waterscroll

It's been an exhausting few months but I am still alive. In otome-playing I read the Kennyo's dramatic route in Ikemen Sengoku and I liked it a lot better than the romantic route. ( spoilers ).

In Samurai Love Ballad I finally read Saizo's route, which I liked a lot more than I expected I would. I didn't really enjoy his event routes and he's not my favorite as a character but his route holds together well as a story. Plus Kenshin and Shingen get to live happily ever after together. Now I'm on Sakuya's route and he reminds me a lot of Saito from Hakuouki with sense of duty and honor, plus they are doing fake dating, so I'm liking this a lot.

Two fic recs, both enemies-to-lovers, both long:

Third Time Pays for All. Guardian, Shen Wei/Ye Zun, Zhao Yunlan. Post-canon, the three of them work out their baggage.
Heavy in Your Arms. The Untamed, Jiang Cheng/Wen Zhuliu. After the destruction of Lotus Pier, Jiang Cheng and Wen Zhuliu learn that they are soulmates.

Both of these stories in different ways are about loving someone who has done truly horrible things, and not being able to ignore the horrible things but also not being able to stop loving the person. Both of these are long stores that take the time to work out in detail what it means to build a relationship with someone who has caused great harm. While the first one deals with the problem in more down to earth ways (they communicate, they solve problems) the second one deals with it in more magical/supernatural ways (soulbond, telepathy, demonic cultivation). I like both these takes on the trope and it was fun to read them together.

Guardian

glymr is writing the post-canon Ye Zun slow-burn fixit of my dreams, in which he very slowly learns to live in the world and eat things other than people. It's going in a Ye Zun/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan direction but it's going to be a long journey. Third Time Pays for All. WIP.

china_shop wrote a phenomenal early-season casefic with a heartwrenching pair of sisters from different worlds. This isn't a premise I've seen before and I love it. Won't Be Falling.

starandrea wrote a lovely subversion of the arranged marriage trope for Ye Zun and Zhao Yunlan, Fire, Rain, Reasons to Choose, and also a very nice Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan fixit in Dixing, Infinite Staircase.

extrapenguin wrote an extremely fun Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan AU, in which Zhao Yunlan finds Ye Zun before Shen Wei, and they live happily ever after with lots of food. In Two Nights and a Day.

The Untamed

The Immortal Wen Qing by Nillegible. A Wen Qing Lives AU with a fantastic premise and an excellent use of the self-fulfilling prophecy trope. No pairings.

on the verge of surpassing by jelendra. Lan Xichen/Jin Guangyao. One reason I love this pairing is that it makes Lan Xichen potentially a lot more morally ambiguous than he looks, and this fic uses his dreams to push him to the breaking point to see what he might be willing to do for love.

Nothing in Return by Rurtle. Post-canon, Wei Wuxian's relationship with Lan Wangji falls apart and Wei Wuxian is stuck in regrets and pining over Jiang Cheng. The author promises a WWX/JC happy ending but for now they're barely talking and the WWX angst is beautifully angsty. WIP.

The disappearance of Jiang Wanyin by koburi. Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji or Jiang Cheng/Lan Wangji, depending on how you look at it. After Wei Wuxian's death, his golden core starts to take over Jiang Cheng. Lan Wangji is into it. I had a much more optimistic interpretation of the fic than the author did, but I thought it was a beautifully creative take on the consequences of Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng trying so hard to die for each other.

the beast that slumbers within your soul by Cross_d_a. Baoshan Sanren & Jiang Cheng in an AU in which she really does find him on that mountain. Has some great and beautifully epic Baoshan Sanren/Lan Yi backstory. WIP.

And a thing I wrote:

Second Disciple, the story of the rebuilding of Yunmeng Jiang, and of its Sect Leader and First Disciple, as told by a disciple who used to be a merchant of purple cloth. Vaguely JC/WWX shippy, may be more so in the second chapter. WIP.

( some notes on that story )

Good riddance 2020! Let's hope the new year is better.

New year's resolutions:
1. Stop reading about MDZS wank. It brings no joy to my life.
2. Find a fandom that I am more comfortable writing fic in, and then actually write fic.

