all of them, because he can discuss the sexual ethics of BDSM with Lan Wangji before offering to demonstrate that people really can enjoy the sex freak hidden beneath that icy shell, and then turn around and offer Jiang Cheng a person who isn’t intimidated by him and doesn’t want him to be the Big Strong Man (yes there’s pegging). He can fail to help Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue find dual cultivation techniques to prevent Mingue’s qi deviation, and enliven Nie Huisang’s drinking parties with Mo Xuanyu with witty and erudite banter, and quietly stan Jin Guangyao as someone from the gutter who made it, even when that means JGY as Chief Cultivator can’t be seen to do anything to raise dual cultivation sects’ frankly abysmal social status in the cultivation world.

The Juniors fear him because he and his sect head gave them a series of lectures on sexual ethics, so he’s the fatal combination of a weirdo hippy who’ll talk freely about masturbation, and the stern teacher who will know if you don’t tip your sex workers in cash where their management can’t see.

(And then when he meets Wen Ning he recognizes another outcast, someone uniquely without arrogance or pride--someone with, frankly, an outrageously idealistic amount of anger towards the cultivation world’s status quo--and thinks, I would like to become the kind of person who could walk beside you.)

But when one of his patrons advocates for the Jiang sect to accept him as a student in swordsmanship, they tell Jiang Cheng some things that significantly recontextualize their whole years-long relationship as sex worker and client, like how this guy got injured in the first place, which is just frankly hitting Jiang Cheng when he’s already been clobbered over the head with the fact that his pride has ruined his life, and this guy ends up at ground zero of JC working his way out of the post-series breakdown/spiritual awakening. While being consistently in love with/longing to join Wen Ning.

IT’S BASICALLY AN EPIC ROMANCE ABOUT FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS WITH ONE LITTLE ROMANCE-ROMANCE THROWN IN FOR SPICE. I CAN SEE IT ALL SO CLEARLY.

I hope to god I can write the damn thing. And find him a fucking courtesy name.

[perkynurples]

RULES: TAG PEOPLE YOU WANNA GET TO KNOW BETTER

tagged by @maderilien, thank you :D <3

your name and then what you would have named yourself: Annie | all my self insert characters from when I was a teen were called Emma but I’m happy with my name now :’D

astrological sign (sun/moon/rising if you know them): I’m a Capricorn annnd.... I have no idea about the rest but considering I love vague descriptions of something approaching my personality I should really look it up

when did you join tumblr and why?: oh man I joined in 2011... Pretty sure it ruined my academic career, too. I genuinely can’t remember what led to it, but my first fandom definitely was Doctor Who.

top 5 fandoms: LOTR/The Hobbit, MDZS, Discworld, Ace Attorney, uuuhh various video games

top 5 favorite films: Pride and Prejudice (2005), Princess Mononoke, the Ace Attorney live action (COMFORT SILLY MOVIE), Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Miss Congeniality (extremely fond memories)

go to song when you wanna Feel something: Out Of Reach by Gabrielle

what’s your religion or faith if you have one?: agnostic

a song that makes you feel seen: Falling by Florence & The Machine

if you could have any career: village witch 

do you have a type?: I’m the Classic Bisexual - a man has to fit an extremely narrow set of criteria, and a woman just. has to be a woman

what does your heart/soul yearn for: surviving the mortifying ordeal of being known and actually being loved at the end of the day

if you had to describe yourself in 5 words to someone who doesn’t know you: plants, stories, bees, SOLARPUNK BABY

favorite subjects in school: english (I’m esl), literature, psychology

where does your soul feel most at home: At my desk when it’s cleaned and the inspiration strikes and I know I’m gonna write a lot. At the barn with my horse, taking her for a walk through lonely forest roads. In the old abandoned orchard where my beehives are.

top 5 fictional characters: Granny Weatherwax, Elizabeth Bennet, Susan Sto Helit, Bilbo Baggins, Lan Xichen

top 3 moments in a show that made you ugly cry: recently? pretty much the entirety of Over The Moon, the end of The Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb documentary on Netflix for whatever reason, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts on several occasions

the earth, the sun, the moon or the stars: the earth

favorite kind of weather: thunderstorms but only from afar, sunny afternoons in september and october, not too hot and not too cold

top 3 characters you kin with: Granny Weatherwax, Bilbo Baggins especially in my fics (going thru my trauma, I’m sorry man), and unfortunately, on a deep personal uncomfortable level, JGY

favorite medium of art: music, painting

introvert/extrovert/ambivert: introvert

a favorite literary quote: ‘Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves’ (and pretty much the entirety of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver), and too many Discworld quotes to count

some of your favorite books: Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, Pride and Prejudice, The History of Bees by Maja Lunde...

if you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?: provided my family were still reachable, somewhere slightly remote - a house with a forest surrounding it, civilisation close by but not uncomfortably so, lots of beautiful nature to get lost in. just a hobbit life with a heavy village witch undercurrents, so probably NZ with a sprinkle of feral scottish highlands.

if you could live in any time in history when would it be?: by choice?? late 1800′s, when it was still easy to go off the grid, but you didn’t have to die of a papercut anymore. 

if you could play any instrument masterfully it would be: guitar. I mean I play it but. the dedication isn’t there

if you have one, what mythological god or goddess do you feel a connection to: full-on Persephone vibes, goth spouse absolutely included

and lastly, favorite recent selfie in your camera roll: not on my phone rn, but it’s mostly just me documenting my curly girl method journey akhdlkh

I tag, if you like obv: @piyo-13, @sweetlittlevampire, @a-cutebird, @elenothar, @huacheng-zhu

[wandering-bitch]

