#yeah I’m yearning for romance sue me

[cookiesonfire]

Date idea: we get soup dumplings for dinner and spend the rest of the night at a board game cafe and get hot chocolate

Another date idea: we order takeout, put on a marine biology documentary, and do a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle with wine

[neverdoingmuch]

now hear me out,,, an au where lan wangji is an editor who works for an erotica publisher and wei wuxian is essentially chuck tingle. (also lwj writes romance novels on the side)

wei wuxian didn’t plan to write erotica he wants to make that really clear, he was actually studying like biomed or something equally “oh wow my parents can brag to the other parents about this”

but, as frequently happens in wwx’s life, he got drunk with nhs, like really drunk and they woke up the next morning with a laptop on the floor beside them and loose paper strewn everywhere

they don’t really remember what they were doing or thinking last night but they’ve both drawn a bunch of really shitty and weird porn (the less said about the anthropomorphic version of wen chao’s pet turtle the better) and wei wuxian has like 20,000 words of an erotica story on his laptop

when he starts reading it, at first he’s like haha what the fuck this is so weird but then it turned out to be really good??? and nhs blushed at some of the ~sexy~ scenes so that’s how wwx knew he was writing the good stuff

anyway they’re sitting there, eating their hangover food and wei wuxian goes so uh my story was good right? and nhs is like yeah it was, top stuff i would buy it and wei wuxian goes what if i actually wrote it,,, haha just kidding,,,,, unless?

and in his defence he doesn’t actually write anything for the story for another like three months but then he finds himself in the middle of exam season and he’s like fuck it stress relief let’s write some erotica

he finishes the book and his exams (which he does well in but whatever) and then spends his summer holidays editing the book

when he comes back, he slaps down a paper copy on nhs’ desk and is like i finished it. nhs, thinking he meant his latest lab write up, opens it up to a random page and starts reading it out loud which was a Mistake

he trails off mid-sentence, and whips around to glare at wwx with all the wrath he can muster. it’s raunchy nhs says and just read it wwx tells him so nhs does

like 2 hours later nhs turns to him and says if it wasnt for you and the librarian staring at me the whole time i definitely would’ve felt something and wwx is like so it’s good? and nhs is like fuck yeah it is but i dont get what you want from me?

pretty much wwx passed out after exams, slept for like 20 hours and then woke up and went i should publish this and decided that nhs should draw the cover art.

nhs agrees of course and a month later wwx self-publishes bc there’s no way he can walk into a publishing house with his porn and not just combust on the spot and he decides to go by the name yiling patriarch

wwx clicks the final button to upload the fic and nhs just toasts him and goes yknow what,, this is the closest you’ve ever gotten to having sex and i’m proud of you

wei wuxian is the man who guarded his first kiss for the first twenty years of his life for someone special,,,, wwx definitely wants his first time to be special and there’s no way he’s putting out for someone he doesn’t think is important & despite having dated before, he’s never gotten close enough to someone to go yeah let’s do it so our boy is still a virgin

so wwx’s entire erotica writing inspiration comes from porn, nhs’ way too in-depth answers as to how his latest date went and uh more porn

wwx blusters about a bit bc how is he meant to respond to that and nhs is like maybe you’ll finally move on from reading those trashy romance novels and read something more exciting and wwx is like how dare you call them trashy!! hanguang-jun is a master of the romance novels!! he understands the heart in a way that no other person has ever!! 

and nhs just chugs a bunch of wine and is like yeah hon okay, do you still blush when the main characters hold hands? and wwx is like no! of course not! (it’s a lie, he blushes a lot)

so nothing really happens with the book at first and wwx forgets about it for the most part but then he wakes up one morning and he’s got an extra like RMB 1000 (i dont actually know much about currency so it’s roughly $200 if my quick interneting is legit)

wwx is like wtf? and once he finds out it’s from his novel he’s doubly like wtf? but then he finds out that someone had purchased his book and did a dramatic reading on youtube bc wwx decided that regular erotica was boring and decided to make it satirical or whatever and people loved it??

he’s got nothing better to do so he just goes hm yeah remember that Author i dated who had an “incredible idea that would absolutely amaze The Critics and helped explore his own convoluted mind” let’s make something of that and he writes another book kinda mocking that idea in a very horny way.

he publishes it and someone writes a review of his two books on their blog and now he’s actually starting to get popular - he’s got more money from those two books than he did by working at the local cafe for the whole week

wwx is poor and broke and semi-disowned anyway by this point so he goes fuck it and spends every moment he’s not studying writing erotica. 