The Kennyo route in Ikemen Sengoku was unfortunately kind of a dud. He's such an interesting antagonist and his short stories were interestingly ambiguous, but once they tried to fit him into the formula of their main routes it got, well, formulaic. I'm guessing they never intended to write a route for him originally because bridging the gap between how awful he is in some of the other routes and the fanservice they want in their main routes was a big challenge and I think in the end didn't work. But ( mild spoiler ) so I guess I got fanserved.

In MDZS, I got back to the novel and I'm now up to chapter 35. I'm finding it very different from the show, and I found it offputting for a while because I couldn't connect to novelverse Jiang Cheng. But as I'm getting more into it I'm enjoying novelverse Wei Wuxian more and more, because he is funny and a little bit ridiculous in a way that he mostly isn't in the dramaverse after the first couple of episodes. He's also kind of a mess and it's fun watching him figure himself out. Reading this translation helped me get into it, and I think I'm now invested enough that I'll read the rest in the regular translation.

I started watching season 4 of The Crown (haven't watched the other seasons) because I thought it might scratch my itch for watching terrible people do politics. And yes, it definitely does. The fandom has 70something fics on A03. My favorite tag, on a shipfic involving the Queen: no smut bc treason. I don't think this will be a fic fandom for me but it's fun to watch.

glymr tells me that Nirvana in Fire has a lot of politics, so maybe I should watch that next.

And how are you all?

The Goosekeeper Game, Nie Huaisang/Jiang Cheng in a noir AU, interactive fiction. I've never read interactive fiction fanfic before, and it is really interesting. I've seen so many different takes on Jiang Cheng in the fandom and in this game you get to pick your take: how consumed by guilt vs. obsessed with revenge do you think he is? How intellectually honest? How willing to repress his memories? To accept responsibility for his actions? I've gotten four out of the six endings and in each of them he finds a different way forward, but there's no uncomplicatedly happy ending. Which is I think true to the spirit of canon.

A Myth of Devotion. Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng, E, very many warnings. Yiling Patriarch!WWX takes Jiang Cheng with him to the burial mounds in a nonconsensual way, terrible things happen, for some reason I keep rereading this because I like to suffer.

everyone lives (and that's all I ever wanted). Mostly Jiang Cheng being mad about the golden core transfer, in an AU in which more people live. I really enjoyed the background JYL/NHS, I think they'd be great together.

Maybe In Another Ferry Purple Parallel World, I Deserve You. Instead of dying, Wei Wuxian dimension-hops to find a universe in which he and Jiang Cheng can get along. Sad but hopeful, JC/WWX shippy.

School Daze. Nie Huaisang/everyone but Jiang Cheng in particular. E, very porny. I enjoyed this take on young!NHS and how he's frivolous and savvy at once.

vids:

children's work, Nie Huaisang & Nie Mingjue. Uses a lot of material from the Fatal Journey spinoff movie, which I liked a lot and has great character moments for them.

Hard to Love, Jiang Cheng & Jin Ling, which somehow turned out to be one of my favorite relationships of the show, and this is a good vid for crying about it.

Be as You Are, Jiang Cheng gen, but I especially liked it for the very positive take on his relationship with his mother.

Wait for it, Jiang Cheng & Wei Wuxian and a painfully relevant song. I've been watching this one over and over.

I finished watching The Untamed in an all-night watching binge on Sunday night/Monday morning and immediately wrote my Jiang Cheng feelingsplurge in fic form, What Things Cost in a Broken World (mostly Jiang Cheng introspection, rated T, no warnings). Because damn, his last scene gave me lots of feelings. I may write some of them in tl;dr meta form here as well, but not today because I'm exhausted.

I'm going very slowly through the novel and kind of having a hard time because it's so close to the drama and but the characters are different enough that it feels very uncanny valley odd. I think I'm going to have different favorite characters and ships in the MDZS novel than I do in the Untamed drama - in the drama I love Jiang Cheng beyond all reason but I don't think I like his novelverse character as much. I also have very strong feelings about dramaverse Lan Xichen, who is a different person in the novel. I'm going to continue with the novel, because it is very good, but it might be better if I try to keep the canons separate in my head.