Annotations on Falling in Love with Love (Again) pt 2

Falling in Love with Love (Again) is my 3zun cinderella fixit. here are some sick notes on chapters 5-8. there are spoilers obviously (god the notion of my shit needing a spoiler warning haha)

ch 5: love’s a game I can play

nie mingjue is smart and anyone who thinks otherwise can die mad about it

i hate go/weiqi so much bc of Terrible Boring Boyfriend Reasons so the fact that i researched it for this fic means a lot. nmj better fucking love me after all this

im just a sneaky terrible polyam bitch who wants to make another sneaky terrible polyam bitch happy and give him a nice life

i say this, as though im not ALSO constantly planning to kill him with tension

lxc: perhaps u’ll indulge me; nmj + my: yes of course whatever u want king

lxc begging for help playing games is one of the most galaxy brained things ive ever come up with

lxc isn’t normally thirsty or flirty but with his boyfriends??? playful flirt extraordinaire. 

ch 6 the half-sister’s lament

look this chapter title is the funniest fucking thing i’ve ever written. 

it’s ~*murder time*~

qin su for mvp

ppl keep saying i have the best qin su take which is great and flattering but honestly it’s just that i have any qin su take

more ppl should write qin su with me

actually im gonna talk about qin su for a second

from canon we know a small handful of things:

she doesn’t care about heritage/birth

she pursued meng yao

she’s got a nice face

from this we can deduce a few things

she’s a fucking comerade

she’s smart enough to attract meng yao

she’s thirsty as hell

and therefore

she’s good, i love her, she deserves little a crime as a treat

happy polyam feels!!!!

and here we are, the core of the fic, the strike of the clock at midnight....... the murder

meng yao thinking through like ten layers of shit while murdering someone is SUCH a mood. not the murder part but like. u’ve got what ur doing, ur commentary on what ur doing, what ur actually thinking about while doing shit, commentary on what ur thinking about,  plans for what to do next, and of course the part of your brain that’s laughing at you for having so many lines of commentary going on

sometimes u gotta murder a man who’s trying to assault you or your sibling. 

u see, the other emotional core of this fic is Qin Su Rights

More seriously:

the only thing that makes meng yao better in this fic, the Major Change TM, is qin su meeting him + making him realize that jin guangshan’s validation isn’t worth it

i mean it doesn’t happen immediately but like

our start + midpoint + eventual end are going to center around meng yao’s created family with qin su

ch 7 Glad to be Back In My Own Little Corner

starting from the top again we hang out in koi tower

word of god: jin zixuan knows that meng yao is is brother, but doesn’t know 1. if meng yao knows or 2. if meng yao wants to talk about it. so he’s being as nice + caring as possible to his brother. but also he’s just the most awkward creatur on the planet

writing jin guangshan is annoying and i probably have made him more dumb than i could have but like. i think he’s good at short-term planning + being a coward, but he’s not as good at the Game as he thinks he is

“this is fine” big mood meng yao

ch 8 Seriously Thinking of Retreating

awwww yeahhhh the Tension chapter

this ch was hard to write, not bc like emotions or whatever, but bc i don’t have as good a handle on the xiyao dynamic. lan xichen is such a good man and when with him, meng yao wants to be a good man, too

(i mean, unless it’s later in canon and lan xichen’s goodness makes jin guangyao want to appear as good as possible, while also continuing to control him)

(i live for toxic xiyao and nieyao and 3zun just as much as i live for happy healthy 3zun/xiyao/nieyao/nielan)

first we have some absolute saccharine bullshit!! but it’s meng yao so of course he’s afraid that everything will fall apart

back in the present, we have some more Qin Su rights! supporting our sibling who’s going through some Trauma, helping her get some sick sect leader ass, making dumb jokes. love 4 qin su and nothing else

then we see lan xichen being bitter, as he deserves. it sucks to talk to someone who broke your heart so soon after. i spied my ex in a crowded lush six months? a year? after she dumped me and i immediately ran powerwalked out and went to the craft store to feel better

what i’m saying is that lan xichen is stronger than me

“i don’t know what you want me to say to that” “neither do i” hurts so much i love it

tbh??? “It should have hurt more, but he just felt still. this was an acceptable ending” is. also something im proud of

i can’t feel my own soft romantic content but i CAN feel my own Tension Content

[spaceskam]

Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by @chamblerstara ​ and @prouvaireafterdark ​

Name(s): Alyssa

Fandom(s): primarily RNM and The Untamed, but I fuck around with 911 Lone Star and The Old Guard when I’ve got worthy ideas

Where you post: Here and AO3

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos): the winner by over 100 kudos is no one deserves to be forgotten which is wild. It’s a little fic where Lan Sizhui grows up very intrigued in learning about the infamous Yiling Patriarch and desperately going after any little tidbit he can find 

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (by kudos): our fainted thrill carries on which is an RNM season 2 fix-it, so I feel like there’s a good reason why it ended up being the most popular lol it’s also one of the first multi-chapter stories I’ve written that actually feels complete. Looking back on it now, I have my qualms with it and I’m not as happy with the ending as I originally was, but, hey, we can’t all be good at everything

Favorite story you’ve written so far: This really does change by the week and like there are some I’ve written that I probably would’ve said were my favorite at one point that I now can’t even look at. Currently, though, I guess I’ll say it’s Just One Normal Night because, well, soft 

Fic you were nervous to post: probably tastes like misery which is a fic about Alex being in a loveless marriage and getting off the memory of Michael. It was the first more risque thing I’ve ever written and I had no idea what I was doing. But it’s all good because barely anyone read it askdfja;lk

How do you choose your titles?: I have a list of song lyrics and quotes and shit I have to use, but if the story isn’t over like 4k, then I feel like it isn’t long enough to be worthy of the title I think will fit it so I sit there being like “this would fit but what if I can use this title for something better later” and then I have a lengthy crisis and end up naming it something stupid and never use that song lyric for anything better

Do you outline?: yes and no? If it’s long, I have a vague outline, but I can’t use too much detail or I won’t write it. It be like that sometimes.