he publishes another like five books by the time the year is out (i know the maths isnt working here but this is a book world where wwx can just do that via the power of loneliness and friends who egg you on)

also?? he varies his books. some of them are porn parody things a la chuck tingle and some of them are genuine porn and one book was just him writing a recipe book but making it sound as horny as possible

by the time he’s published his like 8th book or so he starts getting reviews that are critiquing his book and most of them boil down to the fact that he needs an editor or something 

he ends up asking nhs for help and he’s like oh sweet my brother’s boyfriend works for a publisher who does that sort of thing

cloud recesses actually specialises in erotica and i hate the idea that lqr has spent years reading and editing erotica but sacrifices must be made

(side note that i know nothing about the writing or publishing process so pls don’t judge me too harshly)

wwx goes in with his latest manuscript and ends up arriving like ten minutes late, he rushes into the room sweaty and hot, takes one look at the guy sitting on the other side of the desk, flushes an even brighter red and runs back out of the room. he checks the plaque on the door and walks back in slowly and goes hm i didnt expect you to be so hot

cue lan wangji

lwj has always enjoyed being an editor. what do editor do specifically? idk? edit? regardless, he enjoys it. 

while most of the time he’s happy working from this side of things he also likes writing

lwj fucks. he deserves it tbh. but, while he’s had a tonne of one night stands and fuckbuddies, he’s never actually dated someone. so the fact that he’s writing romance novels under the pseudonym hanguang-jun makes his friend jzx laugh a lot

he tried writing porn once and he just couldn’t do it. it was always too clinical or vague and lacked any actual passion bc he was always going oh okay mc sucks a dick but the guy i slept with last week was like a 6.4/10 when it came to sucking dick so maybe mc should also be bad at it or whatever and it just ends up falling apart,,,, but romance he can do

as an editor lwj has pretty high standards for good erotica but he’s really found himself enjoying yiling patriarch’s work even though he’s clearly just been editing himself so when the guy sent cloud recesses an email asking whether they’d be interested in his latest book lwj was ecstatic. 

he also didnt expect wwx to be so hot

anyway,,, we now get to enjoy a week of lwj thinking that wwx is super hot but even more annoying and then him deciding that annoying is hot and now wwx is just absolutely amazing and wwx is just panicking the entire time 

i want my publisher to rail me so hard wwx texts nhs and nhs just responds has he read the bdsm scene with the alien who has a tentacle dick and a knot yet? and wwx is like no??? nhs just goes shame, it will give him so ideas for if you ever grow a backbone and just ask him out

they publish one book together and nothing happened between them the entire time other than yearning and horniness,, of the heart and body. 

when wwx realises this means that he won’t get to see lwj again he immediately writes a new book and like a month later he’s back in lwj’s office, lying on his couch while whining about the cafeteria prices at university

lwj is very enamoured by the fact that wwx is writing erotica and studying biomed bc wow

they do this for like another three books and wwx’s eroticas evolve from here’s a dinosaur man fucking a politician while a mary sue watches on to be like here’s a dinosaur man with black hair and golden eyes and a stern look to his face fucking a politician while a mary sue watches on

and hanguang-jun’s latest book?? i dont want to say that this au’s version of wangxian is hanguang-jun finally finding inspiration to write porn (his muse is wwx of course) and writing the most amazing porn with feelings and plot novel ever,, but it is. 

wwx read it five times in the first week and when nhs finally tried to read it he was like uhhh wwx are you a narcissist, the love interest is exactly like you? and wwx is like ??? no???? he’s nothing like me??

anyway one day wwx gets called into lxc’s office and lxc is like so i’ve read your latest book (not the dinosaur man, a serious one with like normal people and not overly humorous thank fuck but still full of lwj yearning) and wwx is like okay? and lxc goes yes, see i was worried that you didn’t care very much for my brother but after reading your book i’m not so sure and wwx gets the weirdest shovel talk ever which is interspersed with like compliments for his porn writing skills

anyway lxc accidentally mentions that lwj writes books too and before he can take it back wwx is like who??? and lxc is like are you fucking stupid?? you told lwj to his face that you loved his books,,, he broke his theme of tender romance to write kinky sex with a character that’s a lot like you and wwx is like .,,,,,,,,, hanguang-jun??? HANGUANG-JUN???!!

lxc barely manages to confirm it before wwx is sprinting out of his office and across to find lwj.

