A Fan's Playground

Time for monthly recs again!!! a delicious selection for you from the month of April.

6 TGCF fics

flew like a moth to you, by Euphorion

- space au featuring ling wen/yushi huang, HELLO

- yushi huang's deliberate mysteriousness, and the way she uses it to flirt and get the upper hand with ling wen!

- ling wen enjoying having something to research that's for FUN instead of for work!

- the interesting development of the setting, and ways the characters and backstories have been tweaked to fit!

- LOVED IT.

- 4k words in length


these are the streets of favour, by bloodletter

- a fanfic about ling wen and pei ming, written for mxtx remix as a remix of my ling wen fic

- SHRIEKING. FLAILING. CLAWING AT MY FACE IN DELIGHT. I am so honoured that my fic could inspire this piece of absolute perfection

- the dynamics between Ling Wen and Pei Ming throughout are soooooo good. the affection and the insults combined, the way selfishness is manifested differently in each of them and the way it does and doesn't affect their connection

- ling wen nonsexually domming pei ming!

- the vibes of three tumours are so perfectly rancid!

- and the unofficial junior official chats!

- the way heaven in general thinks about ling wen's takeover!

- I'm just. blown away. this fic is EVERYTHING to me.

- 2k words in length


joy thief this human heart, by tshirt

- hello impeccable gothic vibes beefleaf

- also, doing great things with gender. also, contains MUFFING. (thank u Fucking Trans Women for teaching me about muffing)

- this is so beefleaf. I love them both so much <3

- 2k words in length


A Lose-Lose Situation, by eggfish

- omggg this is exactly the kind of dynamics I love to see between Feng Xin and Mu Qing during the Xianle era

- fx and xl are so SWEET together and fx and mq are so....united in their mutual disdain for each other and how they're connected with each other

- and how sex with each other doesn't actually change any part of that for fengqing; they have a good time having hatesex, they still hate each other, they're connected forever via their hatred for each other and their mutual love of xl, and their mutual inability to understand /how/ the other approaches their love for xl

- it's just so good!!!!

- 3k words in length


Only The Sword Remaining, by biasto_bias

- a compellingly painful fic about xie lian testing the limits of wu ming's devotion, leading to a sexual encounter that neither of them feel great about

- it's so very them for that period in their history: xie lian trying to push wu ming away because he thinks wu ming is better off elsewhere but doing it by being horrible to him, and wu ming feeling an awful mix of self-loathing and heady excitement for getting to be touched this way by dianxia

- 1k words in length

- thanks to roland for the rec that brought this fic to my attention!


talking to strangers, by bloodletter

- beefleaf prior to the black water arc

- sqx and her bff ming-xiong go to a party together! sqx explains to the hostess why ming-xiong is such a good friend, and it's definitely not about sex!

- they absolutely do have really good sex sometimes though. including at this party.

- the dynamics between sqx and hx are soooo good

- and ditto sqx having a great time being a beautiful woman at multiple after-parties, after the mid-autumn banquet

- what a delightful little gem of a fic

- 2k words in length

7 SVSSS fics & 1 SVSSS podcast

Cottage, by biasto_bias

- extremely cute bingqiu being pleased with themselves and having sex about it

- one of the tags is "bingqiu-typical bad consent etiquette" lol and that's accurate

- I love them and they're disasters <3

- 1k words in length


I listened to the first episode of The Scum Villain's Self-Summarizing Podcast today and I adore it already omg. only four episodes so far alas but it consists of one person summarizing svsss chapter by chapter to someone else who does not know it and it's SUCH a great way to relive the story!


a story about nothing in particular, by relationshipcrimes

- post-canon bingqiu

- sqq is in the sort of epilogue where absolutely nothing happens, no matter what some people might say. there's no storyline and he's definitely not experiencing character development!

- this was SUCH a delightful read omg. extremely bingqiu of them!

- I've been thinking a lot about bingqiu's sexual dynamics of late due to my current wip, and I can say authoritatively that this fic Understands them

- 18k words in length


everyone knows; we saw for ourselves, by bosbie

- svsss gen fic about ning yingying and ming fan, reacting to the news about luo binghe becoming the sect leader of huan hua

- nyy and mf only know what they've seen, and their shizun is dead and luo binghe is behaving as if he has no love or loyalty left in him

- oof this is so GOOD, I had emotions at the end!!!

- 2k words in length


the rise and fall of @ peerlesscucumber, by Allpiesforourown

- reverse transmigration bingqiu story, told through the forum posts of peerless cucumber, cucumber bro's fans, shizunsheavenlykitten, and all the people who think shizunsheavenlykitten is a tradwife

- a quick and fun read! I loved seeing the other internet people being endlessly baffled by bingqiu

- 5k words in length


Revisions, by ParueCake (MiraEyeteeth)

- bingqiu canon divergence au where after the abyss, lbh makes his way back to qing jing peak

- lbh is determined to prove to sqq that despite his demonic nature he can be a good disciple who is worth keeping

- sqq of course takes lbh's actions very differently

- really enjoyed lbh's pov here, and the things lbh does in service of his plan!

- 15k words in length


if you make a snake blush, by corduroyserpent

- wherein zhuzhi-lang lets sqq examine him to make notes about snake demons. they're both into it.

- it's so cute!! and funny. and very them!

- 2k words in length


Oxford Blues, by raitala

- modern AU f/f moshang where they meet as college roommates

- I appreciate that it's set in a specific college and the details about it are made use of to build out the sense of setting

- I love sqh's narrative pov, she's so funny!

- I also love the glimpses we get into the cumplane friendship and into the whole....situation sqq has going on with the harem of young men who are in love with him while sqq is oblivious to how gay everything is.