Complete: 426 lmao

In-Progress: Going off of what I have actually written stuff for and I’m actively planning on continuing, we have about 7:

From A Whisper To A Scream

tarlos secret santa

my Jennifer’s Body AU 

my The Holiday AU ft. neurodivergent LWJ

5 times JC relied too heavily on his nephew

chronically depressed!LWJ fic 

tiny LWJ and NMJ having a bro to bro moment. 

Coming soon/not yet started: so that’s less of a secure thing. Here’s some I’m pretty sure I’m gonna do 

based off the title of Truth Beauty Freedom Love from Moulin Rouge where each word will describe an arc of teenage malex running away together

modern au for The Untamed that’s loosely inspired by s8ep8 of Supernatural

Lan “Party Prince of Gusu” Xichen

JC under a truth curse while on a night hunt with LSZ

sequel to Secret Admirer

And There Was Only One Bed--rosabel edition

Prompts?: sometimes I vibe, others meh. I have a billion in my inbox right now and idk when or if I’m going to get to them. I feel very overwhelmed and tend to ignore them in favor of funky fresh ideas.

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: my The Holiday AU because you know I like to psychoanalyze my favorite characters 

No-pressure Tags: I feel like everyone’s already done this BUT if you haven’t, feel free to pretend I tagged you! I’m always interested in people WIPs and ideas

[bitterfrosts]

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works.

Thanks to @dustproof for tagging me! so here we go!

1. The House on Qishan Hill

I planned this fic for a while and it’s probably the one I put the most time and effort into fleshing out- since it’s a murder mystery/ghost story, I needed to make sure all the little clues I put in there would make sense for all the big reveals I have planned. I’m proud of it. 

2. The Just Desserts Series

Technically this is two fics, but one series so I think they go together. I fell in the LanLan hole in 2020 and I’m not mad. In fact, Cake Batter was written in one day- I ended up staying up wayyyyy later than I should have on a work day so I could finish it while I still had the motivation to do so. Worked out well, though didn’t it? 

3. The Little Love Shenanigans Series

Yes I know there’s only one fic in there, but I’m gonna add more, I swear! I originally wrote a YanQing fic that people liked, and they also asked me to write out some of the other background ships present in it in that universe too, so I figured OF COURSE I WOULD! Eventually there will be sangcheng, wangxian, whatever the hell the ship name for lan xichen and wen ning is, and mianmian/qin su! …Eventually. 

4.  The Bodyguard AU

Technically not a full fic but a series of snippets in the same universe (not in chronological order) that I enjoy doing! Came to me out of boredom one day. Was gonna be a full fic, but I didn’t want the pressure of making another fic that I might potentially not finish, so the snippets are easier but still tell a cohesive story. 

5. Threads

Baby’s first foray into fic writing after not having done it for 10 YEARS! Yes it had been that long! It’s also my first cql fic so it holds a special place in my heart, and yes I eventually plan to finish it… once I have my motivation back…

I wont tag anyone specifically, but if you wanna do this and be proud of your stuff, do it! I’ll treat it as a rec list~ 

[khazadspoon]

001: mo dao zu shi, 002: chengyao, 003: zack fair!

HRMMMM

001: 

Favorite character: Lan Xichen and/or Jin Guangyao but for like... opposite reasons

Least Favorite character: Sect Leader Yao and Xue Yang (I am sorry everyone who loves him I just really dont) - ADDITION. I dont care for Wen Chao at all.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): XiYao, 3Zun, Jiang Yanli/Jin Zixuan, ChengYao, Jiang Cheng/Any Semblance of Happiness 

Character I find most attractive: LAN XICHEN. Hands down.

Character I would marry: Lan Xichen. Again. 

Character I would be best friends with: Probably Sizhui because he is so lovely and polite and kind, but it would probably be Yanli. I would be very very down to be friends with Lan Xichen even if he is far above my station in life. 

a random thought:  Does anyone else just really want to see more of Mian Mian being amazing with her husband and kid? Spinoff perhaps? 

An unpopular opinion:  I wasnt moved by the Yi City arc and dont have strong feelings for any of the characters involved in that besides the Juniors. And generally just enjoying Jin Guangyao as a character is unpopular I guess. Also the Wangxian relationship in the novel? Yikes.

My Canon OTP: Since none of my OTPs are canon it has to be Yanli/Zixuan (I like wangxian dont get me wrong but I dont get emotional over them)

My Non-canon OTP: XiYao and all the painful awfulness with that.

Most Badass Character: Jiang Cheng or Wen Ning. 

Most Epic Villain: Does Wei Wuxian count as a villain in his own story? Because he was the scariest at times. Jiggy was awesome but not Epic in that badass way.

Pairing I am not a fan of: XiCheng or the Yi City arc ships.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Wen Ruohan maybe? He did so little and could have been so much cooler and more villainous. 

Favourite Friendship: Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning FOR SURE. 

Character I most identify with: Jiang Cheng for the whole “I am not good enough and need to be angry/cry 24/7″ and Lan Xichen for the “gotta be impartial and not ruffle feathers if it can be helped”. I am an angry peacekeeper. 

Character I wish I could be: Lan Xichen. He is my answer to everything but he is beautiful, intelligent, kind, powerful, Tall and A Cis Man unless someone has kept something from me (my gay little short-ass trans heart beats wildly at him)

002:

When I started shipping them: Very recently when I saw someone displaying Jiang Cheng’s desires in a woman and them fitting Jiggy almost to a T. It just descended into madness from there.

My thoughts: It is just Pain as everything in Jiang Cheng’s life is, but given the chance it might have been pretty good, y’know? I mean... co-parenting, trauma sharing, clashing personalities that could balance out, the whole shebang is there. Also powerplay.

