#there is one fic on AO3 called “dynasty” and it's so well written. it feeds my slendermansion AU desires so bad

[marbledproxies]

i apologize for my rambling, none of my friends like creepypasta as much as i do, they dont get the hype :brokenheart:

[shijiujun]

HERE’S ANOTHER - WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH: THE SLEUTH OF MING DYNASTY

OOF alright here’s another drama recommendation! I already briefly talked about the show here so you can see that for a tl:dr version. I would still like to repeat that I have a type, and I love detective shows, whichever period they happen in, and this one happens to be WAY BACK IN TIME so the cases aren’t like crazily good or anything but everything else? YES PLS.

Episodes: 48 (PRODUCED BY JACKIE CHAN!!) 

Where to watch: iQiyi, iQiyi YouTube, Kissasian. Viki, Duboku.net, Kankanwu.com, Bilibili has it too and unfortunately I do not know when the subs come out for Viki :(

History: It was adopted from a BL novel, so Tang Fan and Sui Zhou are technically supposed to be together. But China censorship, we know that ain’t gonna happen, but one can hope that we get something like The Untamed XD So from the trailer it looks like they might pair Tang Fan with this other girl who’s actually quite pretty and I do like the character she’s playing, but looks like the focus WILL BE on the three main guys

Trailer 1 | Trailer 2

Novel (Chinese) - 150+ chapters + 17 epilogues I think?

Summary: Tang Fan is a sixth rank official working at Shun Tian Fu (like an equivalent of a neighbourhood police office) who’s a deductions specialist, smart genius detective of sorts. He happens to be at the scene of two cases, and is arrested by Sui Zhou, Captain of the guards (like a regional SWAT team of sorts). Wang Zhi is a eunuch working under the Gui Fei (royal concubine) in the palace, and also the head of the Western Depot Xi Chang, which is the equivalent of I guess, a city police headquarters? All three men work for the Emperor, with Wang Zhi having the most power among them three because he has direct access to the Emperor and is a trusted advisor kinda.

*Found out that the ship name from the novel is 饭粥 Fan Zhou, but written (rice + porridge XD)

Anyway the three of them work together for the first two cases and form unlikely friendships and find themselves wrapped up in a larger conspiracy. Do the three of them together make me feel like there should be a polyamory thing going on? And do I kind of ship Tang Fan and Wang Zhi? Oh jesus. Yeah. Then again I’m only 10 eps in and from the trailer there’s a lot of Tang Fan WHUMP!!! And both Wang Zhi and Sui Zhou try to support him in different ways and I’m all for that although the conspiracy seems pretty huge and the angst looks like it might hit the roof.

1. OUR HIMBO IS CALLED TANG FAN (Tang Run Qing): His hobby aside from detective work is writing romance novels under another pen name (I suppose, almost an AO3 fic writer’s equivalent at that time) and eating. He just, eats. Honestly, he checks all the boxes - Needy, whiny, intelligent and smart, pouty, always hungry, tries to laze about all the time, is timid AF, gets bullied all the damn time and cannot fight for shit, is a cheapo and always has food debt, but has a temper etc. No sense of boundaries (uses Sui Zhou’s bath without asking and then invites him in for a bath, together). And like Lu Yao in MRIAD, he threw up at the sight of a body, so yep. But at the first sign of trouble does Tang Fan go save Sui Zhou, all on his own? FUCK YES. Still a himbo tho.

2. SUI ZHOU (Sui Guang Chuan), OUR SECOND HANDSOME, CAPABLE, FIGHTING MALE LEAD WHO TAKES CARE OF TANG FAN (BUT BULLIES HIM IN THE BEGINNING): This man, he be handsome and his fight moves are all BEAUTIFUL. He’s so calm at all times it’s amazing and when HE BE IN UNIFORM?? OOMPH. He rescues Tang Fan a few times, and then later Tang Fan moves into his house because he got kicked out, and this man BECOMES THE HOUSE COOK. HE HAS TO NEGOTIATE WITH TANG FAN TO NOT TOUCH SHIT IN HIS HOUSE, OR RENOVATE WITHOUT HIS KNOWLEDGE. But he still cooks for Tang Fan, gets him to do work by threatening not to feed him. 

3. AND OMG WANG ZHI - LIKE, HE BE A SCHEMING BUT VERY COMPETENT & CHARMING LITTLE BIJ. He’s like 17 in this show. Can you tell he’s 17? I can’t. I like that he’s so powerful and he’s the concubine’s right-hand man, plus he seems heartless in the first few eps but when you get to know him you do see that he’s very loyal, and quite fair even if he’s very opportunistic. He also has A LOT of money and power. He has a SHITTY TEMPER when provoked but he quite likes Tang Fan, that’s the thing - basically the very competent sidekick teasing & bullying Tang Fan while Sui Zhou is TF’s SO but i can’t help but ship FanZhouZhi if you get what i mean

4. Royal Concubine is like apparently, 49 years old - She’s pretty, and she seems to be mean as well, but evil? Not so sure. Gotta see how it goes. But the first few cases are aimed at her, as unseen forces are trying to take her down considering how much power she has. She’s done her fair share of evil things (like the usual, getting rid of other concubines who can dethrone her etc.). Look at her yawn at a serious meeting. She couldn’t give two fucks about propriety. I like that.