- and the moshang is super cute. mbj and sqh are both bad at communicating, in very different ways, and mbj is doing her best!

- 9k words in length

6 MDZS/CQL fics

within these walls, by Shadaras

- cql/mdzs. this is a remix of another fic but you don't need to read the original to follow this one, as it follows a character who gets less focus in the original

- about wen qing and her interactions over the years with jin guangyao, in an au where she's imprisoned by him and helping him, after surviving leaving the burial mounds

- a great look at wen qing and her choices, and what she is and isn't able to do to affect things, and what she's willing to help with

- 2k words in length


Bird on the Wire, by villainousfriend (katzenfabrik)

- mdzs space au about nie huaisang and his years-long project in avenging his da-ge

- a repeated theme throughout the fic is nhs visiting and talking to back-ups that had been taken of nmj's personality before death, and the way that this makes literal how HAUNTED nhs is by his brother's absence is just sooooooo good

- the worldbuilding is great, the things that are changed from canon due to this different context are great, the anguish and monofocus of nhs are great

- I AM ALL EMOTIONS ;_;

- 8k words in length


mutual aid, by verity

- mdzs wangxian modern-with-cultivation au where lwj is a trans man and wwx is a trans woman

- and ahhhh it just makes me so emotional about how GREAT wangxian are!!!

- wonderfully integrated characters/plot into a world they inhabit where friends and work and weird tastes in books are part of their lives, and also, lwj and wwx find each other and are immediately obsessed with each other, finding something in each other that allow them to best be themselves

- so many very funny details also, at the same time that it's many feelings

- 10k words in length


how Yao Yongzheng traveled back in time to save everyone, by ShippersList

- mdzs/cql time travel au fic where Sect Leader Yao travels back in time at the point of his death, and intends to Make Changes For The Better

- a funny and fun look at how things happen, with and without his intervention!

- 6k words in length


lotus blossoms out of season, by Kieron_ODuibhir

- mdzs/cql canon divergence au, where instead of mxy sacrificing himself to resurrect wwx, jc sacrifices himself to resurrect jyl

- jyl and wn and mxy eat soup together about it

- and jyl grapples with how she feels about everything that happened. and what she's going to do next

- and like. DANG I love it!!!

- 5k words in length


the mountain, by verity

- mdzs songxuexiao t4t4t modern au where they're grad students in china

- I had the pleasure of getting to see this fic as it came together, and the thought and care verity puts into their writing is always so evident in their beautifully written and beautifully constructed stories!

- from song lan's pov as he watches creepy stalker xue yang entwine herself into his bff (and object of pining) xiao xingchen's life

- sl DOESN'T trust xy, he DOES find it super hot to put her in her place and have sex with her, he DOES struggle to be fully vulnerable with xxc despite everything she is to him

- the vibes are so good, I love how real and present each character and their complex emotions about each other are, and I love the way the theme of the weather runs through the whole fic holding things together

- highly recommend!

- 12k words in length

OTHER STUFF: 1 original 10-min movie, 1 torchwood/doctor who fic, 1 original short story

this 10 min space movie made by one person in her apartment starring herself as every character is SO GOOD, I loved it


Hi, I'm Captain Jack Harkness, by Frostfire

- it has been many years since I first read this fic but the memory of it will never leave me. it's an all-time classic.

- fanfiction shipping Jack Harkness of Torchwood/Doctor Who with Chewbacca of Star Wars

- Jack Harkness sees a cute wookiee in a bar and picks him up for a night of fun

- it's perfectly in character and delightful. I'm so glad it exists in this world.

- 3k words in length


The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday #37, by Stephen Granade

- according to the author on their mastodon, this short story is about "authenticity, purpose, existential dread, and being resurrected by far future aliens to work your shitty fast food job" and you know, I don't think I can sum it up better than that

- does a great job integrating and interrogating these themes in a fun and satisfying story

- and now I want guacamole

- 5k words in length

one

It's been about two months now of spending a bit of time working on my writing every evening at bedtime, and it continually amazes me how well it works and how much I like it. I enjoy the process of writing so much more like this! I never expected to be the kind of person with a daily writing habit; that seemed like it would never work for me and I thought people who did it were fascinatingly alien. guess I'm an alien lol!

my word count goal for each day is tiny (100-200 words) but I love to see my fic increase in size bit by bit, and to look over what I've written and see how much I like the story I'm telling

every time I stop writing for the night, it's at a point where I have no idea where I'm going next. all the next day I continue to not know, but I don't stress about it. and having so much time for my subconscious to process it between sessions of writing means that when I get back into bed for the night and open my fic to write the day's words, I'm able to figure out what to write next! and it feels so good


two

I have never gotten any tattoos before due to being afraid of needles, but I worked on that phobia and it's much less of a problem now....and I have a tattoo idea I love.

which is:

description of dinosaur-themed tattoo idea

dinosaurs are cool, right? and the scientific process is cool, and paleoart is cool! what if we take an example of a dinosaur which has gone through significant evolutions in our understanding of its appearance over time, and create line drawings of the scientifically accepted understanding of the dinosaur at two different points in the past plus our current most up to date understanding, and then line up the three versions of the dinosaur in a row on my forearm.... with space left for an even more up to date version to add onto it in the future as our understanding continues to grow

the thing is. I need to be able to get this art drawn by someone who has an art style I like, and has sufficient paleo background to know what they're doing in depicting these dinosaur variations, and is taking commissions!

