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2023: in writing
TOTAL WORD COUNT (COMPLETE WORK ONLY): 20,065. COUNTING THE POSTED CHAPTERS OF INCOMPLETE WIPS IT’S 63K+ THOUGH!! but still. more than i managed last year, but I long for my 2020/2021 levels of writing output.
FICS COMPLETED AND PUBLISHED:
January
and this is not our fate: the untamed, 1.7k, t. wen qing pov on chengxian, with sort of a proto-weird vibes ot3 energy; also this takes place in a nebulous wens-won-the-sunshot-campaign au wherein chengxian are prisoners of war
the skies occult blue: tian guan ci fu, 8.3k, e. beefleaf, & one of those tropey fic premises i didn’t think i’d ever actually write until an exchange request gave me an excuse; in this case, that looked like “pre-canon beefleaf get hit by a pollen that makes you either compulsively reveal your secrets OR have sex.”
February was taken up by top surgery recovery, and then March was spent subsumed in a fiscal year-end hellpit at work. I started publishing my ongoing “quick” “chapterfic project” in March, which I discuss a little in this post but will get its own DVD commentary when it’s finished, but otherwise I didn’t write much.
April
innamorata: a song of ice and fire, 1.6k, g. worldbuilding-heavy minor character f/f fic focused on braavosi theatre and courtesan culture; i just think if you had a highly mannerly and somewhat tragic pining situation going on for your greatest professional rival, that would be neat
all the ghosts still singing: the scum villain’s self-saving system, 2.6k, t. bingliu during the “shen qingqiu is dead” era; this is a remix that i also turned into “choose between x negative effect or sex pollen” fic? i’ve never written any variety of sex pollen before this year, so it’s funny it showed up twice in this relatively distinctive way.
May
take me by the braid: house of the dragon, 1k, t. rhaenicent epistolary fic from one of my pet AU timelines, wherein the greens win and alicent is keeping rhaenyra alive as a prisoner despite all logic, and really wants to have an “enemy mine” atticwife situation going on, but rhaenyra is just ghosting her instead, which is way more devastating.
June was spent working on the first two of the following fics, which were exchange gifts that revealed/de-anoned in July.
July
baby loves to dance in the dark: tgcf, 1.9k, e. pt.1 of my thesis that shi qingxuan’s ultimate sexual fantasy is about being bullied by other women for being soo slutty and fuckable while she’s like “oh my god stoppp no seriously stopppp 🙈.” the pairing is ling wen/shi qingxuan/yushi huang, and more than any of its merits as trashy porn, i am proud of this as a work of ling wen POV. i love her so much. she’s just dreadful.
in your little grey heart: tgcf, 5.3k, e. beefleaf & pt.2 of the above thesis. i wrote a post about this fic.
bruising the velvet: wolf hall, 1k, m. this is a short angstfic about a fictionalized version of thomas cromwell giving henry the eighth a depressing blowjob while he’s in the tower of london to be shortly executed.
in august i was very depressed.
September
see you at the sun’s collapse: tgcf, 2.3k, t. we return to ling wen POV for a rumination on her ambitions, her relationship to gender, and her relationship to the other two tumours, especially pei ming. aka, how i turned myself into an unironic pei ming/ling wen shipper (sort of)????????????????
everything I’ve published since then has been updates to ongoing WIPs, which I touch on briefly at the end of the post.
FANDOMS:
Heaven Official’s Blessing/TGCF: 3 + 2 (currently posted) wips
The Untamed/CQL: 1
A Song of Ice and Fire: 1
House of the Dragon: 1
Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: 1
Wolf Hall: 1
being a TGCF main in 2023/4? likelier than you think.
NOTICEABLE TRENDS:
i branched out a lot! mainly due to exchanges. i’m taking an exchange break right now because my life is not calm enough to be able to handle even voluntary deadlines in my free time, but i did have fun writing stuff i never would have written on my own. everything on this list was an exchange fic except for my current wip. (also a reason why i’m taking a break from exchanges. i have some projects that won’t leave me alone until i get to them and i can’t manage the distraction at this time.)
otherwise: I wrote so much about people being imprisoned? and this is not our fate, take me by the braid, and bruising the velvet all take place while at least one of the central characters is in captivity, and my wip panting like a dog at the edge of your bed starts in prison, and focuses on the impact of that foundational experience of incarceration.
i also wrote more f/f than i have in years and years. writing majority f/f even when you’re mostly in danmei fandoms? i’m so talented.
I HAVE MORE TO SAY:
AND THIS IS NOT OUR FATE: the untamed, 1.7k, wen qing & jiang cheng/wei wuxian.
written for bulletproof exchange 2022/2023.
i adore wen qing and i loved having the opportunity to write her pov again outside of the long, depressing slog that is mercies.
this au scenario came to me in a dream. what you see in this fic is truly just a sliver of the broader idea, which i’m putting under a cut because it’s really long.
the jumping-off point was wei wuxian and jiang cheng (and presumably other jiang cultivators) getting apprehended on their way out of qishan after jiang cheng comes back for wei wuxian following xuanwu cave. wei wuxian and some other jiang cultivators are being held captive and the gloves are fully off at this point, because cloud recesses has already been attacked and lotus pier is soon to follow. having chengxian & co as hostages is being used to keep yunmeng jiang in line. (the upside of this is that jc doesn't get his core melted, so if you follow the threads long enough, this could end up next door to a fix-it, but that’s obviously not what my heart wants, you know me.)
jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan are killed by wen chao and wen zhuliu, like in canon, and yanli is being held at lotus pier as an interim puppet leader/hostage for jc and wwx's compliance, probably with the threat of her getting married off to a wen relative or vassal. more yunmeng jiang sect members are alive at point than in canon, so they're dangling that over jc's head as well. but all of this is just the background for what my dream was really about, which was wwx and jc being stuck together in this increasingly noxious and terrible situation and getting frustrated and having nowhere else for this all to go other than taking things out on each other. the crux of my dream was the core of this fic, where wen ruohan has jc torture/punish wwx in what is very much a classic whipping boy scenario—jc is too valuable to touch, so they're trying to get to him psychologically by making wwx suffer instead. that, plus it’s a more effective way to fuck up and traumatize jiang cheng than just torturing him would be. in my dream i think jc had some kind of information that the wens needed, and that's why he was being kept alive instead of just killed? my dream did not disclose what that important information would be, of course.