regretfully for everyone else, lwj is in the lobby so thirty people get to hear it when wwx comes in and shouts LAN ZHAN!! back then, i really wanted write porn about you! ... i think i have actually? but i want to write porn about you and i want to be able to do the research to make it accurate! and i also want to go on dates and hold hands and feed each other food! and i love you a lot! 

lwj is dying inside bc his brother’s bf is there, his uncle is currently waiting for the elevators and a whole bunch of staff are also there but also wwx likes him??? dinosaur man was lwj??

he goes over and they make out for a really long time right there in the middle of the lobby but no one wants to get between them when they’ve been pining for so long

after that they start dating and they do all the romantic stuff but also,, let’s just say that the next book wwx publishes is a lot more creative than all of his previous books

and they become some writing power couple with horniness of the heart and body and sometimes wwx will be like hey lwj i don’t really know how the logistics of this sex scene will work and lwj will be like we could try it out ourselves? and wwx just pats him on the head and is like im sorry but you dont have enough dicks for it to work ),: better luck next time

[thermocoil-boilmaster]

Ironworks Live!

Arlen: (It’s break time, and he is peering over Jessie's shoulder as she leans back in a chair, reading) Good book?

Jessie: Meh. It's another pile of pulp of the Ishgardian Stud Knight variety, starring some hunk named Benovic. Which I'm pretty sure was also a brand of cheap Garlean lager.

Arlen: I thought you liked alcohol.

Jessie: For sure. And given the choice, I'd take the lager, sure. Nothin’ you’d want anywhere near your mouth, but they used to say you could clear drains with it, whereas this Benovic chap is about as useful as a screen window on a fish tank. Dunno what you see in him, Wedge.

Wedge: Y'wot?

Jessie: Well, I nicked it from your desk, and the thing's got more ears in it than a millioncorn field.

Wedge: Nah! Nah! You've got it wrong. That thing's just for inspiration, see. 'cause look here, Biggs 'n me, yeah.

Biggs: We thought of something to make extra dosh, yeah.

Wedge: We're writing our own company romance novel, yeah, yeah.

Biggs: Imagine it, Jessie. (Gesturing) SEXY ENGINEERS!

Wedge: 'cos look, right. Look. You got your sexy healers, sexy knights, sexy pirates, sexy adventurers, sexy bloody mustachio'd Lalafell merchants--

Biggs: —we're sating a void in the market!

Wedge: We're filling our own hole!

Jessie: ...I’ve watched you two try to fill holes, no way.

Biggs: Ach, give it a chance, Chief! We put you in it too, you know.

Wedge: He’s right! You’re the... (struggling) Lady What Gets A Juicy Piece.

Biggs: A Juicy Piece.

Wedge: Or two?

Biggs: More than two, eh.

Wedge: Like that bowling team.

Biggs: Several Juicy Pieces.

Jessie: Oh, marvelous. Like a handful of mayonnaise sachets you’d get from a service station.

Biggs: Somethin’ like that, yeah.

Jessie: (dryly reciting) The sordid, panty-girdle melting tale of the thirtysomething Bessie Baye—who, let’s face it, spent far too much gil on a master’s degree and has recently pawned off her last discernible character trait to cover this month’s rent, only to be left slogging and sweating day and night in front of a very poorly described metal press, and yearning to catch the eye of—

Wedge: —"Sid", the hunky, chunky, funky, foxy, fishy, ottery—

Biggs: —ERR—we're still brainstorming that one. Oh, but it's "Sid" with an “S”.

Wedge: That's so he can't sue us.

Arlen: Alright, this sounds fun! Can I be in it?

Wedge: You already are! Oi, but I spelled your name with a “J” up front, just in case.

Arlen: “Jarlen”?

Wedge: Well, “Ajrlen”. Pronounced the same.

Biggs: Silent “J”, right.

Wedge: And you're also an engineer with his best mates, “Bjiggs” and “Wjedge”. And they’re all there mostly to bust ghosts.

Biggs: Aye. For some reason, we keep writing in lots of ghosts. S'ppose someone's gotta bust 'em.

[traincat]

Do you think that Johnny/Daken's canonical relationship was at least semi-abusive or at least really unhealthy? I see a lot of people really liking it but their interactions in that comic book gave me a lot of red flags :/

Oh yeah, 100%, this is not a healthy relationship in canon. I think my thoughts on that have always been pretty upfront? I know I’ve never written it happy or healthy lol. Not to knock anyone shipping it, everyone should ship what they want and besides I ship this (not in terms of wanting a happily ever after or for them to necessarily even interact again, but more in terms of where’s the 30k dirtybadwrong smutfest), but yeah, I think it’s more than fair to say that in canon this is messed up from start to finish, as one would expect from a relationship between Johnny, who Just Wants To Be Loved, and a master manipulator like Daken.

