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extrapenguinFamily has started to descend upon me, so while I might nobly post something at some point next week, my posting spree will probably be over. It was nice while it lasted, and ran for almost two weeks in a row! My Yuletide assignment is done, but I still have a treat I want to make cohere. At least my dear beta's been very helpful.
For those of you new to DW, every year from 1 to 15 Jan,![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge will be posting a prompt for discussion/talking about. They generally include stuff like "rec 3+ fanworks" and such. The topics are roughly the same each year, so I won't be doing it in 2019, as my fandom-related milestones don't really change much, year to year. Here's the revamped promo graphic:
As for the actual contents of this post, I was looking at my stats page, and realized that each and every work of mine had at least one bookmark, save the one I wrote forspace_swap and my Yuletide assignment, which is still unrevealed. Modao Zushi fandom seems to be really into bookmarking stuff! Even this experimental thing no-one clicked on has a bookmark! (I, on the other hand, bookmark none of the things. Except maybe resources like the Liang Primer ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
ofsevenseas wrote for Nirvana in Fire fandom.) This is kinda cool, as I've received 328 bookmarks this year so far, and 591 bookmarks over the whole of my writing career. (55% of my bookmarks were this year! Then again, 54% of my published wordcount has happened this year, too.) I can finally start using bookmarks in my year-end stats in a reasonable way!
My subscriptions have gone way up, too – 33 people have subscribed to me, up from 5 in 2016. (I didn't write down the stat for 2017, boo.) Modao Zushi fandom people seem to like subscribing to works, too – I did admittedly start actually posting WIPs, but a bunch of my oneshots have subscriptions as well. Perhaps people are using them also as private bookmarks? (Highest subscription count was 54, for Rediscovery, Reconstruction.)
In other Modao Zushi news, I have 7k of fic that stalled back in ... September? I started writing it in late August, then stalled on like the 4th of Sept when I realized I'd have to write the Sunshot Campaign again, and I didn't wanna. Then I wrote Rediscovery, Reconstruction plus ~10k of other WIP stuff, including my Yuletide fic. So I'm posting the first bit of words beneath a cut, to see if anyone has any opinions on it. (I'm not expecting any – very few people on DW are in the fandom.)
Upon rereading, I discovered that my writing skills have leveled up in the interim, and Lan Wangji is perhaps a little OOC. Completely unbeta'd and unrevised. The finished product will pair up more people than the fic's main characters, and I realized that ship tags are technically spoilers, so I think if this ever goes anywhere, I'll first post it without any ship tags! The readers can then nail-bitingly observe Jiang Cheng's love life! (I do, however, promise that Wei Wuxian will not end up with an OC of any stripe.) Setting is very technically omegaverse without betas, but given that heats don't exist, it's just people who smell of things with normalized mpreg. Qianyuan = alpha; kunze = omega.
"Why?" Lan Wangji snapped.
Wei Wuxian continued bandaging his leg with the forehead ribbon. "Your clothes are too shredded up to be useful, and besides, it's just a forehead ribbon. Surely your leg is more important!"
Lan Wangji's expression tightened. "Let me die."
"Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan, no-" What happened to make the second jade of Lan like this? The burning of the Cloud Recesses? "Hey. The Cloud Recesses' people are still there. You can rebuild it, better than it was. Or just like it was, if you don't want to change. Anyway, wouldn't your uncle be upset if you didn't come back?"
If anything, Lan Wangji's expression became worse. Wei Wuxian squeezed his uninjured knee and continued, "Hey. Let's mend your leg. I guarantee you'll feel better once you can walk again!"
"...won't," Lan Wangji said, like all the fight had left him.
This was alarming. Something else must've happened, but Wei Wuxian could only finish up bandaging the leg and then try to gently pry out what the matter was. As he finished it up and placed the first of the medicinal herbs from Mianmian's pouch onto the wound, Lan Wangji objected again, but so much time between his legs gave Wei Wuxian another reason for his upset.
Lan Wangji was a kunze.