wwx and jc's relationship is getting increasingly codependent and fucked up because they're stuck together in the same cell and flipping between desperately trying to come up with escape plans/talking over ~what they're going to do when they're out of here~ to being forced into these mutually nonconsensual torture sessions (which, in my dream, weren’t just floggings but eventually escalated to other stuff too.) when they're alone, they're trying to pretend they can compartmentalize it and that it doesn't have to impact their relationship, but jc is DESPERATE for validation that wwx doesn't hate him for it/isn't going to become scared of him/etc, and as we know putting jc in a situation where he's desperate for validation from someone who is not really in a position to give it freely/satisfactorily (obviously wwx is SUPER pretending that this doesn't matter and he's laughing actually, but people can only be SO GOOD at acting) is just not going to work out well for anyone involved. they have a lot of weird sex about it, which is funny because i've always been very tepid on romantic chengxian and just preferred it as a super fraught and intense platonic relationship until i had this dream. my subconscious went "let's come up with the specific au scenario in which you could be brainwormed about this ship you're otherwise meh about."
wrh's health is deteriorating faster from demonic cultivation in this au than in cql canon, so wen qing is also in nightless city to treat him. she's been observing all this going down and feeling powerless, because all her attempts to help the jiangs don't seem to result in anything good happening in the long run, plus wen ning is here and she doesn't want to put him at risk. but jc and wwx correctly identify that she's their best chance at getting out—and they're increasingly acutely aware that wrh has little good reason to keep them both alive in the long term, when he could have someone under his control marry yanli and assume control of yunmeng jiang if he wants to maintain a veneer of this being a legal takeover. however, they disagree on how to actually to go about making their escape, and eventually wwx goes over jc's head somehow by telling wq that they need to get the torture stuff to stop, not for his sake but for jc's. the bargain they strike is that wwx becomes the meng yao figure to wrh—being the guy overseeing the dungeons and inventing new torture methods (potentially involving proto-wwx-style-demonic cultivation), which involves collaborating with wq a lot, as she's there as the other side of the operation and making sure the important prisoners don't die or whatever. (actual meng yao may or may not be here too, i don't think he appeared in my dream and i keep going back and forth about whether him being there complicates things in a good way or is just Too Damn Much.)
wwx hates this obviously, but is doing as much as he can as fast as he can to put an escape plan together, not only for his and jc’s sake but also yanli and the rest of the yunmeng jiang survivors, and is actively working to sabotage wen operations in whatever ways he can get away with. at first jc is super relieved to not be the torture guy anymore, but before long things get arguably worse for him, because now he's just spending tons of time alone in a cell and feeling useless to contribute to their plan. certain unhinged corners of his brain are also, like, "okay, so, i spent three weeks torturing my shixiong and then he gets promoted to Head Torture Guy????? FUCKING WEI WUXIAN" akjdgh. he and wwx don't feel quite so "in it together" as they did before, AND he can tell from whatever glimpses he gets of their dynamic that wwx and wq are getting increasingly close (read: trauma bonded over morally compromising yourself for the sake of someone you want to protect), which jiang cheng really can't deal with because a) he doesn't have the same kind of opportunities to meaningfully interact with other people in a sustained way as wwx does when he's clocking in for his job at torture college, so wwx is kind of his entire social world atm, b) he hates to feel left out and is turbo FOMO haver, and c) there are new added layers of romantic jealousy which are being applied to! both sides!! of this equation now!!!
he doesn't rationally think wwx and wq are sleeping together, but he’s spending a lot of hellish time alone staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but fester. there's a lot of thinking about how they probably don't even need him anymore and he's being abandoned and disregarded and for all he knows they're [redacted] right now, etc etc.
wwx and wq aren't stupid and they're picking up on the jist of all this. also, even though they never talk about it in so many words, wwx knows about jc's feelings for wq, and wq knows about depressing emotionally needy chengxian prison sex, and they each know they know, and it's a giant elephant in the room. so eventually through [waves hand] Events, wq and wwx sufficiently convince wrh that wwx and jc are totes going to be loyal minions and do whatever he wants if they can go back to yunmeng. they're planning to keep in touch with wq and have some kind of semi-coordinated resistance activity happening, because this has all resulted in wq feeling like she's had to finally Choose A Side re: committing to work towards wrh's defeat in whatever ways she can/what seems viable to actually result in something happening, since she's way too pragmatic to just like. Make A Symbolic Sacrifice or whatever over this (at this point in the timeline, am i right :zany:.) but before they leave for lotus pier, there’s a torrid and kind of awkward threesome that's very, "idk if we'll make it or ever be able to see each other again but here's hoping," and also very much wwx and wq trying to reassure jc emotionally and make him feel like he's a part of this and not just an afterthought—it’s a gesture of there not being some cordoned-off circle that jc doesn't get to step inside (even though there kind of is just by virtue of their shared experiences... but that's true for wq being on the outside of lots of aspects of wwx and jc's relationship too!). it also assuages some of his fears about them having been carrying on a secret affair without him, because it's clear in the vibe that a) wwx and wq have never had sex before and b) they're not really attracted to e/o and this is kind of a poly-v thing with jc as the hinge. that said, wwx and wq have their own complex bond and know e/o deeply. then wwx and jc leave and it ends on a note of ~bittersweet uncertainty~ about where it'll go from here/whether it'll all work out.
considering that the synopsis/story outline under the cut is nearly the same length as the actual fic i wrote, it’s safe to say that there was a lot of my vision i didn’t get to express, but i feel okay with that. i simply don’t have the energy or desire to spend a year writing another novel-length CQL fic. i have, uh, other novel-length fics for mxtx properties to focus on instead. CQL/MDZS got its day in the sun of my heart.
anyway, i hope my attempt to communicate a sliver of this universe via this fic could evoke some of what i found interesting about it.
THE SKIES OCCULT BLUE: tgcf, 8.3k, he xuan/shi qingxuan.
written for bulletproof exchange 2022/2023.
this is easily the thing i had the most fun writing all year. i thought this fic was going to be about ~3k since it’s not exactly a complex piece of narrative, but it just kept going and going because sqx is so effusive. i actually used to struggle a bit with writing sqx pov, and i credit this fic with helping me figure out how to approach it, which would have been worth writing this fic for even if it weren’t just a great time in general.
this was also the first time i really had to think through “what does shi qingxuan… like… see in ming yi???” which led to a lot of amusement and fondness on my part, because ming yi is such a walking red flag yet shi qingxuan is so charmed, and i… can’t say i wouldn’t feel the same, in her place. the gap moe is real.
INNAMORATA: asoiaf, 1.6k, bellegere otherys the courtesan/the daughter of the dusk.
written for worldbuilding exchange 2023.
this is the first asoiaf fic i’ve ever actually completed, despite being into the series for more than a decade. bellegere and the daughter of the dusk are extremely minor characters from braavos who appear late in the series. the requestor had a series of really interesting prompts about a couple different minor female asoiaf characters and it was difficult to pick what to focus on!