I would definitely want this dinosaur to be a theropod dinosaur, one of the ones we're now sure had feathers. and I'm feeling fond of oviraptor in specific! not because it's my fave kind of dinosaur (I don't have just one fave!) but because it's particularly interesting in terms of its history in scientific misunderstandings of it, so it would be thematically resonant in this tattoo context

three

I just! am so fond of bingqiu! the way they're incapable of normal healthy emotional communication but are so crazy with respect to each other that they can yes-and each other into truly wild displays of horny possessiveness!

it's endlessly fun to play with. characters who WILL hold the idiot ball but only in extremely specific ways that nobody else could ever match. but they match each other! 🥰


four

"x character makes a different choice at a significant canon moment" is a fairly popular type of canon divergence au, and it's interesting to me to think about how it often doesn't work for me. in most contexts in a canon there's a reason the character makes the choice they did, so if the story changes their choice out of nowhere, it doesn't feel grounded in the narrative and in the character.

often these fics are about making things nicer for the characters in question because the canonical choice is ouchy, and I get why that's popular, but I usually find it boring!

Details on what I find more interesting than that

I think I'm just more interested in the question of why people make the choices they do. and less interested in "let's turn this story into straight-up fluff," though there is of course a spectrum of how much this kind of story is interested in going straight for the fluff.

I think to do this type of fic in a way I'm most likely to be into, is to write it so that there's a small but significant change BEFORE the moment of decision, which allows the situation to be just different enough that the character would make a different choice. and even then I'm more interested in exploring the things that lead up to that moment of decision, what makes the character choose what they do, how the change to canon has affected things. Ending the story with "they made the good choice" rather than beginning with it; that's the happy ending right there!

or make the fic an exploration of how you'd think that this choice would be immediate happy ending times, but actually has its own complications and problems as well.

or make it a time loop!

five

As you may or may not know, I have been a power user of online bookmarking services for nearly my entire time in fandom. I was of course on delicious back in the day, until it got altered into unusability, and then I switched to pinboard. I've been trucking along with pinboard ever since.

But I heard that the pinboard guy is a jk rowling supporter these days, and I'd been thinking about trying to leave pinboard anyway because it seems to be basically abandonware at this point. But the jkr support was the tipping point on overcoming the inertia of staying with what I know.

Extended description of my efforts and successes in setting up a self-hosted bookmark manager after finding no other good options online

I'd heard good things about raindrop.io but when I gave it a try, despite some interesting features, I ran into major problems. My biggest problems with it were 1. that it truncates all bookmark descriptions and tags after a certain length, to save space, and I use a LOT of tags and description space; and 2. that I couldn't actually get the website to let me log in on firefox. So that was a deeply disappointing result for something that had seemed promising.

I also took a look at larder.io because it looked intriguing, but it failed to import the description field from my pinboard export, so that was a nope right out of the gate!

After a bunch of reading articles and listicles about other bookmarking service options, all the other online bookmarking services I could find were even less suitable for my needs, and I was getting pretty disheartened.

But then I learned from a friend about the option of setting up Linkding on a personal website as a way to self-host bookmarks, so that you don't have to rely on a service provided by someone else anymore, and it was so exciting to think of having personal control over my own bookmarks like that! I knew I had to give it a try.

I am very glad I went down that rabbit-hole of teaching myself css earlier this year for the purpose of ao3 site skin development, because it made me feel a lot more confident in my ability to try out unfamiliar tech things, and indeed my rudimentary css knowledge was helpful in keeping me from feeling quite so lost in the process.

Linkding has particular requirements around getting it integrated into a website, so I gather this means that what I did to get it set up is playing "my first website" on hardmode. But here's what I did:

I followed the "start a website" steps at https://landchad.net/

And then the linkding instructions here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/create-own-bookmark-manager-with-linkding/

It definitely involved some moments of deep confusion, but I figured it out eventually, and I'm super happy with the result! You can see my public bookmarks here: https://linkding.aviansoph.com/bookmarks/shared

Having my very own website with my very own bookmarking instance feels very "I am learning the forbidden magic" in a gleeful way tbh

But just because I have this set up does not mean I am done! For I would like to CUSTOMIZE my linkding instance!

Linkding has a built-in way to customize a user's view of it using custom CSS, but that's only for what that specific logged-in user sees, rather than changing the appearance of the public bookmarks page for visitors, so that doesn't quite accomplish what I'm wanting to do. I am investigating how to make more direct changes to my linkding instance but I'm still on shaky ground there. (if you have any useful advice, I'm all ears!!)

Also I want to do things with the rest of my website, aviansoph.com. As I mentioned above, I'm playing create-a-website on hardmode for the sake of linkding, so I can't follow most of the guides you find online for building a personal website. But it looks like if I set up an FTP server on my VPS I should be able to make a reasonable system for doing my website? I haven't had time to try this yet but we shall see!!

I can't believe it took me until my mid-thirties to become the kind of nerd who has their own website for the purposes of cataloguing information. I feel like this is one of the kinds of nerd I was destined to be all along.

Recs round-up for the month of March, 2024! This month we have:

1 Nirvana in Fire fanwork

Go Forward Slowly, by burnt_oranges

- a post-canon jingyan/mei changsu nif fic in which jingyan discovers that mcs survived after all...and never let jingyan know.

- jingyan is uh. not handling it well, the loneliness and responsibility of being emperor. and this only makes it worse!

- anyway it's a venue for lots of real good angst, and I definitely cried at one point!

- I also really appreciate the use it makes of various secondary characters who are also important figures in jingyan's life

- many feels. I love these characters. there IS a happy ending.

- 31k words in length

2 TGCF fanworks

Never Look Away, by dkwilliams

- hualian fanvid of the TGCF donghua set to Vienna Teng's "Never Look Away"

- ahhhhh it's just very feelings!!!!