9. No huge bromance moments yet! Just little things here and there, but I like that there hasn’t been any like hint of a token hetero relationship for any of the three main leads just yet, but I may probably have to eat my words. IN ANY CASE. SOME MOMENTS THAT I DO LIKE:

+ classic wall 壁咚 moment between sui zhou and tang fan

+ wang zhi telling tang fan that whenever he needs him, he’ll turn up right at his side

[jandjsalmon]

I was looking at other shows on the Archive and noticed Riverdale has over 5k stories which is more than most. Do you think the motivation to write so much fanfic for a fledgling series comes more from the desire to correct the bad writing decisions and fill in the gaps or rather the wonderful characters they created taking on a life of their own?

I think you ask a very interesting question, Grayface.

Firstly - as I answer I feel like I need to stipulate that my experience is with the 2700+ Bughead specific fics on Ao3 as opposed to the over 5k in the general Riverdale tag. I have read a very small handful of non-Bughead but Riverdale fic and while I have enjoyed the random Archeryl fic (and even read one or two polyamory related fics which definitely weren’t my bag) - I’m most comfortable talking about the corner of the fandom that makes me happy so I can’t say for sure that the motivations of the other Riverdale fics are the same but I’ll do my best. 

ALSO - I did some preliminary research in answering and noted that in the TV category there are fandoms with many many fics (Sherlock has 106,564 - SKAM has 4819 - Supergirl has 17,159 - Supernatural has 185,296 - Buffy has 27,333) but it’s definitely true that there are many more with just a few fics (Naked and Afraid only has 1… which you will never be able to convince me wasn’t written by Lili Reinhart under a pseudonym). 

And while it’s true that MOST fandoms don’t have as many fics as Riverdale does (and Bughead is literally 47% of the Riverdale tag - which is amazing for a single ship) - I don’t know necessarily that we can say it’s simply because of overall dissatisfaction with how the writers write canon. 

Part of it may be that - but as @mothermaple said to me last night (as I was mulling over how to answer your question) - we both think we are a very invested fandom because a lot of us have been reading the comics for decades, we love the characters, and we have all kinds of thoughts and headcanons about them because many of us have shipped Bughead for 20+ years. Then the powers that be introduced us to a show with beautiful characters, compelling actors (even when they cheese it up and/or overact), and pretty visuals (I love me a fog machine). When you love the characters and world so much, and you love to write, everything kind of just falls into place. 

Your specific question was:

Do you think the motivation to write so much fanfic for a fledgling series comes more from the desire to correct the bad writing decisions and fill in the gaps or rather the wonderful characters they created taking on a life of their own?

I’m going answer this a couple ways and please know this is not a criticism towards any person in particular. I’m not saying what I’m saying to call out anyone or belittle anyone’s feelings. 

Firstly. Whether you like the direction of canon or not, whether you think the writing is crap or not - it doesn’t change the fact that THIS is the canon we’ve been given. I see a lot of people pining for what we got in season 1 and while there are definitely aspects of season 1 that I miss - THIS is what we have. 

If you don’t like how something went down in Season 2 - then by all means write canon!divergent fix-it fic. A lot of our Bughead fic in particular is fix-it, but more than a lot of it is AU - so then it isn’t really about the bad writing in canon - and more about wanting to see these kids in a variety of different ways that canon couldn’t and wouldn’t show us. Coffee shop AU. College AU. Fake Dating AU. New York AU. Meteorologist AU. New Girl AU. 

I’ve also read some really amazing “missing moments” fics. They aren’t always to emphasize how crappy canon writing is... but more so illustrate that while the show is only 45 minutes - and those forty five minutes can’t 100% be devoted to Bughead (as much as some of us wish they could) - so the missing moment fics fill in the space between what we saw on screen and what happened next. I love those fics. @litladyloveshp writes them particularly well but there are lots.

But I think it’s important to emphasize the last bit of your question, Grayface. Have these characters taken on a life of their own? I think so yes. I think this is the main reason we have been blessed with SO much fic.

You can see that in many of the tv fandoms I pointed out with stats above - it’s much the same. Let’s talk Sherlock Holmes as a character. There aren’t over 100k stories in the Elementary fandom... but there are in the Sherlock fandom. Is that because the Sherlock writers are awful? I dunno. I don’t think so. But I know it’s because the characters are compelling and we want to see more of what we love - regardless of what we have available in canon (whether that’s Adlock for @paperlesscrown or Sherlolly for me). 

In my view, there has been an explosion of fics for Riverdale as the characters have become more developed and become more loved - as people fall in love with their portrayals by amazing actors like Lili and Cole and KJ and Camila.

What I find particularly interesting is that Dynasty (for example) is on the same channel as Riverdale - and has some really beautiful cast members (like Riverdale) and a few good and a few terrible writers (like Riverdale) and yet there are only 17 stories on the Archive for that show. Seventeen. Compared to over 5k. Isn’t that fascinating?

I’m not sure whether my babbling has actually answered your question to any satisfactory degree. But I hope you’ve managed to get the simple gist of my answer. I love our fandom and my FAVOURITE part of fandom is the fic and people who write it. Canon won’t be here forever but there are definitely Bughead fics I’ll read over and over again (just like I do for Veronica Mars or AHS or any other show/film I love that does not have a continuous feed of canon to draw from).  I feel SO privileged to ship something that is canon and I’m really really looking forward to this hiatus and all the awesome fanworks that are sure to come.

Thank you for the Ask, Grayface. Happy Riverdale Day to you. 💙💛