What makes me happy about them: THE ANGST. And the way you can just play on the unrequited feelings from other side characters. If things had been Less Terrible and if Jiggy had Not Been an Ultimate Shitlord there could have been some great stuff there.

What makes me sad about them: THE ANGST. The awful betrayal. The fact its obviously not gonna work out when there is Lan Xichen being the one person JGY didnt think about (directly) hurting. Jiang Cheng didn’t really stand a chance.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: There is very little so idk, the fact that there isnt more and I cant write more.

Things I look for in fanfic: TOUCH STARVED CLINGING. UNREQUITED SIDE PAIRING. Bonding with each other over Jin Ling. Also top-Jiggy stretching his mean muscles a little. 

My wishlist: More fic. The stuff above. A completely different canon where nothing terrible happens so it can all be fine??? No war crimes and betrayal please???

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: For JGY it is easy, Lan Xichen and/or Nie Mingjue (if there isnt all the war crimes and betrayal of course) but with Jiang Cheng I am really not sure. Forever alone. 

My happily ever after for them: There isn’t one HAHA. But maybe they bond over being uncles (Yanli lives au solves everything), get close, help each other with parental issues, and work on their repression of feelings and develop healthy relationships with themselves instead of the messes they are.

003

How I feel about this character: I love him and I was devastated when he died in canon... and thrilled at the prospect of him just being back again.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Aerith, Sepiroth, Cloud. Maybe Reno.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: I liked his interactions with Angeal and the Turks in Crisis Core...

My unpopular opinion about this character: He is better than Cloud to me as a protagonist. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: Besides having lived??????? Just having lived would be enough.

Favorite friendship for this character: He had a great friendship with Aerith even before the romance so that.

My crossover ship: I dont have one........yet. Give me time. 

[memorydragon]

"My shidi is a real brat," Wei Wuxian interrupted, apropos of nothing.  "It was my idea to go down and look too, but he said I should stay behind to look after you." Lan Xichen blinked at the information, then shivered at the mental image.   "I am grateful to be in your care, rather than brave Jiang Wanyin's bedside manner.” Wei Wuxian let out a loud guffaw, curling in on his side as he laughed.  Lan Xichen waited patiently for him to calm down, and debated if he was up to having less than perfect posture to lie down as well.  In the end, he couldn't quite bring himself to be that improper.

"Are all Lans secretly this funny?" Wei Wuxian asked.  "What about Lan Zhan?   Or... does the Grandmaster actually have a sense of humor?"

"I think you're more likely to believe me about time travel," Lan Xichen said.   That started Wei Wuxian off again.  It seemed he shared a very particular taste in humor with Nie Mingjue, who had often said the same, but at least he would find his future husband humorous.

If you want to go through previous posts about this eventual fic of mine, just click on the tag Time Traveled and Traumatized at the end of the post.

Since last night I posted angst, have something lighter.  One of the reasons I’m typing this now instead of later is that I did accidentally write a part of this scene twice.  So might as well go over what I’ve already written afresh so it doesn’t happen again.  Or it might happen again.  I have a suspicion it wasn’t my memory that failed me, but that I was probably drinking while writing at least one of them.  Drink responsibly, kids.  XD

I decided I liked the second version better, so that meant scrapping and editing this scene to skip the reveal that Wei Wuxian had seen Lan Wangji take the thirty-three strikes through empathy during one of Lan Xichen’s less lucid moments.  Cause, ya know, it’s only a Gusu trauma party if the trauma’s shared.  He does not know the reason why it happened, and Lan Xichen is gonna try to keep that from him once he does admit what he saw.  

On the plus side, Jiang Cheng was absolutely there when Wei Wuxian came out of that vision for him to cling to and hug, so lots of cuddles at least.  And, of course, when the ‘blessing’ that sent Lan Xichen back in time in the first place ends up rebounding on Wei Wuxian and... well, plot happens, but then he’ll know.  Because Gusu Trauma Parties. 

Current word count: 51,631 words of Gusu Trauma parties, and we ain’t done yet.  I’m on page 65 of 88/89-is pages to type and then I go back to word production to pick up after the Cloud Recesses arc.  Yes, I’m dying inside, why do you ask?

[veliseraptor]

Hey Lise, I was wondering if you could maybe just give me a quick and dirty synopsis of The Untamed characters? I really like your fics and wanna read them, but I have NO idea who anyone is hahaha

I was gonna like. Link to someone else’s rundown of this, but then I decided it might be fun to write my own, which was a mistake. But I make all kinds of mistakes! So unsurprising.

This is going to, by virtue of being a character overview, contain spoilers, so if you think you’re gonna want to watch and want to avoid spoilers then watch out for that. This is also broken down by sect because that makes it easier.

The degree to which I explain the plot here varies wildly and I’m not actually sure how coherent it is. If you want a more detailed rundown that has pictures and shit and also other information, see here; also some of these characters have more than one name, which I’ve noted where the usage of multiple names is likely to pop up in fic.

This is very much QUICK and DIRTY and NOT COMPREHENSIVE, just to underline that a few times. It’s also show focused rather than novel focused, because that’s most of the canon I’m working with. I have also not translated titles here (Hanguang-jun, Zewu-jun etc.) because they just sound better untranslated.

THE JIANG SECT

Wei Wuxian: Also known as Wei Ying or (if you’re nasty) the Yiling Patriarch. One of the two main characters of the show. He died (killed himself) in disgrace, universally reviled as evil, but it’s okay, he got better. Or rather, his soul got swapped into the body of a man named Mo Xuanyu, whose life really sucked and who almost never gets acknowledged by the narrative. Sunshine boy on the outside, but it’s complicated. 