In other fannishness, I've started watching the Scum Villain Self Saving System cartoon. It is hilarious and cracking me the hell up. Very recommended. I think I'll have to read that novel too, eventually.

...also finished the animated version. Reading the novel slowly. I have a feeling I'm going to like novelverse WWX much better, but I feel like I need to pay more attention when reading, and attention and focus are scarce in my life right now. Similarly I feel like I have lots of thoughts about Themes and Such but my brain is too fogged to really articulate them. So instead here's a post about what I am shipping and not shipping right now, with some recs:

( shipping and fic recs, cut for length )

( reactions to episode 31, spoilers past that )

Anyway now I'm only reading fluffy fixit fics, including anything in the Jiang Cheng/Lan Jingyi tag (my go-to for fluff in the fandom) and any fixit in the Meng Yao/Lan Xichen tag (my go-to for cathartic fixes of a very bad situation).

Some recs:
this crossover vid with Lord of the Rings in which post-canon Lan Xichen visits Rivendell, befriends Elrond, and talks to him about grief and loss. Elrond was the very first character that I ever got fannish about so it's nice to see him again, and yes I think he and LXC would get along. The title is in Russian.
Make it Holy Another Meng Yao/Lan Xichen vid. Not a fixit but great for watching over and over while bawling my face out.
across the wheel, Jiang Cheng/Meng Yao falling in love as they co-parent Jin Ling. Would probably be a disaster but I like this optimistic and sweet take on it.
Complicit: Towards an alternate reading of CQL's Lan Xichen. Fake academic study that treats the various canons as based on competing historical analyses. Hilarious.

I can't imagine I'm going to write anything in this fandom, there's so much out there that I can find what I'm looking for without having to write it myself. But I think that's good for me for now, I'm feeling a little exhausted by life and don't have much active fannish engagement in me at the moment. So it's nice to just sit here and read other people's fics for a bit.

So that got real, hunh.

( spoilers, fic recs )

I'm also on episode 7 of the animated version and chapter 19 of the novel, because I like seeing multiple versions of things. I'm finding the novel difficult to read so it might take a while. The animated version is a lot of fun though.

In other fannishness, I'm slowly and haphazardly rewatching Guardian. I'm pretty sure I have more Guardian fics in me, so I hope I can keep my head in the canon.

I don't have a lot of deep thoughts about it yet, so just some personal reactions.

( It's quite addictive )

If you've watched it, who are your favorites? Any spoilers you want to give me? I'm not avoiding spoilers at all.

starandrea made a strong case for why The Untamed is a logical next thing to watch after Guardian, so I watched the first episode of the animated version and the first two episodes of the drama. Both are good, but the drama hit me in the 'I must keep watching this' place. Especially that arm-touch from the second episode. You know what I mean. It gave me the same feelings I had from early Guardian, when all I cared about was the two protagonists somehow getting together. I expect that, like Guardian, it will eventually distract me with worldbuilding, woe and epic angst, but for now I'm having fun.

Those of you who are in the fandom, anything you want to tell me about it?

I also started playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Black Eagles, because Edelgard is relevant to my interests ~~and also very pretty~~. It's slow going so I'm not sure if I'll stick with it. And I am not at all enjoying the fights. It reminds me of Dragon Age: Origins, a good story that you have to slog through a lot of annoying stuff to get through. With Dragon Age I just ended up watching the story clips on youtube so I might do the same here.

Meanwhile in Guardian I feel like I still have more stories in me but I haven't settled on what to write next. I have the beginnings of a backstory shippy fic in which Ye Zun and Shen Wei are childhood sweethearts rather than brothers (and have the same face for Reasons). I also have the beginnings of a fic about Fu You convincing Shen Wei to join the Alliance. Meanwhile I have some growing interest in writing about the Regent, he gets zero villain-sympathetic fic and I feel like someone should look out for him, and I have the beginnings of a piece about him being a petty bureaucrat haplessly trying to deal with Dixing's utter mess. I have a major RL deadline in three weeks so I can't write much fannish now, but I still could do something short if I get an idea that won't take me too long to write. Do any of the above sound like something you'd like to read? Or do you have other ideas to throw at me?