- audio is song-only

- youtube video includes lyric captions

- 3:16 in length


Ten Feet Behind, by thetrickisnotminding

- tgcf quanyin canon divergence au where quan yizhen finds the coffin containing the guoshi fangxin

- a fun look at a different way for xie lian and hua cheng to meet again, and for quan yizhen and yin yu to meet again!

- 9k words in length

3 CQL/MDZS fanworks

in the tall weeds, by cordial

- sangyao fic set during the qinghe era of jgy’s life

- a look at trans man meng yao and his experience of his gender, and nie huaisang experimenting with transfemininity

- a beautiful look at the complexities of identity, the precarity of position, and the connection between jgy and nhs

- 1k words in length


A Good Fit, by nirejseki

- canon divergence fic where young Meng Yao goes to the Lan Sect to learn cultivation as a guest, instead of trying to be accepted into Jin

- I had a lot of fun with the route this fix-it took!

- and I enjoyed that it included friendship between Meng Yao and Su She <3

- 5k words in length


Practical Mythology, by metisket

- a fun cute look at a cql wangxian time travel fixit au, where wwx is the alarming immortal who fixed the burial mounds and will grant wishes to deserving people, and lwj meets him for the first time at 8 years old and decides he'll marry him

- I enjoyed the look at how this au has changed things for all sorts of different people across the cultivation world, and the ways in which wwx both is indeed extremely powerful and also is someone who still has his blind spots and emotional vulnerabilities

- lots of different povs throughout the fic which is fun too!

- 17k words in length

5 SVSSS fanworks

Oversharing is Caring, by Prudabaga

- bingqiu fic where during the trial in jinlan city, sqq is given a truth serum that comes with a side of lowered inhibitions

- nobody is prepared for the kinds of truths sqq wants to share (thoughtful and detailed list of who's hottest)

- or, tbh, for the truths that come out by the wayside

- funny and cute

- 4k words in length


Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, Prudabaga

- another bingqiu fic about the jinlan city encounter going differently, this time because lbh has visited sqq's dreams

- and sqq has a Totally Very Straight Of Himself tendency to have sexy dreams about lbh

- hard for lbh to believe that sqq wants nothing to do with him after that! (he's still very confused tho)

- love this for them

- 26k words in length


right from the start, I gave you my heart, by nex_et_nox

- sqq is hit by an obedience curse! uh oh, it's time for the mission to jinlan city!

- fun sqq & sqh interaction, and sqq's first meeting with lbh post-abyss going very differently than in svsss

- sqq absolutely out here making his own life harder on a regular basis

- lots of fun with this trope!

- 11k words in length


cleanse your life of me, by ambrorussa

- svsss au where sy transmigrates into yqy instead of sqq

- the fic is in two parts: first, from sy!yqy's pov as he tries to change events within the parameters the system allows him, and then the second from og!sqq's pov follows where the first part left off, with sqq trying to deal with the fact that yqy is so different now from the one he remembers.

- the two parts are different in tone and both excellent, both really fitting the kind of character and person the pov character is, and what it is they want the most. I loved it!

- endgame ships: liushen & qijiu

- 11k words in length


Scenario: Fix-It Fic, by lettered

- bingqiu fic where due to System shenanigans sqq travels back in time to when he first encountered lbh in jinlan city post-abyss

- sqq does his best to make things go differently this time, within the parameters of the genre "h/c fic" which the system tells him he is now in

- I'm just! so delighted by so much about this fic!

- and I love how the fic plays metatextually with its own fourth wall in ways I haven't really seen much in svsss fic before!

- fic is a WIP; as of my initial rec on mastodon there are 14k words; satisfying to read as is

1 academic article on the gendering of trans voices

"Transgender voices: Insights on identity, embodiment, and the gender of the voice" (2018, Language and Linguistics Compass)

- this free-to-read academic article is an overview of the features of a voice that lead people to read that voice as a particular gender

- it pushes back against the traditional view of male vs female voices, of pitch being the main deciding factor in gendering voices, and of a voice's gender being immutable

- it's a pretty accessible read, IMO!

- 16 pages in length; 12 pages if you discount the list of references

2 short stories

The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics, by Adam-Troy Castro

- really more of a prose poem than a standard short story

- about the experience of being a robot given unfair orders under unbreakable laws

- a satisfying read and I loved the structure

- 2k words in length


Afflictions of the New Age, by Katherine Ewell

- A sci-fi short story about an elderly woman hundreds of years old, making use of every life extending treatment she can, but her grasp on time and on memory is no longer good

- Focuses on her relationship with her family, with her home aide, with her fear of death, with her experience of the confusion of past and present

- Evocative melancholy wistful tone, really effective!

- At the end of the story I'm left with many questions, but in a good way

- 4k words in length

1 novella

On the English Approach to the Study of History, by E. Saxey

- huh, in the end I'm not entirely convinced I LIKE this novella but it's odd and compelling and interesting for sure

- about the academic study of history in a context where a very specific subset of people have access to a very specific subset of historical figures to ask them directly about what they remember

- asking questions about who's an insider vs an outsider in academic study, about the values of different approaches to history

- ultimately I think it turned too much into a story about the fantastical elements in the narrative and didn't engage as deeply with the themes as I thought it would at the beginning

- but it's still a very interesting and well done story and I'm glad I read it!

- 22k words in length

one

I was fascinated to learn (from merriam-webster) that "themself" used to be the only reflexive form for they/them pronouns, and "themselves" only started being used in the mid-1400's, and eventually dominated the scene almost entirely, making "themself" an extreme rarity.

"Themself" is making more of a comeback these days and APA says that either "themself" or "themselves" is acceptable for singular they, although "themselves" is still more common.