Sort of invented necromancy, or at least perfected it. Will kill you with his magic ghost flute, but mostly only if you deserve it. Mostly. Self-sacrificing to a fault due to basement level self-worth and a tendency to believe that he can handle things other people can’t. Swapped out his ability to do magic to keep his brother alive via nonconsensual surgery. This had a lot of somewhat unexpected consequences, it turns out. Got thrown into a very bad place called the Burial Mounds and came out with new powers and a whole new pile of trauma.

Rescues the Wen remnants from being killed in a prison camp after the war against the Wen Sect; this is not a popular move. Founds a commune with them in the aforementioned Burial Grounds. Also raises Wen Ning from the not-dead. 

Adopted older brother (ish) to Jiang Cheng and younger brother to Jiang Yanli, adopted father to Lan Sizhui, eventual husband to Lan Wangji (at least according to novel canon and many, many post-canon fics).

Jiang Cheng: Also known as Jiang Wanyin, but only if he’s being a little bitch. He technically has a title (Sandu Shengshou) but I don’t remember if it’s ever actually used in the show. The youngest of the triad of Yunmeng Siblings (Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli), and possibly the most dysfunctional. Expresses all his feelings as anger, and he has a lot of feelings. Abandonment issues and inferiority complex the size of the lake that he grew up on. His entire family died and it fucked him up pretty bad, along with all the other terrible shit that happened. 100% Slytherin especially in terms of “protect my own people first and probably nobody else second.” 

Adopted younger brother to Wei Wuxian, biological younger brother to Jiang Yanli. Uncle to Jin Ling (see below). 

Jiang Yanli: I’ll take “oldest daughter who doubled as parent figure” for 500, Alex. Jiang Yanli is relatively quiet and mild-mannered but she loves her brothers very much and will throw down for them in a pinch. Tends to wilt in the face of people treating her poorly; not very good at standing up for herself. A professional at taking care of other people and not herself (Wei Wuxian and she have this in common!). She dies and it really does a number on her siblings.

Oldest sister of Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, wife of Jin Zixuan, mother of Jin Ling.

Jiang Fengmian & Yu Ziyuan: Parents of Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng and source of the above’s dysfunction, in a lot of ways. Jiang Fengmian plays favorites (with his adopted son Wei Wuxian) and takes out his feelings about his wife (complicated) by ignoring Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. Madame Yu is straight up abusive; physically of Wei Wuxian, emotionally of everyone else. In her first appearance she walks into dinner and specifically targets everyone’s weak spots, demolishing three children emotionally in about two minutes, then leaves.

This family! It’s a disaster.

THE LAN SECT

Lan Wangji: Also known as Lan Zhan or Hanguang-jun. The other main character. Has a reputation for being very upright and righteous and rule-abiding; is that, sort of, but also kind of a socially awkward, deeply lonely boy who is trying to be a good person and thinks he can get there by following the right rules. Eventually figures out that’s not how it works. Doesn’t make friends easily but when he loves someone it is with all 500% of his heart. 

His circle of people is very small, though. It’s kind of just two: his brother and Wei Wuxian. That’s all! Lan Wangji could use some friends, maybe.

He’s good! Also learns to rebel when appropriate, and “appropriate” especially involves things having to do with Wei Wuxian, for whom he will do just about anything, at least after he comes back from the dead. Before that it’s a little harder. 

Younger brother of Lan Xichen, nephew of Lan Qiren, adopted father of Lan Sizhui, eventual husband to Wei Wuxian (see above).

Lan Xichen: Also known as Zewu-jun. He does have a birth name (everyone does!) but it doesn’t get used in canon. Also parented his younger brother (there’s a lot of sibling parents in this show!). Is the peacemaker, does not like conflict, diplomatic to a fault. Noticed how everyone else is very quick to jump to conclusions and decided he has to take all of the giving of the benefit of the doubt and good faith and “let’s wait and see and not jump to murder” because no one else is going to.

People in fandom give him a lot of shit for being stupid but he is not! He is just conflict-averse and cautious and inclined to reserve judgment on people. It just turns out that he happens to place his faith in the wrong person, which is to say Jin Guangyao. It does not work out. He ends up getting tricked/manipulated into killing Jin Guangyao by Nie Huaisang, and is about to stay and die with him when Jin Guangyao surprise pushes him away and thus saves his life. 

At least one of the Lan brothers gets a happy ending!

Older brother of Lan Wangji, nephew of Lan Qiren, sworn brother/boyfriend of Jin Guangyao and Nie Mingjue.

Lan Qiren: Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen’s uncle who essentially raised them due to family dysfunction involving a mother who was basically on house arrest (because she killed someone??? not sure what happened there, information minimal) and their father seems to have been absent, and both died before series start. Rigid and hidebound, very much not a Wei Wuxian fan, very strict with both the Lan brothers and sometimes that involves corporal punishment and yelling.

There are no good parents or parent figures in this series.

Uncle to Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen.

Lan Sizhui: Also known as A-Yuan / Wen Yuan. Originally a Wen kid, first adopted by Wei Wuxian when he founded the commune with the Wen remnants, then adopted by Lan Wangji when everyone in his family was killed and also Wei Wuxian. Grew up a Lan with no memory of his past. Lan Sizhui has two dads.

Cousin/brother (??) to Wen Ning and Wen Qing, adopted son of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.

Lan Jingyi: Sassmaster extraordinaire; the Lan kid who gets to say everything the rest of the Lans are holding back. Of the younger generation quartet formed by him, Lan Sizhui, Ouyang Zizhen, and Jin Ling. If a Lan kid in a scene is sassing someone, it’s Jingyi.