ALL THE GHOSTS STILL SINGING: svsss, 2.6k, liu qingge/luo binghe.
written for mxtx remix 2023. this is the second time I've done this exchange, and had a lot of fun both times!
at last, I made the mxtx hat trick (writing fic for all three novels.) i don’t see myself writing more scum villain fic, not because i don’t love the novel but because i just don’t have anything fresh and original to say about it; i had one (1) story in me and this was it. it’s my grand statement on how bingliu kept each other from killing themselves and still came out of it without any kind of emotional intimacy. touching <3
liu qingge is an extremely fun POV character and scum villain is an extremely fun setting; but i’m not saying anything that people don’t already know.
i honestly really don’t have much to say about this, and not because i didn’t like how it turned out! i had a lot of fun with it. it’s just quite straightforward.
TAKE ME BY THE BRAID: house of the dragon, 1k, alicent hightower/rhaenyra targaryen.
written for unsent letters exchange 2023. as one might imagine, it’s epistolary fic, which i always really enjoy writing (and reading.)
alicent is so incredibly cringe and insane, i love her. i wanted to do something with the idea of alicent attempting to atticwife rhaenyra for ““political reasons”” while in denial that she’s being horny/hatefully yearning about it, and it wasn’t until i was writing this that the idea came to mind that maybe the funniest and most poignant outcome would be for rhaenyra to continue her habit of refusing to meet alicent at her level of emotional investment in the relationship, even in an antagonistic way. i didn’t have a solid sense while i was writing of whether rhaenyra was actually wasting away of illness, as she claims to be, or if she was just ghosting alicent to fuck with her, or if this was an escape ploy of some kind—i don’t think it matters so much, since the focus here was alicent getting what she ostensibly wants and being totally unsatisfied to the point that she feels compelled to send a barrage of dubiously hinged letters where her true feelings are increasingly evident.
…now that i think about it, i particularly enjoy the epistolary fic angle “character A can’t stop themself from repeatedly writing to character B, even though the letters are not receiving responses.” the other time i wrote this trope also shared the “character B, whom character A once trusted deply and feels betrayed by, is in seclusion/isolation as a result of character A’s own revenge-driven actions” element with this story. huh.
i have several other fun rhaenicent ideas i’d like to write before season 2 comes out (particularly since i am reasonably confident it will be. bad), but will i ever get to them? unclear!!!
BABY LOVES TO DANCE IN THE DARK: tgcf, 1.9k, ling wen/shi qingxuan/yushi huang.
written for femslash kink exchange 2023.
this was in the peak of my period where i was dealing with work and life stress by claiming exchange pinch hits with the same mentality as someone compulsively online shopping. i’ve forced myself to stop doing exchanges for a while because i’m not very reliable at the moment due to Life, but i do miss having external accountability to come up with oddball things i’d never write on my own! such as this kind of god-brained ot3 concept.
this is secretly a three tumours fic below the surface. but, like, of course it is?!? with this combination of characters??!??!?!?
my biggest regret was not doing more with yushi huang’s character, but i was already having a hard time trying to get these characters in a room together to have kinky sex meeting the recipient’s requested tags without it turning into a Whole Thing. i hope that in future i can give her a bigger role in something (and i’ve got an idea or two.)
IN YOUR LITTLE GREY HEART: tgcf, 5.3k, he xuan/shi qingxuan.
written for mxtx exchange 2023. there’s little i enjoy more than writing he xuan being an absolute ghoul.
this fic is the reason i’ve since written a 9k essay zine, as well as embarked on writing a direct sequel longfic. why am i like this. anyway. little grey heart is where i really started to rotate beefleaf gothic, and particularly the triangle of psychosexual struggle wherein shi wudu and he xuan are in conflict over shi qingxuan’s immortal soul, and, as ming yi, he xuan is the monster under the bed, etc… but i wrote a post about this fic over the summer that goes into these ideas a bit, and i have a Big Post (zine) coming (as soon as i get around to making a couple minor edits) that will expand on all of that in painful detail and with many, many citations.
i made myself incredibly stressed out writing this fic for an exchange deadline, and had to delay a solo bike camping trip by a day to finish it (why did I do these things back to back?? why was i so ambitious this year???). i started out with a tripartite structure of the shi siblings in shi qingxuan’s childhood / beefleaf in the beefleaf era / beefleaf in the postcanon era, with the spectre of shi wudu hanging over it all, but quickly realized that this was completely untenable with the time i had, so i cut that third section entirely and wove the childhood stuff into the rest of the fic. and then the wip known as “welcome to dark fuck princess island” was borne of that postcanon stuff, so, yeah, safe to say i would not have had adequate space to do my Vision justice.
BRUISING THE VELVET: wolf hall, 1k, henry viii/thomas cromwell. (lol.)
written for rare male slash exchange 2023.
the title is a phrase from one of the final chapters of the mirror and the light: “[Rafe’s] glance flits up and down the room, because he cannot look at his master. He takes off his cap and crushes it, his fingers bruising the velvet.”
i’ve never written wolf hall fic before, despite it taking up a ton of mental real estate for a decade plus—writing for exchanges is fun like that, in that i don’t think i ever would have done so purely on my own impetus, but there was a real sense of satisfaction to seeing a late-in-the-game lingering pinch hit and thinking to myself, “you know what, i am uniquely qualified to write slash fanfiction about thomas cromwell at short notice, and i ought to use my powers for good.”
i wrote this in about two hours, on work time (there were some slow days over the summer), and i had no real plan or outline. i just reread the final ~50 pages of tmatl and then started vibing into an obisdian file until it congealed into something that felt like a story, but i was pretty happy with it in the end. i cannot say that i did a good job of writing a depressing blowjob in the style of hilary mantel, but god did i try.
SEE YOU AT THE SUN’S COLLAPSE: tgcf, 2.3k, ling wen & pei ming (ling wen/pei ming??? not even they know!) & the spectre of shi wudu.
written for t4t exchange 2023.
i was actually convinced that this fic was terrible when i first wrote it, but i think i was just incredibly burnt out at the time and it’s actually fine. i enjoy it on reread, and i’ve been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of the response it’s received, considering it’s genfic (sort of????) about side characters. i also worried before reveals that this story wasn’t gendery enough for the exchange in question, since ling wen’s Deal is a delicate interplay of situational coersion/obligation and pragmatism and agency, so it’s been gratifying that people have responded it to positively.
ling wen is a very close third to both sides of beefleaf wrt my “favourite tgcf character” spot, and i was v happy to have the chance to write about her twice this year—i can only hope i did her wretched, shriveled prune of a soul justice.