But I'm all for "themself" for singular they. It just makes sense!!!


two

It suddenly occurred to me that although volunteering to write fic for fan auctions like Fandom Trumps Hate doesn't feel doable for me, I COULD offer book reviews. But it is too late to sign up as a creator for this year's FTH!

Ah well. In future years maybe. Throw money at a good cause and I will read a book of your choosing and write a review of it.

Actually I might be willing to do that outside of an official framework like FTH? Hit me up for more details if this is something you want, I guess!


three

As of this week it's been two years since I posted my first mxtx fic?! Genuinely does not feel like it's been that long!

Also holy shit that fic has over 800 kudos, when did that happen, that's so many people who read and liked it.

Once again time for my monthly recs round-up! This month you will find:

9 mdzs/cql recs
2 nirvana in fire recs
5 svsss recs
1 tortall rec
1 word of honor rec
6 poetry/short story/novelette recs
1 youtube video essay rec
1 zine rec

MDZS/CQL

MDZS/CQL


Rule the World, by remellow

- cql fanvid about wei wuxian as the yiling laozu, set to the Lorde song Everybody Wants to Rule the World

- incredible ominous vibes threaded through with the pain of everything that happens

- beautifully edited! I was hooked from the start

- 2:33 in length

- thanks to lookitmychicken for the rec!


Tucked inside the heart of every nice girl, by phnelt

- I've read this fic before but today I had call to reread it and it's still SO good

- t4t jzx/jyl!!!! always into this, in every permutation

- cql/mdzs modern au jin zixuan is a trans woman finding her gender euphoria in the midst of the work of being a woman under patriarchy, and jiang yanli, in watching her, realises just how much every aspect of being a woman has been a burden and not a joy for herself

- the relationship jyl has with gender here is so good and makes so much sense for the character!

- I love how careful jyl is to not ever stifle jzx's baby trans joy, even as jyl is struggling

- 4k words in length


Borne, by Cordial

- cql fic

- after wen qing's execution, she ends up sharing jiang cheng's body!

- they're both dealing with so MUCH at this point in the narrative, and they're so careful with each other now that they are tied together like this, and it's so gorgeous

- 3k words in length


All I Really Want, by trelkez

- a cql vid about Wei Wuxian & Wen Qing

- ahhhhhh I have SO MANY feels about them and this vid GETS them

- ouchy in the best way

- audio is solely the music

- no subtitles

- 4:41 in length

- thanks to lesbianwangyibo for the rec!


Reunion Dinner | 团圆饭, by vivisextion

- mdzs/cql, post-canon, jiang cheng realises jin ling has never tasted his mother's soup

- cue the epic quest to learn how to recreate it, and the things he learns along the way

- lovely fic about family and about food

- 4k words in length

- thanks to stultiloquentia for the rec!


The Other Mountain, by nirejseki

- omggg I tore through this fic SO fast and had SO much fun with it

- mdzs lan qiren/wen ruohan arranged marriage!

- I'm always here for fic that's like "okay this ship might sound ridiculous but WHAT IF --" and then comes up with genius ways to make it plausible

- there's fun character interactions and fascinating plot and it does interesting things exploring the situation between Qingheng-Jun and his wife, and I love how much lan qiren loves rules and has carefully considered what they mean wrt right behaviour

- I love this vision of lqr so much, and I love how FUNNY the interactions between lqr and wrh are, and how well these interpretations of the characters work with each other and play off each other in mutually beneficial ways!

- the fic started off a little slow but once I was into it I was INTO IT and read every word with relish

- completely delightful. do recommend.

- 287,000 words in length


Spilled Pearls, by nirejseki

- another mdzs lan qiren/wen ruohan canon divergence au! and also wen ruohan/nie dad at the same time

- this one follows lqr from when he's a young teen and it's very fun to see his changing perspectives on wrh over time

- I enjoyed it a great deal, and also it's fun to see what is and isn't the same between this fic and the others by the same author featuring these characters and ships

- and I just want MORE!

- 89k words in length


Tricks of the Trade, by nirejseki

- a reread, just as fun the second time as the first

- mdzs, jin guangyao/lan qiren!

- jgy coming up with schemes to get hugs from lqr and accidentally developing a relationship of mutual respect and care which changes the trajectory of jgy's life goals

- it's so delightful

- getting bits of lqr's perspectives on the whole course of events at the end, in the form of excerpts from his diary, is incredible for recontextualising what was happening from his pov

- 31k words in length


of all the gin joints in all the world, by bloodletter

- cql, jiang cheng/nie huaisang

- a post-canon fic, running into each other at an inn and Not Talking About Things

- a wonderful little interlude of finding space to have a bit of something fun

- because sometimes the opportunity to not talk about things, and not even think about things, is what you want the most!

- even though everything that happened IS still there. but you're with someone else who knows and understands and has seen you since before anything went bad.

- it's great

- 1k words in length

NIRVANA IN FIRE

NIRVANA IN FIRE

Never knew a part of you / you didn't set in ink, by BromeliadDreams

- Nirvana in Fire fic about Cai Quan/Shen Zhui!!!!!! god I love these nerds

- Reading fic about their comfortable relationship with each other as they argue and work and engage in endless bureaucracy just filled me with enormous fondness for them both

- they should be a thriving ship in the fandom and it's a tragedy there's not more fic about them, but this one is GREAT.

- 3k words in length


our hands our hearts are empty, by egelantier

- NiF canon divergence fic where Jingyan is called back to the capital to an arranged marriage with a young maiden named Mei Changsu

- I love seeing what is and what is not different in the plans and in how the two of them relate to each other, in this changed context!

- some great cameos from other characters too

- what a fun and satisfying read!