THE NIE SECT

Nie Mingjue: Also known as Chifeng-zun. Very strong opinions about right and wrong with not a whole lot of room for nuance. Formidable warrior. Anger issues, also daddy issues but we don’t get into those as much. Not exactly the friendliest of fellows but it’s not completely his fault, he’s being gradually poisoned by the malevolence of his own weapon. It’s a thing. Dies as a result of being poisoned by evil music courtesy of Jin Guangyao.

Sworn brother/boyfriend to Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao. Older brother of Nie Huaisang.

Nie Huaisang: Mastermind (sort of) of questionable morality, sometimes in order to get revenge for the murder of your older brother you have to wait ten years while building up a reputation as someone utterly useless, then get your old best friend resurrected as part of a series of dominoes meant to demolish your brother’s murderer’s entire life and reputation. Loves art and fans, not a fan of losing his mind to violent sabers as is traditional for the Nie Sect. Smarter than he wants you to think he is, and also just really good at winging it.

Younger brother of Nie Mingjue.

THE JIN SECT

Jin Guangshan: The actual worst. Sect Leader for the first half of the show. Should’ve been kicked down several sets of stairs; the world would’ve been a better place.

Father of Jin Zixuan, Jin Guangyao, Mo Xuanyu, and too many other bastards to list. Possibly Jin Zixun? I’m not clear on that.

Jin Zixuan: Disaster Straight. He comes off as aloof and arrogant but partly this is because he’s just really bad at interacting with people and incredibly awkward. Eventually marries Jiang Yanli after failing to express his feelings for 26 episodes. Shortly thereafter ends up dying when he’s fisted by Wen Ning (through the chest, you filthy animal). 

Husband of Jiang Yanli, father of Jin Ling.

Jin Zixun: The other actual worst. When Jin Zixun is having fun no one else is, and when Jin Zixun is not having fun no one else is either. Just generally a tool. As far as I can tell has no redeeming qualities. His ambush of Wei Wuxian provokes the rolling disaster that results ultimately in the deaths of (in order) Jin Zixuan, Wen Qing, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian. 

Cousin of Jin Zixuan.

Jin Guangyao: Also known as Meng Yao and Lianfang-zun, the former before he gets promoted by his absolute bastard of a dad. He’s complicated! A good boy, also responsible for a lot of the bad things that happen, with varying degrees of culpability depending on who you ask. Son of a (in everyone’s words, ever) prostitute, and he’s really got a problem with it. Made some valid points but also got possibly too much revenge on people who hurt him, including some preemptive revenge on people who might have. Does a lot of murder but mostly via other people or evil music. Gets kicked down the stairs twice, which if you ask me is a pretty good reason to be kinda worked up about things.

His hat is very silly and I will not pretend otherwise.

Dies at the end and it’s real sad, if you ask me. Incredibly gay for Lan Xichen, and who can blame him? 

Son of Jin Guangshan, half brother of Jin Zixuan, sworn brother/boyfriend of Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue. 

Jin Ling: Part of the quartet of juniors including Lan Sizhui, Lan Jingyi, and Ouyang Zizhen. A mess of a child. (Half)-raised by Jiang Cheng and it shows. Spoiled brat but also just like. Brimming with loneliness and desperation for someone’s approval. 

Son of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, grandson of Jin Guangshan, nephew of Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao (and Wei Wuxian, and Mo Xuanyu, and too many other bastards to name, he’s got a lot of uncles). 

Mianmian / Luo Qingyang: Mostly known as Mianmian, which is her nickname. She’s technically a servant but Jin Zixuan is her best friend. Ditches the Jin Sect when they start being jackasses about Wei Wuxian in a seriously epic mic drop moment. Actually lives to the end of the show which makes one female character!

THE WEN SECT

Wen Ruohan: The first Big Bad of the show. Pursuing world domination by the power of the Yin Iron, aka evil metal that lets you control corpses. It doesn’t go well for him. 

Dies at the hands of Jin Guangyao - going, at the time, by Meng Yao.

Father of Wen Xu and Wen Chao.

Wen Xu: The oldest son of Wen Ruohan; he barely appears but he does exist. Or did, he doesn’t make it very long.

Wen Chao: Absolute worm of a human being. Like Draco Malfoy in early Harry Potter, but with more killing people. Dies an absolutely horrifying death courtesy of Wei Wuxian, but he did throw Wei Wuxian into a place he was supposed to horribly die in, so I don’t feel that bad for him. 

Younger son of Wen Ruohan.

Wen Qing: Incredibly gifted physician, can probably fix anything, including transferring a golden core from one person to another which no one has ever done before. (That’s how Wei Wuxian’s ended up in Jiang Cheng.) Starts out as determinedly loyal to Wen Ruohan basically to protect Wen Ning and keep him safe, but keeps ending up helping our protagonists basically against her better judgment. This does not earn her any points with the Wens, and being a Wen does not earn her any points with anyone else. 

Ends up getting swept up by Wei Wuxian when he finds her destitute in the street and they charge off to save her brother together. Subsequently lives in the Burial Mounds commune up until things go to shit and she goes to give herself up with Wen Ning in the hopes of mitigating damage after Jin Zixuan dies. She is executed.

Has a non-thing with Jiang Cheng because they’re very alike in ways that mean that, under the circumstances, they keep missing each other.

Older sister of Wen Ning, sister/cousin (??) of Lan Sizhui, adopted older sister of Wei Wuxian, sort of.

Wen Ning: Also known as Wen Qionglin, but like, once in canon. So you probably won’t see it much. Neither he nor his sister are actually related to Wen Ruohan - they’re from a branch of the family but serve him. Wen Ning doesn’t get to have a lot of nice things. He saves Wei Wuxian’s life (after Wei Wuxian saves his), and (along with Wen Qing) helps get Jiang Cheng out when he was captured by the Wens and protects Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli after their family and sect are killed. 