also, i suspect this fic may have contributed to pwicniq’s creation of the most important tgcf image ever:
WORKS IN PROGRESS:
PANTING LIKE A DOG AT THE EDGE OF YOUR BED: tgcf, he xuan character study with beefleaf and huaxuan, 45k
i don’t want to talk too much about this here because, as i said up top, it’s going to get its own DVD commentary when i’m through with it. but it would be silly to do a year-in-review reflection post without reflecting on the thing i spent the most of my time on this year.
there’s really no way to pitch this beyond it being a biopic-style character study fic with the opening hook of “what if he xuan had all his canon problems, plus trauma from prison rape?”, which is… not my usual fare, but after i first entertained the idea (as a result of pondering the sexual peril already present in the beefleaf saga on shi qingxuan’s end), it wouldn’t leave me alone. so here we are, most of a novella later, fuck my life, etc.
there’s a common and understandable misconception floating about that i “enjoy” writing he xuan POV, but this is not a nie huaisang situation where i feel irrepressible joy in going through the process of capturing this character’s internal world. writing my fave in this case is somewhere between an unholy crusade and a tedious compulsion. it’s quite difficult, even when the subject matter isn’t this heavy. but my takes on this character are quite galaxy brained and good, so i have no choice.
despite all my grumbling, it’s been very worthwhile experience to write, and i’ve refined my understandings of character and canon a lot, in ways that feel good. and all of the stuff with hua cheng is soooo fun. like did you guys know this? hua cheng is a fun character?????????
SHADOWPLAY: tgcf, beefleaf gothic horror/romance, 7.1k
the story otherwise known as welcome to dark fuck princess island.
this is the most egregious example of the “bloodletter special” i can imagine, meaning it’s a long, rambling BDSM romance novel where the characters start fucking really early even though they haven’t remotely sorted out their feelings, but it’s actually all about family grief despite the long smut forays.
i’ve been having the darndest time for more than a year trying to materialize my postcanon shi qingxuan fic into existence, and i realized recently that a major barrier was that it was in fact two different stories i was trying to force into one, and was at odds with itself in basically every way. i’ve finally accepted the reality that i’m actually the kind of person who will write three different novella-to-novel-length beefleaf fics within, like two years, because they will haunt me if i don’t, and none of them are even the kind of thing where it makes sense to file the serial numbers off and make it origfic. i just have to commit to this lifestyle of being utterly outside the social dogma. i keep thinking about how i want to try dating again and legitimately getting anxious about the prospect of at some point having to disclose to someone just how fucking insane i am about some side characters in a mxtx novel.
that ^ makes a funny segue into the fact that i’m challenging myself to make this story an exercise in NOT TAKING EVERYTHING SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY and just writing something. like. for fun. like, i have fun writing most anything, but especially compared to edge of your bed which is super heavy and definitely carries itself like A Character Piece with Things To Say (even though it is honestly… really goofy at times… but tbf that is the tone of tgcf canon b/c mxtx loves to write jokes)… i have no chill about it. so i’m not even running this one past a beta for line editing, because i’m trying to make myself just write it and move on. it’s campy darque erotic romance. and, like, yes, i think it has Themes and a Story and some compelling stuff, but @ me can we stop trying to write the great american novel every time you sit down to play with your blorbo paper dolls, SOMETIMES IT REALLY ISN’T NECESSARY TO DO ALL THAT……
WHITE HORSES RACING TO CARRY ME HOME: tgcf, beefleaf (WHAT DID YOU EXPECT), Thee postcanon shi qingxuan fic, 7.3k
this was also listed in my “wips for the new year” section of last year’s post, lolsob.
it’s finally finally getting very close to being ready to start sharing, and once edge is wrapped, i intend to work on/serialize shadowplay and white horses alongside each other, since they are the two halves of what i was trying for ages to make one fic, but was totally at war with itself because welcome to DFP island is gothic melodrama with a lot of weird sex and white horses is, like, an attempt at a thoughtful and grounded character piece about shi qingxuan’s journey to independent personhood. the tone and approach is extremely disparate.
this fic has gone through a lot of iterations, but at its core has always been a divorce fic. in the sense that i’ve felt a strong need to write beefleaf slowly and messily rebuilding their relationship leading up to an emotional climax where the balance has flipped, and now it’s he xuan at shi qingxuan's mercy (emotionally speaking.) and he xuan gets hurt as a result! sometimes you do the brave thing and it's still not the fairytale ending...
i think it's still a happyish ending, because shi qingxuan has a very meaningful mortal life and has gained a lot of closure and more self-esteem, and he xuan has taken a chance on being vulnerable. but also, you know. this is (will be) a longass story about my OTP trying their absolute best to make amends and make it work, and it’s good for a while but things end in a pretty bittersweet place. THIS IS WHY I NEED TO SUPPLEMENT IT WITH A DIFFERENT FIC ABOUT GETTING KIDNAPPED BY A SEXY LADY DRACULA AND HAVING A HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER. FOR MY HEALTH!!!
there are other things kicking around my wip folders, but these are the ones with a significant amount of writing or outlining already in the bag and which i’m working on actively. my trilogy of beefleaf novellas…why…… why am i like this. why.
in 2024… really, i just want to focus on finishing these wips, and knuckle down on pre-writing/research stuff for my novel, which i consciously put on the backburner last year because i was burning myself out terribly. i’m actually feeling excited and motivated about it again, though, which feels really great. time to read, like, so much about historical equestrian cultures. :)
FICS COMPLETED AND PUBLISHED:
January
and this is not our fate: the untamed, 1.7k, t. wen qing pov on chengxian, with sort of a proto-weird vibes ot3 energy; also this takes place in a nebulous wens-won-the-sunshot-campaign au wherein chengxian are prisoners of war
the skies occult blue: tian guan ci fu, 8.3k, e. beefleaf, & one of those tropey fic premises i didn’t think i’d ever actually write until an exchange request gave me an excuse; in this case, that looked like “pre-canon beefleaf get hit by a pollen that makes you either compulsively reveal your secrets OR have sex.”
February was taken up by top surgery recovery, and then March was spent subsumed in a fiscal year-end hellpit at work. I started publishing my ongoing “quick” “chapterfic project” in March, which I discuss a little in this post but will get its own DVD commentary when it’s finished, but otherwise I didn’t write much.
April
innamorata: a song of ice and fire, 1.6k, g. worldbuilding-heavy minor character f/f fic focused on braavosi theatre and courtesan culture; i just think if you had a highly mannerly and somewhat tragic pining situation going on for your greatest professional rival, that would be neat
all the ghosts still singing: the scum villain’s self-saving system, 2.6k, t. bingliu during the “shen qingqiu is dead” era; this is a remix that i also turned into “choose between x negative effect or sex pollen” fic? i’ve never written any variety of sex pollen before this year, so it’s funny it showed up twice in this relatively distinctive way.