- 10k words in length

SVSSS

SVSSS


Ignorance Leads to Bliss, by Tainaron

- An svsss qijiu canon divergence fic, about things that might have happened while lbh was still a very young disciple to change the course of events

- I love how small the things are that cause these changes, and that it's a small unthinking kindness from yqy to his own disciples that in a winding way leads to his own happiness

- as the author says, these two are freak4freak and I love it

- the desperation both of them feel about each other while being unable to talk about any of it!

- 11k words in length


petal and vine, by aibari

- an SVSSS bingqiu fanfic wherein sqq wakes up in his plant body with amnesia and makes a home in the small village nearby, blessing its crops

- lbh eventually comes through looking for his shizun, and sqq helps him

- trying to find the right words to describe the tone or flavour of a piece of writing can be so hard but imo that's one of the things this fic does best! it's got this like....distanced, fairy-tale, dreamy vibe that really drives home how disconnected sqq is from his life and his emotions here and it's so great

- (happy ending, of course!)

- 5k words in length


raised by winter winds, by nyoomerr

- this is a fic that really understands the fundamental problem with original sqq, which is that the child abuse is real but so is the tragic backstory. he contains multitudes! one feels complex and conflicting things about him!

- ok so the fic is a canon divergence fic where shen yuan is transmigrated in early as a disciple of og!sqq, and it's a bingqiu fic but also a fic about the master-disciple relationship between sy and sqq, and also about sy's relationship with his role as head disciple on the peak

- and it's so good at all of that! I love what it does, I love all the sides of sy you get to see and all the things he cares about and puts his energies into (... and what he doesn't), it's all so perfectly him

- and aughghhhhhh I have SO MANY FEELS

- I am very emotion. I highly recommend.

- 36k words in length


Toxic, by Prim_the_Amazing

- Ming Fan/OMC, where the OC is another disciple on Qing Jing Peak

- it's truly impressively horrible, the pov of this awful bully who manipulates Ming Fan into misery and encourages Ming Fan in all of his own worst bullying tendencies

- it's so well and believably done, and so compelling!

- mind the tags on this one, it means what it says. I enjoyed the fic a lot but it's not a kind fic!

- 13k words in length


Lost and Found in Limitless Clarity, by TGP

- bingqiu postcanon fic

- lbh is miserable because sqq has died again, permanently, and lbh blames himself

- this weird recluse Shang Yuan is a compelling mystery for lbh to investigate though......

- the fic is deliciously full of angst and misunderstandings and attempts to learn from the past

- 75k words in length

TORTALL

TORTALL


A Personal Challenge, by bobbiewickham

- fic for the Tortall books, in epistolary form

- Alanna was forbidden from challenging Wyldon to a duel because she was king's Champion, but obviously as soon as she's not anymore, she goes for it

- various people react

- it's perfect. it's delightful. it's everything.

- 2k words in length

WORD OF HONOR

WORD OF HONOR


A Little Bit Ghost Valley, by alpheratz_vids

- a Word of Honor vid focusing on Wen Kexing. I have never seen any of the show and do not know who any of these people are and it's still so fun!

- stylish and snappily edited and confident

- audio is solely the music

- subtitles available

- 2:04 in length

- thanks to lesbianwangyibo for the rec!

ORIGINAL POETRY/SHORT STORY/NOVELETTE

ORIGINAL POETRY/SHORT STORY/NOVELETTE


Merciful Even to Scorpions, by Kay Chronister

- in a village where people possessed by demons are turned into javelinas, cared for by a pig-boy for the rest of their lives, what happens when the new pig-boy has a little too much empathy for his charges?

- excellent use of fantasy alternate world to engage with questions of the failures of the justice system and the penal system, and the ways people become complicit with the system

- really well done pov character

- 5k words in length


Also, the Cat, by Rachel Swirsky

- an original story about ghosts and toxic family dynamics and feeling trapped

- the three sisters who are the main characters are all difficult people in their own way, and all fully-realized characters I truly believe in

- I loved that it's a story where the moral isn't "family should always stick together." family can be wonderful but it can also be awful, and sometimes you're better off apart

- 14k words in length


The Naming of Knots, by M.A. Carrick

- an original story that I believe to be set in the same world as Carrick's Rook & Rose trilogy, which I haven't read yet but which is on my tbr list

- having read this story and enjoyed it definitely increases my interest in that trilogy!

- this one's about a thief who gets talked into helping a legend steal information to get back at people who misuse their positions of power

- the importance of public infrastructure! the usefulness of recordkeeping! the will to carry out audacious crime!

- fun and interesting and I want to know more about this world

- 9k words in length


I'll Be Your Mirror, by Rebecca Schneider

- an original story about AI personhood, and about the bond between one AI who is different from the others, and their bond with a human who is different from other humans

- it's also about the difficulties of caregiving during a pandemic, and the toll it takes

- a beautiful, quiet, tender story about finding where you belong, no matter what others think

- and ultimately, in my read, about a neurodivergent robot and a queerplatonic relationship, which like. AS ALWAYS, TAKE ME TO THERE. I'm here for it.

- 6k words in length


Then Came the Ghost of My Dead Mother, Antikleia, by Nadia Radovich

- about grief and loss; losing a parent young, and losing access to that parent's culture and language; and about holding on to what things you can

- the story isn't specific about exactly what happened in the disaster when the main character was a young child but the hints are enough to be pretty dark

- beautiful, longing, sharp and bittersweet

- second person pov

-1k words in length


My Last Duke, by Jess Nevins

- narrative poetry from the pov of a dead woman to her terrible husband's new wife

- really fun and compelling to read on in a vacuum, but also it is clearly written in response to Browning's famous poem "My Last Duchess" and is from the pov of the dead woman that poem is about!