After the Sunshot Campaign he is killed by Jin cultivators (or almost, it’s complicated) but brought back to unlife by Wei Wuxian. Unfortunately this makes him vulnerable to control to make him do things like, say, kill Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun. He and Wen Qing go to be presumably executed in an attempt to mitigate the damage to Wei Wuxian/maybe?? save his life; Wen Ning gets kept in a dungeon for sixteen years and comes back when Wei Wuxian does. 

Younger brother of Wen Qing. brother/cousin (??) of Lan Sizhui, adopted younger brother of Wei Wuxian, sort of.

Wen Zhuliu: Mysterious assassin/bodyguard of the Wens, we know almost nothing about his backstory save that he owes them some kind of debt and he and Yu Ziyuan seem to have some kind of history. The main thing is that he’s capable of destroying the golden core of cultivators, aka rendering them an ordinary person devoid of special powers, forever. Gets killed by Jiang Cheng, whose golden core he destroyed. 

Various Wen Remnants: You don’t get a lot of individual characterization from these folks - basically they are the remains of the Wen Sect after the Wen Sect is defeated in the war (called the Sunshot Campaign) that forms the arc of the first part of the show. Pretty much everyone wants them dead. Wei Wuxian rescues them and takes them off to the Burial Mounds, where no one else wants to go, and builds a commune with them, which works for a while until it doesn’t anymore.

They all die. It’s bad.

YI CITY CREW

These got long because I felt like I had to explain more about plot stuff.

Xue Yang: The gremlin! Will cheerfully murder just about anyone at the drop of a hat, he doesn’t really need a reason. Driven initially by a revenge quest for the guy who crushed his finger when he was seven; he kills his whole family, which is a reasonable response when you think of your own life as worth significantly more than anyone else’s. Subsequently and also during fixated on Xiao Xingchen. Kind of a genius?? but he’s pretty low key about it.

Really involved with the plot in a lot of weird ways. Introduced Wen Ruohan to the Yin Iron and taught him how it functioned-ish, worked with Jin Guangyao for a while on necromancy stuff, after the inevitable betrayal ended up getting picked up by a now blind Xiao Xingchen (more on that later) and a-Qing, and lived with them in domestic semi-bliss for three years while also tricking Xiao Xingchen into murdering a lot of people, up to and including his sort-of-ex-boyfriend Song Lan. Turned Song Lan into a zombie, sort of. Fell apart when Xiao Xingchen died (killed himself, on account of Xue Yang demolishing his entire life, whoops) and spent the next decade or so trying to bring him back from the dead.

Dies messily, as you might guess, and I’m still sad about it.

Xiao Xingchen: Grew up on a secret mountain isolated from the rest of society, came down from the secret mountain to help make the world a better place, it really does not work out for him. Travels around for a while being best friends/boyfriends with Song Lan, getting poetry written about him; unfortunately then he and Xue Yang run into each other which is widely regarded as a bad move. Things get messy, Xiao Xingchen ends up with his eyes in Song Lan’s head and blind, he adopts a teenage con artist (see below) and rescues Xue Yang (who he doesn’t know is Xue Yang). 

Three years of domestic bliss (sort of) ensue, with the wrinkle that while Xiao Xingchen’s sword Shuanghua can sense corpses so he can still hunt things, it has a glitch where sometimes the corpses it senses are in fact living people that Xue Yang has poisoned and cut out their tongues. Whoops. 

After he kills Song Lan (whoops), Xiao Xingchen finds out from a-Qing who he’s been living with and, uh, is upset about it. Xue Yang drops the bomb of “oh yeah so you’ve been killing people this whole time and also! yeah! killed Song Lan too! eyyyy” upon which Xiao Xingchen, his entire world wrecked, kills himself and shatters his soul.

He ends the series basically fragments of soul in a little pouch being carried around by Song Lan. When I put it that way it sounds kinda funny but it’s really not.

A-Qing: Teenage con-artist who pretends to be blind and adopts Xiao Xingchen after stealing his money (he notices, but he also just gives it to her). Knew Xue Yang was bad news but didn’t know how bad. Smart cookie. Xue Yang blinds her and cuts out her tongue (he just loves doing that) after she tells on him to Xiao Xingchen; she gets her revenge by leading Wei Wuxian & co. to figuring out what’s going on, and ultimately enabling the first mortal-wounding of Xue Yang. 

Unfortunately, also dies.

Song Lan: Also known as Song Zichen, rarely. A Daoist priest (I think that’s right?) and “rogue cultivator” (in the sense that he’s not affiliated with any sect). He is definitely affiliated with Xiao Xingchen. “Affiliated with.”

Ends up getting caught in the vortex of Xue Yang when his entire temple-family is killed and he’s blinded; says some harsh things and a guilty Xiao Xingchen trades out his eyes to pay him back for being the cause of Xue Yang targeting his temple, then vanishes. Song Lan spends the next long time trying to track him down, eventually finds him in mid-domestic bliss (sort of) with Xue Yang (yikes), promptly attempts to kill Xue Yang, ends up getting his tongue cut out and himself corpse-poisoned and killed by Xiao Xingchen, who thinks he is a random evil corpse instead of his best friend/ex-boyfriend. Xue Yang turns him into a zombie controlled by him. He gets better (from the control, he’s still a zombie).

Literally the only one of the Yi City Crew to make it out alive and he’s not technically alive.

MISCELLANEOUS OTHERS

Ouyang Zizhen: Part of the juniors quartet with Jin Ling, Lan Sizhui, and Lan Jingyi. A budding romantic. Very good, has the misfortune of having Sect Leader Ouyang as a dad, but at least it’s not Sect Leader Yao (see below).

Su She: Due to a confluence of factors having to do with jealousy but also class/rigid hierarchy issues, ends up as Jin Guangyao’s right hand henchman. He’s very loyal when you’re actually nice to him. Really doesn’t like Lan Wangji. 