May
take me by the braid: house of the dragon, 1k, t. rhaenicent epistolary fic from one of my pet AU timelines, wherein the greens win and alicent is keeping rhaenyra alive as a prisoner despite all logic, and really wants to have an “enemy mine” atticwife situation going on, but rhaenyra is just ghosting her instead, which is way more devastating.
June was spent working on the first two of the following fics, which were exchange gifts that revealed/de-anoned in July.
July
baby loves to dance in the dark: tgcf, 1.9k, e. pt.1 of my thesis that shi qingxuan’s ultimate sexual fantasy is about being bullied by other women for being soo slutty and fuckable while she’s like “oh my god stoppp no seriously stopppp 🙈.” the pairing is ling wen/shi qingxuan/yushi huang, and more than any of its merits as trashy porn, i am proud of this as a work of ling wen POV. i love her so much. she’s just dreadful.
in your little grey heart: tgcf, 5.3k, e. beefleaf & pt.2 of the above thesis. i wrote a post about this fic.
bruising the velvet: wolf hall, 1k, m. this is a short angstfic about a fictionalized version of thomas cromwell giving henry the eighth a depressing blowjob while he’s in the tower of london to be shortly executed.
in august i was very depressed.
September
see you at the sun’s collapse: tgcf, 2.3k, t. we return to ling wen POV for a rumination on her ambitions, her relationship to gender, and her relationship to the other two tumours, especially pei ming. aka, how i turned myself into an unironic pei ming/ling wen shipper (sort of)????????????????
everything I’ve published since then has been updates to ongoing WIPs, which I touch on briefly at the end of the post.
FANDOMS:
Heaven Official’s Blessing/TGCF: 3 + 2 (currently posted) wips
The Untamed/CQL: 1
A Song of Ice and Fire: 1
House of the Dragon: 1
Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: 1
Wolf Hall: 1
being a TGCF main in 2023/4? likelier than you think.
NOTICEABLE TRENDS:
i branched out a lot! mainly due to exchanges. i’m taking an exchange break right now because my life is not calm enough to be able to handle even voluntary deadlines in my free time, but i did have fun writing stuff i never would have written on my own. everything on this list was an exchange fic except for my current wip. (also a reason why i’m taking a break from exchanges. i have some projects that won’t leave me alone until i get to them and i can’t manage the distraction at this time.)
otherwise: I wrote so much about people being imprisoned? and this is not our fate, take me by the braid, and bruising the velvet all take place while at least one of the central characters is in captivity, and my wip panting like a dog at the edge of your bed starts in prison, and focuses on the impact of that foundational experience of incarceration.
i also wrote more f/f than i have in years and years. writing majority f/f even when you’re mostly in danmei fandoms? i’m so talented.
I HAVE MORE TO SAY:
AND THIS IS NOT OUR FATE: the untamed, 1.7k, wen qing & jiang cheng/wei wuxian.
He wants to break your will. To make it so that you can't stand yourself, she thought, furiously, in Jiang Wanyin's direction. Even if he could hear it, she didn't know what good it would do him. Understanding one's position only went so far when one's options themselves went unchanged.
written for bulletproof exchange 2022/2023.
i adore wen qing and i loved having the opportunity to write her pov again outside of the long, depressing slog that is mercies.
this au scenario came to me in a dream. what you see in this fic is truly just a sliver of the broader idea, which i’m putting under a cut because it’s really long.
synopsis of this canon divergence au
the jumping-off point was wei wuxian and jiang cheng (and presumably other jiang cultivators) getting apprehended on their way out of qishan after jiang cheng comes back for wei wuxian following xuanwu cave. wei wuxian and some other jiang cultivators are being held captive and the gloves are fully off at this point, because cloud recesses has already been attacked and lotus pier is soon to follow. having chengxian & co as hostages is being used to keep yunmeng jiang in line. (the upside of this is that jc doesn't get his core melted, so if you follow the threads long enough, this could end up next door to a fix-it, but that’s obviously not what my heart wants, you know me.)
jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan are killed by wen chao and wen zhuliu, like in canon, and yanli is being held at lotus pier as an interim puppet leader/hostage for jc and wwx's compliance, probably with the threat of her getting married off to a wen relative or vassal. more yunmeng jiang sect members are alive at point than in canon, so they're dangling that over jc's head as well. but all of this is just the background for what my dream was really about, which was wwx and jc being stuck together in this increasingly noxious and terrible situation and getting frustrated and having nowhere else for this all to go other than taking things out on each other. the crux of my dream was the core of this fic, where wen ruohan has jc torture/punish wwx in what is very much a classic whipping boy scenario—jc is too valuable to touch, so they're trying to get to him psychologically by making wwx suffer instead. that, plus it’s a more effective way to fuck up and traumatize jiang cheng than just torturing him would be. in my dream i think jc had some kind of information that the wens needed, and that's why he was being kept alive instead of just killed? my dream did not disclose what that important information would be, of course.
wwx and jc's relationship is getting increasingly codependent and fucked up because they're stuck together in the same cell and flipping between desperately trying to come up with escape plans/talking over ~what they're going to do when they're out of here~ to being forced into these mutually nonconsensual torture sessions (which, in my dream, weren’t just floggings but eventually escalated to other stuff too.) when they're alone, they're trying to pretend they can compartmentalize it and that it doesn't have to impact their relationship, but jc is DESPERATE for validation that wwx doesn't hate him for it/isn't going to become scared of him/etc, and as we know putting jc in a situation where he's desperate for validation from someone who is not really in a position to give it freely/satisfactorily (obviously wwx is SUPER pretending that this doesn't matter and he's laughing actually, but people can only be SO GOOD at acting) is just not going to work out well for anyone involved. they have a lot of weird sex about it, which is funny because i've always been very tepid on romantic chengxian and just preferred it as a super fraught and intense platonic relationship until i had this dream. my subconscious went "let's come up with the specific au scenario in which you could be brainwormed about this ship you're otherwise meh about."
wrh's health is deteriorating faster from demonic cultivation in this au than in cql canon, so wen qing is also in nightless city to treat him. she's been observing all this going down and feeling powerless, because all her attempts to help the jiangs don't seem to result in anything good happening in the long run, plus wen ning is here and she doesn't want to put him at risk. but jc and wwx correctly identify that she's their best chance at getting out—and they're increasingly acutely aware that wrh has little good reason to keep them both alive in the long term, when he could have someone under his control marry yanli and assume control of yunmeng jiang if he wants to maintain a veneer of this being a legal takeover. however, they disagree on how to actually to go about making their escape, and eventually wwx goes over jc's head somehow by telling wq that they need to get the torture stuff to stop, not for his sake but for jc's. the bargain they strike is that wwx becomes the meng yao figure to wrh—being the guy overseeing the dungeons and inventing new torture methods (potentially involving proto-wwx-style-demonic cultivation), which involves collaborating with wq a lot, as she's there as the other side of the operation and making sure the important prisoners don't die or whatever. (actual meng yao may or may not be here too, i don't think he appeared in my dream and i keep going back and forth about whether him being there complicates things in a good way or is just Too Damn Much.)