- also seems to be an alternate history narrative? again you don't need to know this to appreciate the poem but after reading it I had to look up the characters involved. POV character is Lucrezia de' Medici, her terrible husband is Alfonso II d'Este, but as far as I can tell the new wife is someone who in irl history died in infancy: Isabella, daughter of Charles III of Savoy.

- and now I really want to know more about the history of the time period and the ways that this would have affected things and why the author made these choices for the story of the poem!

- anyway. I like the poem. it's good.

- 1k words in length

YOUTUBE VIDEO ESSAY

YOUTUBE VIDEO ESSAY


Ranking Every 2023 Historical Drama on Costume Accuracy, by Bernadette Banner

- bernadette banner on youtube has been in the habit for a few years of putting out a video rating the historical accuracy of costumes from tv/movies of the previous year, and each year the video gets longer and includes more guest experts for other cultures she's not as intimately familiar with, and this year's video for 2023 was SO much fun!

- I loved hearing about all these different time periods in different parts of the world from people who know what they're talking about, and seeing how very wrong (or right!) various media gets the details

- no subtitles

- video is 2 hr 20 min long

ZINE

ZINE


Fucking Trans Women, by Mira Bellwether

- I have never read a piece quite like this before and it's incredible

- the structure, the way she arranges the order in which she leads you through her thoughts!

- the many informative details, and the encouragement, and the desire for a conversation!

- and I love the way she talks about bodies, and celebrating the things about bodies that are soft and that require a delicate touch

- 80 pages long; word count hard to calculate

Over on mastodon, someone I follow started a thing where for each day in December you post a rec for something. I decided to join in! And now that it's the end of December, I'm crossposting all my recs here in one big long list. It's all mxtx fic, mostly mdzs and svsss but a bit of tgcf, and of a wide variety of tones and ships. I hope you find something in here to enjoy!


( cut for length! )

The third volume! It is here! And my main reaction is: aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I actually had to take a break partway through reading because it was so much and I needed to calm down. But now I am finished and I am a mass of emotions.

Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe spend this whole volume trying genuinely to reach out to each other, to understand each other, and doing a lot of failing but eventually they get there and I AM OVERCOME. God. I can't believe that the first time I read svsss (in the online fan translation) I genuinely believed that there was no evidence that sqq was genuinely happy with how things ended up between him and lbh and that he was basically just like "this might as well happen." Sure he's not very outwardly expressive but it is So Obvious how much sqq loves lbh and ahhhhhh. And lbh! Trying so so so hard to be a good boy for his shizun!! Until xin mo warps his obsession and trauma and leads him to follow his worst impulses, and it's SO UPSETTING but sqq is THERE for him no matter what, now that he finally understands what's driving lbh!

Anyway, this volume also contained a whole bunch of absolutely wild plot stuff that I had 100% forgotten had happened from last time I read it and it was a time and a half to re-experience it. Also I now understand Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang far better too. (and airplane's explanation for why he cut tlj is SO FUNNY. Tlj is like binghe but MORE SO and the readers wouldn't stand for someone stealing lbh's spotlight!!)

I also love this bit about sj!sqq:

"When written within the bounds of the original genre, this kind of character was extremely difficult to handle. You could say he was scum, but he was also pitiful. But if you tried to acknowledge his pathos, his ruthlessness was real too. Characters that were both scummy and tragic always drew aggro, and they were a hotbed for wank, leading comment sections to devolve into massive flame wars."

Hot damn. This is so accurate, to how parts of fandom treat characters who are both scummy and tragic at the same time; it seems like many people struggle to acknowledge that both aspects exist simultaneously, or are only interested in exploring one side. And there are characters like this in so many fandoms! I mean, I spent my youth in the depths of HGSS fandom, and like. Severus Snape. Oh boy.

And the statement at the end that the way svsss goes is what airplane's original outline had INTENDED for pidw, like, ALL of it?? Including the lbh/sqq ship?!?? INCREDIBLE. Real curious how that would have gone with sj!sqq instead of sy!sqq! How would a happy ending have still been reached? AIRPLANE TELL ME MORE about the lost non-harem version of pidw!!!!

Also every single illustration in this volume is an artistic masterpiece, I don't even know which one is my favourite because there are SO MANY perfect illustrations of important scenes.

This volume takes us to the end of the main story of svsss, which means that volume 4 will be entirely the extras, and I am PUMPED. I don't think I successfully managed to find translations of all the extras when I read svsss the first time, given how I've definitely heard references to things that happen that I haven't read, so I cannot wait for NEW BINGQIU CONTENT for me, and also to get to wallow in the airplane extras some more because MOSHANG.

As far as I've seen the publishing date for volume 4 hasn't been announced yet, and I want them to take the time they need to finish making it, and also I am on tenterhooks for more. I am made of nothing but svsss feels!!

Hey look I wrote a fic! and posted it! I’m really pleased with it, and delighted to finally share it; I’ve been thinking about it and working on it on-and-off for months.

It has been 1.25 years since I last posted a fic, and 6.5 years (!!!) since I wrote a fic for a fandom I'm actively in, so it has been a bit of a fallow period for me of late. Which is why it feels so good to have finally finished something, and without any deadline even!

truth can find the strangest home (2788 words) by sophia_sol
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mòběi-jūn/Shàng Qīnghuá
Characters: Mòběi-jūn, Shàng Qīnghuá
Additional Tags: Identity Reveal, forced truth-telling, a long history of misunderstanding each other, one of those fics where the only characters with speaking parts are the two romantic leads
Summary:

It was supposed to be a relatively straightforward diplomatic trip, but of course these things never were with demons.