Sect Leader Yao: Mostly just there to have really bad opinions all of the time.

[wandering-bitch]

Annotations on Falling in Love with Love (Again) pt 1

Falling in Love is my 3zun Cinderella/Qin Su Solidarity Fixit fic. It’s got some dumb angst, but i promise every ch with Angst (tm) has at least some soft gentle fluff with it. 

It’s structured like cinderella (servant gets surprised with the clothes + disguise for the ball, falls in love, runs away but leaves behind a trinket, gets found out later and happily ever after), but really it’s About recognizing the growth you’ve gone through, and uh. falling in love again. It’s also, to a lesser degree, about how important Qin Su is.

Notes on writing the first third of this below the cut

Every chapter title is a riff on a song lyric from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (which you might remember as the Brandy and Whitney Houston movie from 1997). Title is “falling in love with love,” the BITCHIN ballad from the stepmother

i keep stumbling on cinderella aus from parts of 3zun and i never like them bc im picky so i started thinking about this and now im HERE, writing thousands of words and thinking about social shit

in this house we love qin su, by the way

Don’t Believe in Sensible Rules

this chapter was called “Enter the Fairy Godmother” in my outline

writing this fic made me like jin zixuan pfffff

look im not saying that qin su is fucking vital BUT

having qin su know that she’s meng yao’s sister means that he has someone who can empathize with wanting but hating jin guangshan’s attention, and so someone who can remind him that jin guangshan’s respect isn’t worth the effort

aka qin su being actively meng yao’s sister fucking stops him from making terrible choices aka this is my fixit.

originally i just was hand-waving away “it’s a good au bc i said so” but as i built the timeline more, i realized that it all comes down to qin su

which is valid!! because yeah, the middle and end of the fic are about qin su

anyway back to this first chapter

i know in canon qin su is probably younger than meng yao but counterpoint i wanted her to have more respect built into her role

what’s up with meng yao’s makeup? it’s a combination of opera + tang dynasty makeup!! 

you know that promo image of zzj playing an opera performer for a movie next year???  this one??? it’s basically this but on crack

if you’re not thinking about that promo image twice a week then i highly recommend u do it bc it certainly brings me joy and serotonin 

oh hmmm meng yao is wearing a fancy emotionally important accessory??? i wonder what might happen

You’ll Never Know a Finer Night

”a lovely night, a lovely night/ a finer night you know you’ll never see”

qin su + meng yao rights!!!

qin su + meng yao rights!!!

the mengyin han sect is something my spouse came up with for their Nie Parents fic that they’re never gonna write.

you should bug @isimplydonotvibewithjgy to write it. why???

it’s about happy healthy nie parent polyamory!!! 

nie huaisang is named in part after nie mingjue’s mother’s sword

meng yao is only a little bit kidding about stealing a baby for qin su. qin su, in turn, is only a little bit kidding about stealing a baby for meng yao

meng yao fucking with wangxian is very important to me, a bitch

Back In the Past, lan xichen wasn’t so much Jealous as he was frustrated with himself for not saying anything for so long (so long was barely a few months)

“second daughter of a third rate sect” is the type of dumb meng yao shit i love

qin!!!! su!!!! rights!!!!!!!

Most Entrancing Sight Of All

from “the greatest love,” the first song from the brandy version

i actually hate this song whoops

i lov every time i get to write meng yao being clever

it is very convenient for me that im writing the entire fic from his perspective

it’s sword content!!!! hooray!!!!

i looked up so much sword dancing for this it made me so happy

swords!!! good!!!

i do wish i had been better at figuring out ways meng yao could eat li bolin alive, but i wrote it, it’s done, im never editing it again

sword! content!!

The Sweet Invention of a Lover’s Dream

AWWW YEAH my favorite chapter because the xiyao troll showed up and said “oh so meng yao’s a selfish little slut now then” and i think about that every fucking day

the title is from “do i love you” 

the breakup was hard to write bc like. neither’s in the Wrong, sometimes u just don’t fit, and that sucks

like it wasn’t Hard emotionally, but it was hard to balance properly

“Eat Wen Xu Alive” -- meng yao

in my early draft, meng yao + qin su had an agreement to check on each other every hour. i scrapped that but u can see 

“time to meddle”

i had fun learning about azaleas + azalea poisoning

i spent SO LONG trying to decide who meng yao would pin the poisoning on but settled on the li sect being complicit in wen imperialism

nie mingjue is here because nie huaisang whined about it. lan xichen is here because he wants to date someone to move on from meng yao

what’s that? he’s dating nie mingjue? that’s not enough to move on? no, actually, it isn’t

sorry lan xichen the way to move on is just time, not dating

to be clear it’s not that lan xichen is greedy or nie mingjue Isn’t Enough, it’s just that there’s an ache still in lxc’s heart

(there’s an ache still in nmj’s heart)

we’ll actually go over all of this in an auxiliary chapter where nmj + lxc snuggle in the middle of the night

healthy polyamory rights

in case it’s somehow not Obvious, the song lxc is distracted by reminds him of meng yao. 

lxc is one hundred percent that friend who doesn’t let u say anything slightly mean about urself

my one ex specifically wouldn’t let me say i wasn’t smart enough to talk about a sociological issue/socialism thing. it was so sweet honestly

like she would let me not have an opinion but i couldn’t say i wasn’t smart enough

lxc is so proud of himself for that “tell me what this song is about” line and he SHOULD be. it WAS sexy it WAS polite it WAS a good line!!!

im not tooting my own horn im just talking about lxc being a polite, sexy hunk

never forget: so meng yao is just a selfish little slut then lol ok

come back next time for ch 5-8 where we see boys being cute and together and also where qin su gets many more rights