I know I owe Zhao Xinci fic but I don't think I can write it yet, my head is so firmly in Dixing that I can't deal with Haixing politics right now.

Finally: Do any of you do this thing where your favorite story by an author is paradoxically the one that you comment on the least? I've noticed myself doing this - I'll read a story by someone, love it, and then read all their other stories and comment more and more as I'm reading, but meanwhile the first story that drew me into their work gets a kudos or maybe a one-line comment. I just noticed that I do that sometimes. I thnk I might need to work on changing that.

Related to this fic. (cn: the fic is E-rated noncon.)

Two pieces of meta here. The first one is on the idea that Dixing has no time. The first part of it may be of interest to people who aren't here for the twincest, just bail when it starts to get shippy. The second is on my attempts to start a rewatch (which is going slowly, because like Dixing I have no time) and what I'm seeing and how I'm dealing with it. That one probably is only of interest for people who share my shipping tendencies.

No real warnings for the meta, aside from the obvious: villain apologism and non-graphic twincest.

( Dixing has no time )

( Rewatching early episodes with wrongshippergoggles )

Thank you for reading, and if you found anything useful here please do leave a note.

Meanwhile, if Ye Zun interests you, please take a look at In Two Nights and a Day, a highly shippy and fun Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan fic that

extrapenguin wrote for me for

equalityauction. It's got food porn, Zhao Yunlan being caretaking, and a lot of optimism about the possibility of actually meeting Ye Zun's needs even when they feel overwhelming. It made me very happy to read.

Today is my birthday and I have many different kinds of imaginary cake, of many different shapes and flavors. Please come by with a fictional character from any of my fandoms and I'd be glad to share some imaginary cake with both of you.

I've made a few friends in the Guardian fandom since the last time I did an introduction post, so hi, nice to meet you, I'm waterscroll. I've been in online fandom for about 20 years but I changed my fannish id last year because I was getting writersblocked. It helped, somewhat. My previous fandoms were all western canons but under this ID before I found Guardian I was all about historical otome novels.

(Otome novels are a kind of dating sim. In historical ones, you date fictionalized versions of historical characters, who are often at war with each other. It sounds extremely cheezy, but I've found them a wonderful genre for exploring how a conflict looks different from different perspectives and how everyone can be written as a hero from the perspective of someone who loves them.)

The main thread that runs through all my fannish interests under both my IDs is people dealing with the consequences and effects of war and of decisions that they made during wartime. I sometimes shorten this to 'redemption arcs for war criminals' but a) they don't actually have to have committed actual crimes as long as they made questionable decisions b) I'm ok if they don't get a redemption arc in canon as long as it is plausible to imagine one. This is a highly specific interest, I know, but it's been remarkably consistent over the years. I also love enemyships and love stories involving terrible people.

Guardian is my first cnovel and cdrama canon. I know this means that I'm missing things, or getting squeeful about things that are relatively common tropes in the genre. I might continue in the genre once I have bandwidth for another canon. Meanwhile I'm reading all the meta I can find and trying to tolerate my own learning curve.

I am not a particularly prolific writer, if I can write a few things a year I'm happy. I almost never write anything longer than 2000 words. I tend to be most interested in writing characters or premises that haven't been written that much. My favorite genres are post-canon fixits and canon divergence AUs, but I also like rule 63 AUs when there's something interesting to say about gender in canon.

For pronouns I'll take she or they. I'm in my late 40s. I live in the US but I didn't grow up here. Personal posts tend to go under access lock, so I tend to grant access once I get to know someone well enough that I think they'd want to read my personal posts, or once they grant me access and I'm commenting on their personal posts. But if you really want to see my vents about life in the pandemic, let me know and I'll add you.

Anything else you want to know?

::glares angrily at pile of drafts that somehow don't write themselves::

Since I seem not to be in a fic-writing headspace right now, let's have a meme: You give me a prompt and I'll tell you about the fic I'm not going to write based on it.

Alternatively, give me a description of a fic you're not going to write and I'll tell you about the squeeful comment I'd have written on it if it existed.