wwx hates this obviously, but is doing as much as he can as fast as he can to put an escape plan together, not only for his and jc’s sake but also yanli and the rest of the yunmeng jiang survivors, and is actively working to sabotage wen operations in whatever ways he can get away with. at first jc is super relieved to not be the torture guy anymore, but before long things get arguably worse for him, because now he's just spending tons of time alone in a cell and feeling useless to contribute to their plan. certain unhinged corners of his brain are also, like, "okay, so, i spent three weeks torturing my shixiong and then he gets promoted to Head Torture Guy????? FUCKING WEI WUXIAN" akjdgh. he and wwx don't feel quite so "in it together" as they did before, AND he can tell from whatever glimpses he gets of their dynamic that wwx and wq are getting increasingly close (read: trauma bonded over morally compromising yourself for the sake of someone you want to protect), which jiang cheng really can't deal with because a) he doesn't have the same kind of opportunities to meaningfully interact with other people in a sustained way as wwx does when he's clocking in for his job at torture college, so wwx is kind of his entire social world atm, b) he hates to feel left out and is turbo FOMO haver, and c) there are new added layers of romantic jealousy which are being applied to! both sides!! of this equation now!!!
he doesn't rationally think wwx and wq are sleeping together, but he’s spending a lot of hellish time alone staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but fester. there's a lot of thinking about how they probably don't even need him anymore and he's being abandoned and disregarded and for all he knows they're [redacted] right now, etc etc.
wwx and wq aren't stupid and they're picking up on the jist of all this. also, even though they never talk about it in so many words, wwx knows about jc's feelings for wq, and wq knows about depressing emotionally needy chengxian prison sex, and they each know they know, and it's a giant elephant in the room. so eventually through [waves hand] Events, wq and wwx sufficiently convince wrh that wwx and jc are totes going to be loyal minions and do whatever he wants if they can go back to yunmeng. they're planning to keep in touch with wq and have some kind of semi-coordinated resistance activity happening, because this has all resulted in wq feeling like she's had to finally Choose A Side re: committing to work towards wrh's defeat in whatever ways she can/what seems viable to actually result in something happening, since she's way too pragmatic to just like. Make A Symbolic Sacrifice or whatever over this (at this point in the timeline, am i right :zany:.) but before they leave for lotus pier, there’s a torrid and kind of awkward threesome that's very, "idk if we'll make it or ever be able to see each other again but here's hoping," and also very much wwx and wq trying to reassure jc emotionally and make him feel like he's a part of this and not just an afterthought—it’s a gesture of there not being some cordoned-off circle that jc doesn't get to step inside (even though there kind of is just by virtue of their shared experiences... but that's true for wq being on the outside of lots of aspects of wwx and jc's relationship too!). it also assuages some of his fears about them having been carrying on a secret affair without him, because it's clear in the vibe that a) wwx and wq have never had sex before and b) they're not really attracted to e/o and this is kind of a poly-v thing with jc as the hinge. that said, wwx and wq have their own complex bond and know e/o deeply. then wwx and jc leave and it ends on a note of ~bittersweet uncertainty~ about where it'll go from here/whether it'll all work out.
considering that the synopsis/story outline under the cut is nearly the same length as the actual fic i wrote, it’s safe to say that there was a lot of my vision i didn’t get to express, but i feel okay with that. i simply don’t have the energy or desire to spend a year writing another novel-length CQL fic. i have, uh, other novel-length fics for mxtx properties to focus on instead. CQL/MDZS got its day in the sun of my heart.
anyway, i hope my attempt to communicate a sliver of this universe via this fic could evoke some of what i found interesting about it.
THE SKIES OCCULT BLUE: tgcf, 8.3k, he xuan/shi qingxuan.
"I think I am starting to feel, ah. A way." Her face burned. This was the first time she'd said something she really didn't want to say, and it felt awful, but she couldn't stop. "This is exactly the kind of thing Ge is always warning me about if I go around in female form. Like, that I'll get into compromising situations and people will make assumptions about my virtue and character, which are both spotless, obviously."
written for bulletproof exchange 2022/2023.
this is easily the thing i had the most fun writing all year. i thought this fic was going to be about ~3k since it’s not exactly a complex piece of narrative, but it just kept going and going because sqx is so effusive. i actually used to struggle a bit with writing sqx pov, and i credit this fic with helping me figure out how to approach it, which would have been worth writing this fic for even if it weren’t just a great time in general.
this was also the first time i really had to think through “what does shi qingxuan… like… see in ming yi???” which led to a lot of amusement and fondness on my part, because ming yi is such a walking red flag yet shi qingxuan is so charmed, and i… can’t say i wouldn’t feel the same, in her place. the gap moe is real.
INNAMORATA: asoiaf, 1.6k, bellegere otherys the courtesan/the daughter of the dusk.
The interior of the theatre feels not so much like the outside world as something outside of the world. For once in their lives, they are there to be pleased, to be entertained. The two of them wait, expectant, in the dark, and do the watching.
written for worldbuilding exchange 2023.
this is the first asoiaf fic i’ve ever actually completed, despite being into the series for more than a decade. bellegere and the daughter of the dusk are extremely minor characters from braavos who appear late in the series. the requestor had a series of really interesting prompts about a couple different minor female asoiaf characters and it was difficult to pick what to focus on!
ALL THE GHOSTS STILL SINGING: svsss, 2.6k, liu qingge/luo binghe.
“You liar.”
“I lie?” Luo Binghe laughs: a deep, melodious, evil sound that made Liu Qingge’s extremities tingle, for some reason. “Do tell me how.”
written for mxtx remix 2023. this is the second time I've done this exchange, and had a lot of fun both times!
at last, I made the mxtx hat trick (writing fic for all three novels.) i don’t see myself writing more scum villain fic, not because i don’t love the novel but because i just don’t have anything fresh and original to say about it; i had one (1) story in me and this was it. it’s my grand statement on how bingliu kept each other from killing themselves and still came out of it without any kind of emotional intimacy. touching <3
liu qingge is an extremely fun POV character and scum villain is an extremely fun setting; but i’m not saying anything that people don’t already know.
i honestly really don’t have much to say about this, and not because i didn’t like how it turned out! i had a lot of fun with it. it’s just quite straightforward.
TAKE ME BY THE BRAID: house of the dragon, 1k, alicent hightower/rhaenyra targaryen.