I’m going to break it down with pictures because otherwise I have to work on fic who doesn’t love a deep read. While, for the record, I don’t believe Daken ever had to use his pheromone powers to get Johnny to sleep with him, he canonically uses them to influence several people in Dark Wolverine #75 alone, and at least one of them sleeps with him as a direct result, so sticking a consent warning on everything. Long and picture-heavy exploration underneath:

Dark Wolverine #75-77, the beginning:

So right off the bat, we’ve established that Daken uses people to get things. We’ll get into where Johnny plays into this in a moment, but it’s just an important thing to remember in general re: this particular story.

During an Osborn’s Avengers board meeting, Daken baits Bullseye into shooting him with an arrow:

(There’s a pattern here: first, there’s Barry, the guy you see in the first set of panels I’ve posted. Then, there’s this agent. If there’s an unseen third person who sleeps with Daken over the course of this story, well, it’s definitely Johnny.)

Anyway, the next time we see the arrow Bullseye shot Daken with is later on in this issue, when the Fantastic Four crash a party:

Shooting a cute guy through the thigh and then blaming your coworker! The start of every classic romance, am I right. So already we’re not off to a great start here.

Daken later shows up at the Baxter Building to ingratiate himself into the Fantastic Four’s midst – by baiting Ben Grimm into beating the hell out of him. It seems like a weird strategy, but it’s very effective. (It’s heavily implied that most of the baiting involves Daken purposefully using his powers to push Ben into a rage – but the verbal component does involve Daken suggesting Ben is sexually attracted to Johnny. And then Daken’s head meets the floor, repeatedly.)

Anyway, it’s a REALLY good move to get Johnny’s sympathy, which is pretty freely given, but most importantly Johnny doesn’t like when the people around him engage in ultra violence, and frequently attempts to be the peacekeeper:

In addition to Johnny being a soft touch, he’s also by far the easiest target if Daken plans to get close by getting into bed with one of them. Reed and Sue are married – not that he wouldn’t do it on that basis alone, but if he wants to stay in their good graces beyond the immediate time (and we see later that he does), well, that’s going to cause drama. With Ben there’s I think both the physical aspect of Ben being a huge rock guy and the fact that Daken has more fun pushing Ben’s buttons in other ways. Johnny’s the obvious (and prettier) choice.

The Four and Daken talk:

So let’s look at these two panels: Ben, Sue, and Reed are all expressing skepticism, but Johnny’s silent. He’s just watching Daken. His body language is pretty attentive – he’s leaning towards him and listening. In the last panel, Daken looks back at him.

When Daken and Reed’s plans against Norman Osborn go south, the Four are “forced” to abandon Daken and flee on their own. I say “forced” in quotation marks because I suspect that Daken’s “go on without me” moment is as big of an act as everything else – a way to make Reed feel indebted to him as he nobly lies in the rubble and waves them on to do their noble work. Johnny, notably, is very upset at the idea that they’ll have to leave Daken behind:

Re: the “keep your voice down” scolding, I think another thing that plays into how easy it would be for Daken to get Johnny to do whatever he wanted is the fact that the group to this day very much treats Johnny as the baby, a role he’s alternately clung to and rebelled against. To have Daken – older, mature, appearing just this side of dangerous – take him seriously (or act like he does, anyway) would be pretty heady for him.

So that’s where this first storyline ends: with Reed feeling indebted to Daken and Johnny, if not involved with him already (unlikely, given the short period of time, but not impossible), then at the very least emotionally invested in him and receptive towards him.

So now we open with Daken #1, where Daken is having sex with a model backstage at a fashion show:

(NOT TO BE THIS WAY BUT I think this kind of attitude is something Johnny’s into in the bedroom. But really I mostly included this panel as an example of how Daken talks during a sexual encounter – since we never actually see Johnny and Daken together in a sexual context, I’ve decided to use Daken’s other encounters as a kind of proxy to read the mood.)

After some sexually charged dialogue between Daken, a few other models, and the designer, he receives a phone call from Johnny:

We only see Daken’s side of this conversation, but there’s a flirtatious edge to it – “What would I have done? Oh, Johnny.” Daken’s also pretty in control of the conversation: it’s light but firm teasing and then “we’ll have to talk about that later.” (because Daken has to go kill a bunch of people.)