Something that causes endless problems in talking about Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: the names for the people who are Shen Qingqiu. Both of these people have other names that CAN be used to refer to them, but both characters very deliberately distance themselves from that other name. I feel fine referring to them as Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan when talking about their pre-canon history when they were actually going by those names, but when talking about them after each of them goes "nope :) I'm sqq now :)" it doesn't feel quite accurate to me, you know?

But if you refer to both of them as sqq, it's so easy to confuse which of them you're talking about!

I love narratives that deal with characters with complicated relationships to their identity, so I have run into these kinds of Name Problems more than perhaps the average fan does. But in previous fandoms where I've run into this broad type of problem, there's usually something that feels reasonable to use to refer to each character as a whole, even if they use different names in different circumstances or times of their life, or even if multiple characters use the same name.

I default to using "Shen Qingqiu" to refer to the person who used to be Shen Yuan, and "Original Shen Qingqiu" to refer to the person who used to be Shen Jiu, but I can't always tell if others are using the same parameters, and especially if they're approaching the fandom from different directions in terms of what character they're obsessed with, I could see them making different choices than me.

So it's a problem when trying to successfully communicate with other fans.

Anyway. Yes I AM still obsessed with svsss and spend hours most days thinking about it and/or reading fic, why do you ask

I have been ignoring the existence of the Chinese web novel The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System for QUITE a while now. I kept hearing about it but it just didn't seem to work for me when I tried the fic, and when I attempted to read the novel I bounced off the first chapter fairly hard. But it turns out I just needed the right introduction!!

You know how it goes, you accidentally get really into the fic for a minor pairing (thanks B!), read all the extant decent fic for the ship, read the relevant canon extras, start daydreaming about writing fic, and decide you had better actually read the full canon if you're going to even make the attempt at writing anything.

So here we are! It took me a bit to get into the novel, since the main characters are in fact not Shang Qinghua and Mobei-Jun, but I found it a surprisingly fun read.

The premise: Shen Yuan is the hate-reader of a bad Chinese web novel, who finds himself transmigrated into the world of that novel! Unfortunately, he's transmigrated into the character of a villain in the novel, and there's a System controlling his actions, assigning him missions and keeping him from being able to act too OOC.

Shen Yuan's goal in the character of Shen Qingqiu, the scum villain: change the story enough so that he can make sure the protagonist Luo Binghe doesn't murder him!

The System's goal: get Shen Qingqiu to fix all the plot holes and missing characterization from the original novel to make a better story.

Luo Binghe's goal: to get his shizun (Shen Qingqiu) to pay attention to him!!

There are a lot of extremely charming things in reading this. The novel as a whole is a fun and funny parody, written lovingly by the author, with lots of great details and jokes.

And the main character Shen Qingqiu is an endearing nerd who, in his previous life as Shen Yuan, read this extremely bad extremely long and extremely porny webnovel for the worldbuilding, and once he's in the world of the novel, he's a veritable encyclopedia of all the interesting monsters the world has to offer. And at one point when he's off on an errand to pick a rare and special magical plant that only grows in one place, he actually worries about the implications on the ecosystem if he picks the plant! I love him.

Also, he spends a lot of time internally raging against a) the System and b) the author who wrote the piece of crap narrative he's currently trying to live through, but he hides everything behind a great deal of fussiness over his appearance and a stern facial expression and an unwillingness to say anything of substance, so everyone thinks he's so cool and elegant and impressive. Maintaining this outward appearance is helped by his inability to admit even to himself that he might have Feelings about anything that's going on, of course. And the contrast between these sides of him is a delight.

It is frustrating that his inability to admit his feelings to himself continues right to the very end of his romance arc, which makes for a very unromantic conclusion to it. It's hard to feel invested in a relationship as a reader when one of the romantic leads spends all of his time thinking about his partner in very distancing terms!

And speaking of his romantic partner......( is the identity of the romantic interest a spoiler? I mean it is to sqq! )

Apparently this is author MXTX's first novel, and in some respects it reminds me of some of Jane Austen's earlier works, where the focus is more on Being A Funny Parody than on making sure the emotional heart of the story gets appropriate attention and a full conclusion. (I'd put it somewhere between Love and Freindship [sic] and Northanger Abbey in that respect.) But there's still enough heart in there to make it something I can enjoy reading.

( cut for spoilers for a background plot point )

Now let's talk about my ship! Shang Qinghua and Mobei-Jun, who I mentioned above, are a popular secondary character ship, and I love them very very much. Shang Qinghua is also a person transmigrated from our world into the world of the novel, but instead of being a reader, he's the author, who feels very defensive about the quality of the narrative he wrote. (He just wrote what the readers wanted! He had bills to pay! Writing lots of terrible sex and no character development is what got him paying readers!) And Mobei-Jun is the minor character he wrote for his own pleasure, to fulfill his ideals of attractive masculinity, even while everything else he wrote was according to his readers' whims. Mobei-Jun also happens to be an ice demon lord. In this ship you get: cross-cultural communication problems! Competency mixed with obliviousness! Hijinks! Questions of identity and power! Loyalty!

Okay yes this is a list of things that are also all present to varying degrees in the Luo Binghe/Shen Qingqiu ship, but it's a lot more charming in the context of Shang Qinghua/Mobei-Jun, at least in this reader's humble opinion. Possibly due to the lack of Luo Binghe. Also you get fun ice-themed aesthetics and a character who actually talks about things (badly)! It's great. I want to reread all the moshang fic again now.

Though I also now want to read fic about Yue Qingyuan? Yeah fine I guess that checks out.

In conclusion, do I recommend this novel? Yeah! Can I recommend my way as a good way to approach it if you're someone who has never read cnovels before? Ehhhhh, it was more than a little roundabout.......But I have fic recs if you're interested!