Has my custody not been sufficient? You have been kept in greater comfort than a traitor to the realm deserves—you have been kept like a queen—let us cease these games. You cannot trick your way to freedom through exploiting for sympathy whatever past affection I may have had for you.
written for unsent letters exchange 2023. as one might imagine, it’s epistolary fic, which i always really enjoy writing (and reading.)
alicent is so incredibly cringe and insane, i love her. i wanted to do something with the idea of alicent attempting to atticwife rhaenyra for ““political reasons”” while in denial that she’s being horny/hatefully yearning about it, and it wasn’t until i was writing this that the idea came to mind that maybe the funniest and most poignant outcome would be for rhaenyra to continue her habit of refusing to meet alicent at her level of emotional investment in the relationship, even in an antagonistic way. i didn’t have a solid sense while i was writing of whether rhaenyra was actually wasting away of illness, as she claims to be, or if she was just ghosting alicent to fuck with her, or if this was an escape ploy of some kind—i don’t think it matters so much, since the focus here was alicent getting what she ostensibly wants and being totally unsatisfied to the point that she feels compelled to send a barrage of dubiously hinged letters where her true feelings are increasingly evident.
…now that i think about it, i particularly enjoy the epistolary fic angle “character A can’t stop themself from repeatedly writing to character B, even though the letters are not receiving responses.” the other time i wrote this trope also shared the “character B, whom character A once trusted deply and feels betrayed by, is in seclusion/isolation as a result of character A’s own revenge-driven actions” element with this story. huh.
i have several other fun rhaenicent ideas i’d like to write before season 2 comes out (particularly since i am reasonably confident it will be. bad), but will i ever get to them? unclear!!!
BABY LOVES TO DANCE IN THE DARK: tgcf, 1.9k, ling wen/shi qingxuan/yushi huang.
They had a pact between the three of them—Ling Wen, Old Pei, and Water Master-xiong—not to go after any of each other's conquests. It was in the spirit of sportsmanship. Younger siblings had never been factored into the agreement, though Ling Wen knew that Shi Qingxuan was beyond off-limits, but in her own defense, she hadn't engineered any of this.
written for femslash kink exchange 2023.
this was in the peak of my period where i was dealing with work and life stress by claiming exchange pinch hits with the same mentality as someone compulsively online shopping. i’ve forced myself to stop doing exchanges for a while because i’m not very reliable at the moment due to Life, but i do miss having external accountability to come up with oddball things i’d never write on my own! such as this kind of god-brained ot3 concept.
this is secretly a three tumours fic below the surface. but, like, of course it is?!? with this combination of characters??!??!?!?
my biggest regret was not doing more with yushi huang’s character, but i was already having a hard time trying to get these characters in a room together to have kinky sex meeting the recipient’s requested tags without it turning into a Whole Thing. i hope that in future i can give her a bigger role in something (and i’ve got an idea or two.)
IN YOUR LITTLE GREY HEART: tgcf, 5.3k, he xuan/shi qingxuan.
She looked impassive, nearly bored—or she would have, to someone who didn’t know Ming Yi as well as Shi Qingxuan did. Though a person less familiar with her mannerisms might accuse Lord Earth Master of only having one expression, and only one mood to go along with it, Shi Qingxuan knew her well enough to see the nuances, and therefore knew that she had at least three or four emotional states to go around.
written for mxtx exchange 2023. there’s little i enjoy more than writing he xuan being an absolute ghoul.
this fic is the reason i’ve since written a 9k essay zine, as well as embarked on writing a direct sequel longfic. why am i like this. anyway. little grey heart is where i really started to rotate beefleaf gothic, and particularly the triangle of psychosexual struggle wherein shi wudu and he xuan are in conflict over shi qingxuan’s immortal soul, and, as ming yi, he xuan is the monster under the bed, etc… but i wrote a post about this fic over the summer that goes into these ideas a bit, and i have a Big Post (zine) coming (as soon as i get around to making a couple minor edits) that will expand on all of that in painful detail and with many, many citations.
i made myself incredibly stressed out writing this fic for an exchange deadline, and had to delay a solo bike camping trip by a day to finish it (why did I do these things back to back?? why was i so ambitious this year???). i started out with a tripartite structure of the shi siblings in shi qingxuan’s childhood / beefleaf in the beefleaf era / beefleaf in the postcanon era, with the spectre of shi wudu hanging over it all, but quickly realized that this was completely untenable with the time i had, so i cut that third section entirely and wove the childhood stuff into the rest of the fic. and then the wip known as “welcome to dark fuck princess island” was borne of that postcanon stuff, so, yeah, safe to say i would not have had adequate space to do my Vision justice.
BRUISING THE VELVET: wolf hall, 1k, henry viii/thomas cromwell. (lol.)
At first he takes the vision for another of his ghosts, but the king is too vital to dissipate against a wall, too broad to look away from. Henry leaves no room for doubt as to what one is seeing. The king stands in the doorway of the room in the Tower where he, Cromwell, has been waiting—waiting for the end, for a reprieve, for Henry—and blots out the sun, where it poured, dilute, into the room.
written for rare male slash exchange 2023.
the title is a phrase from one of the final chapters of the mirror and the light: “[Rafe’s] glance flits up and down the room, because he cannot look at his master. He takes off his cap and crushes it, his fingers bruising the velvet.”
i’ve never written wolf hall fic before, despite it taking up a ton of mental real estate for a decade plus—writing for exchanges is fun like that, in that i don’t think i ever would have done so purely on my own impetus, but there was a real sense of satisfaction to seeing a late-in-the-game lingering pinch hit and thinking to myself, “you know what, i am uniquely qualified to write slash fanfiction about thomas cromwell at short notice, and i ought to use my powers for good.”
i wrote this in about two hours, on work time (there were some slow days over the summer), and i had no real plan or outline. i just reread the final ~50 pages of tmatl and then started vibing into an obisdian file until it congealed into something that felt like a story, but i was pretty happy with it in the end. i cannot say that i did a good job of writing a depressing blowjob in the style of hilary mantel, but god did i try.
SEE YOU AT THE SUN’S COLLAPSE: tgcf, 2.3k, ling wen & pei ming (ling wen/pei ming??? not even they know!) & the spectre of shi wudu.