In Daken #3, Daken fakes his death. He texts Johnny “call me” right before Johnny stumbles upon the scene of the crime, knowing of course that when Johnny does try and call his phone, this will happen, and Johnny will think he was murdered:

So now Daken has another card in his hand: Reed feels like he owes Daken a debt. Johnny feels like he wasn’t there to help Daken when Daken needed him and is sick with guilt to the point where the others comment on it.

Friendly reminder that Johnny Storm doesn’t like himself very much at the best of times, which I’m sure a character who prides himself on reading others as much as Daken does must know. 

But of course Daken’s not actually dead, as he reveals to the Fantastic Four when he reappears in the Baxter Building and appear to rescue Franklin from an unknown attacker. (In reality, Daken orchestrated the attack in the first place.)

Johnny reacts emotionally, calling Daken a jerk for letting them think he was dead. Daken gives them a speech about only being able to trust the Fantastic Four, and wanting to change: “Eventually, when the time is right, I’ll come out as myself. Then, maybe, people will be able to accept me without the past hanging over my head.” Again, it’s a really good speech to hook Johnny, who often doesn’t fit with the celebrity persona he’s cultivated. And who likes men.

Next we see Daken and Johnny in Johnny’s bedroom, where Daken is changing into some of Johnny’s clothes. The sexual connotations are obvious here: Daken’s doing up his pants, while Johnny’s seated on his bed, legs spread. But also important to note is Johnny talking about when he thought Daken was dead, because we’re going to come back to that near the end of Daken’s series when Daken rather cruelly twists that sentiment around.

In Reed’s lab, meanwhile, Ben disapproves of Daken’s presence, calling him “a real bad apple” and citing that it’s strange that the attackers from earlier ran off before they could ID them. (Likely because there were no other attackers and Daken was using his speed and powers to create the illusion.) Reed and Johnny both brush off Ben’s concerns by teasing Ben over his discomfort with Daken hitting on him. Daken, meanwhile, obtains a weapon (albeit one Reed states won’t kill anyone) from Reed, so he won’t have to pop his claws and reveal his identity.

The next scene is upon the Baxter Building roof, while Daken is preparing to leave. Johnny’s notably changed clothes – before he was in his uniform, now he’s wearing casual clothes and he’s barefoot.

“He got what he came for” is a pretty obvious double entendre – the weapon from Reed, sure, but also sex with Johnny. This implies that the other members of the team know about the nature Johnny and Daken’s relationship, and that Ben disapproves. Johnny appears pretty sad about Daken leaving – the slumped shoulders, the barely there answers, the fact that he won’t look at Ben.

After a brief moment alone with Daken on the roof, Daken leaves and Johnny goes inside, and:

THIS IS A BREAK UP SCENE.

Reed, meanwhile, starts to believe they’ve been conned, while Daken reveals to the audience that he stole from Reed’s lab. So I think ultimately, whether or not Daken was attracted to Johnny (and I think he genuinely was attracted to him: later, while in a coma, Daken dreams of Johnny, and in the dream Johnny tells Daken he’s very glad he’s here), this whole relationship was about the manipulation of Johnny to help further Daken’s goals and that he preyed upon Johnny’s yearning for love and affection and to be taken seriously in order to forge a stronger bond with the Fantastic Four. Once he gets what he needs, he drops Johnny and leaves.

Much later, at the end of Daken’s series, he returns to the Baxter Building with his healing factor fried. When Reed offers to try and help him, Daken angrily rebuffs him, and then turns on the charm:

The face of a man who sees his ex hitting on his brother-in-law. Johnny, recently returned from the dead himself, attempts to talk to Daken:

“Real people stay dead when they die, Johnny” is a cruel mirror of “When I thought you had died… I was so sorry.”

To rub salt in the wound, Daken later says this to Reed during his big last battle, right before he drugs Reed and throws him from the Baxter Building’s roof:

“So we take on partners, and when we get tired in life we take on a life partner. Their siblings being an unwanted complication.” There’s a non-zero chance Johnny heard that, considering he’s the one who swoops in to rescue Reed last second. (Daken also murders several people outside the Baxter Building; Johnny comments later that he still has their blood on his uniform.)

That’s the end of the road for their interactions so far, but yeah, I would classify the relationship as unhealthy and deeply manipulative at the least, which is something I’d really like to address in a longer fic at some point because it does interest me (look at this whole thing I wrote, obviously it interests me), especially from Johnny’s perspective on things. Also I maybe want him to find out retroactively that it was Daken who shot him with that arrow in this first place.