Title: Still Present
Pairing: Ye Zun/Shen Wei
Rating: Explicit
Length: About 1000 words
Tags: Noncon, Graphic descriptions of violence, Bondage, Whipping, Blood, Exposure, Twincest, Bad Communication
Summary: “I am going to break you,” Ye Zun says.

( writing notes )

Title: Two Peoples
Characters/Pairing: Fu You and Ma Gui, with his canonical crush on her.
Rating: General
Length: About 800 words
Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, unreliable narrator, politics, unrequited love

Summary: Fu You and Ma Gui forge the Hallows and an alliance. They might not agree on what it means.

( writing notes )

I’m feeling a little nervous to post my thoughts, since I’m still fairly new to the canon and Guardian fandom is full of excellent and thoughtful writers who have been thinking through the show for years, so I’m a little worried that anything I say at this point will be either obvious or wrong. But writing will help me process my feelings about the show and I figure it’s about time for me to get some thoughts out there and see if anyone in the fandom finds anything in them useful. So, here goes. Please be kind.

Content notes: canon-typical violence, murder and suicide. Intended to be creative (a possibly interesting reading) rather than definitive (what I think canon definitely means). Dramaverse, with a very brief mention of the novel.

( woobie villain thoughts be here )

Thank you for reading. If you found anything here useful I'd be glad to know.

As promised, after finishing the Guardian drama and taking a few days to think about it I'm back with some Ye Zun thoughts. In two versions, fic and meta. Here's the fic one first.

Title: Sunflower
Characters/Pairings: Ye Zun centric with some (one-sided, sort of) Ye Zun/Shen Wei and Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan.
Rating: Teen
Length: about 1600 words
Tags: major character death, post-canon, 5 things, character study, emotional/symbolic twincest, hopeful, nonlinear, unreliable narrator.

Summary: After his death with his brother, Ye Zun wakes up in Dixing alone. He thinks about four places where he found light and one where he found darkness.

( writing notes )

I think I'm going to need to sit with that ending for a bit. I'm glad I was completely spoiled for it, as I don't think I'd have had the emotional stamina to watch it unspoiled. And now I am overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings and it's the middle of the night.

( some quick things )

Much more to think about. I'll probably write more soon.

...so I can try to finish in time to participate in the Zhao Xinci conversation over at sid_guardian. I'm only at episode 33, I need to hurry. And damn that man guts me whenever I see him onscreen. ( Why does a fictional character hurt so much? ) Worse, I can't find any fluffy happy-ending fixit fic for him in which he gets love and cuddles. Well, that may be my True Destiny in the fandom. But first I need to finish the rest of the series, because there seems to be lots of character arc left for him.

Speaking of Guardian characters who need fixits, fandom is *definitely* meeting my Ye Zun fixit needs. (Thank you

extrapenguin!) I'm watching the show with fixit fics open so I can flip over to them when canon feels like it hurts too much. And then I accidentally wrote 4 pages of Ye Zun meta the other day to make myself feel better, I think I'm going to hold on to it until I finish canon and then maybe use it as the basis for fic.

I'm hoping I can produce some actual fic out of all these intense feelings I'm having, that would really be great. In the meantime, back to episodes.

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Recent Entries

Still alive, have some recs

fics! (mostly by other people, one by me)

currently reading/watching

some The Untamed fic and vid recs, mostly Jiang Cheng centric

Finished watching The Untamed, having feelings, wrote fic

The Untamed, up to episode 40

Still watching The Untamed and having feelings

Up to episode 20 of The Untamed, reading Jiang Cheng fixits

The Untamed to episode 10

state of current fannishness

some Ye Zun/Shen Wei ship meta

Birthday (and cake)

belated introductions

fic not-writing meme

Fic: Still Present (Guardian, Ye Zun/Shen Wei, noncon)

Ficlet: Two Peoples (Guardian, Fu You & Ma Gui)

Meta: on writing Ye Zun

Fic: Sunflower (Guardian, Ye Zun)

Finished Guardian, now going to have a good cry

no time to write a post, got to get back to Guardian