Back when they were first getting to know one another, Ling Wen had taken to donning her male form at the first sign of General Ming Guang. She resented him for it, every time. The form felt, back then especially, like an affront to everything she was. But she was nothing if not practical.
written for t4t exchange 2023.
i was actually convinced that this fic was terrible when i first wrote it, but i think i was just incredibly burnt out at the time and it’s actually fine. i enjoy it on reread, and i’ve been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of the response it’s received, considering it’s genfic (sort of????) about side characters. i also worried before reveals that this story wasn’t gendery enough for the exchange in question, since ling wen’s Deal is a delicate interplay of situational coersion/obligation and pragmatism and agency, so it’s been gratifying that people have responded it to positively.
ling wen is a very close third to both sides of beefleaf wrt my “favourite tgcf character” spot, and i was v happy to have the chance to write about her twice this year—i can only hope i did her wretched, shriveled prune of a soul justice.
also, i suspect this fic may have contributed to pwicniq’s creation of the most important tgcf image ever:
WORKS IN PROGRESS:
PANTING LIKE A DOG AT THE EDGE OF YOUR BED: tgcf, he xuan character study with beefleaf and huaxuan, 45k
Oh, he ceases to live, to be sure. But, like film left in a bowl after the broth is gone, a residue remains.
i don’t want to talk too much about this here because, as i said up top, it’s going to get its own DVD commentary when i’m through with it. but it would be silly to do a year-in-review reflection post without reflecting on the thing i spent the most of my time on this year.
there’s really no way to pitch this beyond it being a biopic-style character study fic with the opening hook of “what if he xuan had all his canon problems, plus trauma from prison rape?”, which is… not my usual fare, but after i first entertained the idea (as a result of pondering the sexual peril already present in the beefleaf saga on shi qingxuan’s end), it wouldn’t leave me alone. so here we are, most of a novella later, fuck my life, etc.
there’s a common and understandable misconception floating about that i “enjoy” writing he xuan POV, but this is not a nie huaisang situation where i feel irrepressible joy in going through the process of capturing this character’s internal world. writing my fave in this case is somewhere between an unholy crusade and a tedious compulsion. it’s quite difficult, even when the subject matter isn’t this heavy. but my takes on this character are quite galaxy brained and good, so i have no choice.
despite all my grumbling, it’s been very worthwhile experience to write, and i’ve refined my understandings of character and canon a lot, in ways that feel good. and all of the stuff with hua cheng is soooo fun. like did you guys know this? hua cheng is a fun character?????????
SHADOWPLAY: tgcf, beefleaf gothic horror/romance, 7.1k
It wasn’t that Shi Qingxuan couldn’t look at He Xuan without being reminded of Ge’s blood. It was that the sight of her reminded Shi Qingxuan of so much else. It would have been easier if He Xuan had looked like a completely different person, but there were so many traces of Ming-xiong in that stranger’s face. Seeing it again, now, it was impossible to forget the shock and shame of the truth.
And then there were the memories of Ge's blood.
the story otherwise known as welcome to dark fuck princess island.
this is the most egregious example of the “bloodletter special” i can imagine, meaning it’s a long, rambling BDSM romance novel where the characters start fucking really early even though they haven’t remotely sorted out their feelings, but it’s actually all about family grief despite the long smut forays.
i’ve been having the darndest time for more than a year trying to materialize my postcanon shi qingxuan fic into existence, and i realized recently that a major barrier was that it was in fact two different stories i was trying to force into one, and was at odds with itself in basically every way. i’ve finally accepted the reality that i’m actually the kind of person who will write three different novella-to-novel-length beefleaf fics within, like two years, because they will haunt me if i don’t, and none of them are even the kind of thing where it makes sense to file the serial numbers off and make it origfic. i just have to commit to this lifestyle of being utterly outside the social dogma. i keep thinking about how i want to try dating again and legitimately getting anxious about the prospect of at some point having to disclose to someone just how fucking insane i am about some side characters in a mxtx novel.
that ^ makes a funny segue into the fact that i’m challenging myself to make this story an exercise in NOT TAKING EVERYTHING SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY and just writing something. like. for fun. like, i have fun writing most anything, but especially compared to edge of your bed which is super heavy and definitely carries itself like A Character Piece with Things To Say (even though it is honestly… really goofy at times… but tbf that is the tone of tgcf canon b/c mxtx loves to write jokes)… i have no chill about it. so i’m not even running this one past a beta for line editing, because i’m trying to make myself just write it and move on. it’s campy darque erotic romance. and, like, yes, i think it has Themes and a Story and some compelling stuff, but @ me can we stop trying to write the great american novel every time you sit down to play with your blorbo paper dolls, SOMETIMES IT REALLY ISN’T NECESSARY TO DO ALL THAT……
WHITE HORSES RACING TO CARRY ME HOME: tgcf, beefleaf (WHAT DID YOU EXPECT), Thee postcanon shi qingxuan fic, 7.3k
Inside the shrine, dim light gleamed on silver fixtures. The aroma of incense was still fresh from the last visitor. How did one pray to a ghost, Shi Qingxuan wondered. (Within their own head—if they spoke aloud, that might count, and they weren’t ready.) Could one ask for good things, or only pray to be spared the bad?
this was also listed in my “wips for the new year” section of last year’s post, lolsob.
it’s finally finally getting very close to being ready to start sharing, and once edge is wrapped, i intend to work on/serialize shadowplay and white horses alongside each other, since they are the two halves of what i was trying for ages to make one fic, but was totally at war with itself because welcome to DFP island is gothic melodrama with a lot of weird sex and white horses is, like, an attempt at a thoughtful and grounded character piece about shi qingxuan’s journey to independent personhood. the tone and approach is extremely disparate.
this fic has gone through a lot of iterations, but at its core has always been a divorce fic. in the sense that i’ve felt a strong need to write beefleaf slowly and messily rebuilding their relationship leading up to an emotional climax where the balance has flipped, and now it’s he xuan at shi qingxuan's mercy (emotionally speaking.) and he xuan gets hurt as a result! sometimes you do the brave thing and it's still not the fairytale ending...
i think it's still a happyish ending, because shi qingxuan has a very meaningful mortal life and has gained a lot of closure and more self-esteem, and he xuan has taken a chance on being vulnerable. but also, you know. this is (will be) a longass story about my OTP trying their absolute best to make amends and make it work, and it’s good for a while but things end in a pretty bittersweet place. THIS IS WHY I NEED TO SUPPLEMENT IT WITH A DIFFERENT FIC ABOUT GETTING KIDNAPPED BY A SEXY LADY DRACULA AND HAVING A HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER. FOR MY HEALTH!!!
there are other things kicking around my wip folders, but these are the ones with a significant amount of writing or outlining already in the bag and which i’m working on actively. my trilogy of beefleaf novellas…why…… why am i like this. why.
in 2024… really, i just want to focus on finishing these wips, and knuckle down on pre-writing/research stuff for my novel, which i consciously put on the backburner last year because i was burning myself out terribly. i’m actually feeling excited and motivated about it again, though, which feels really great. time to read, like, so much about historical equestrian cultures. :)
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These are great goals! *cheerleads*