Wei Wuxian had thought they were both qianyuans and not thought more of it, but they'd been fifteen while Wei Wuxian visited the Cloud Recesses. It was possible Lan Wangji was merely a very late bloomer, though most kunzes became so around thirteen or fourteen. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were both qianyuans and should've been able to pick up on a kunze, it was true, but their noses had been effectively distracted by Lan Qiren. Relatives typically smelled similar; it was possible they'd simply missed Lan Wangji's burgeoning sweet scent of kunze due to it blending with Lan Qiren's. Lan Wangji's own scent of frosted-over sandalwood on a cold winter's dawn Wei Wuxian must've misidentified as coming from burnt incense.
It really must have been dreadful; Lan Wangji would have planned up a lot of things that'd be cast into disarray by suddenly blossoming as a kunze. Wait, did Wen Chao go exclusively after girls, or did he go after kunze boys as well? Having to suddenly dodge Wen Chao's affections would be terrible.
"Hey. Lan Zhan. It's okay, you'll survive. Your uncle's a respected cultivator, and he's a kunze, too. And there's a lot of respected married kunzes as well." Or Lan Wangji had encountered further trouble, from Wen Chao or elsewhere. "If ... something ... unfortunate ... happened, I'm sure your uncle could help you with, um, kunze things. And I guarantee I won't take advantage of you, come what may!"
Lan Wangji closed his eyes and winced. "Why must you torture me more?" he hissed, like a hurt animal, but didn't interrupt Wei Wuxian placing the medicinal herbs on his leg.
...actually, I might as well dump another of my ideas here! Name magic is always a cool thing, and Modao Zushi affords us true-names in an easy way: birth names! (Cons: I would have to write an entire fic referring to Jiang Cheng as Jiang Wanyin, but whatever, I'm sure readers would manage.) This one has a plot that's based on post-Sunshot Campaign stuff, which the translation hadn't gotten to yet at the time I acquired the idea. (21.9.)
The child was one month old. Its mother could now bathe herself, and her child, but first it was time for a ritual.
They'd selected their child's birth name over the past month without greater fuss. It fit all the requirements: when used together with the surname, it wasn't part of a common phrase used in invocations, and wasn't an obvious choice. With excitement buzzing in her heart, she took the traditional bowl of water and the brush, and carefully pushed aside her baby's robe as her husband held him. She took the brush, dipped it in the water, and wrote the characters of his true name over his heart. Her husband whispered their child's name in his ear, the first and hopefully last time it would be spoken aloud.
Their little baby, upset from the cold water, cried, and her husband soothed him. She herself filled a bathtub and bathed for the first time since childbirth, shedding off all the sweat and gunk accumulated on the skin and letting her hair snake loose in the water like kelp.
After she and her child had both washed, it was time for the next piece of ritual. The child sat in a basket while she and her husband wrote invocations with the newly-given true name. May my son be smart, she wished. May my son be powerful, her husband wished. They set alight the papers in silence and watched the smoke curl towards the sky.
On their son's fifth birthday came the next piece of ceremony: the bestowing of his courtesy name. He'd spend a few more years as alternatively little one, little treasure, or bunbun, but slowly he'd start to be known by it.
As for My Unconquerable Soul, that one's been on the backburner, also due to needing more stuff to know about the translation. I have one aside written and two more planned, as well as an outline for the rest, but ... I needed the vacation from it all. Let's see over the winter break.
For those of you new to DW, every year from 1 to 15 Jan,
snowflake_challenge will be posting a prompt for discussion/talking about. They generally include stuff like "rec 3+ fanworks" and such. The topics are roughly the same each year, so I won't be doing it in 2019, as my fandom-related milestones don't really change much, year to year. Here's the revamped promo graphic:As for the actual contents of this post, I was looking at my stats page, and realized that each and every work of mine had at least one bookmark, save the one I wrote for
space_swap and my Yuletide assignment, which is still unrevealed. Modao Zushi fandom seems to be really into bookmarking stuff! Even this experimental thing no-one clicked on has a bookmark! (I, on the other hand, bookmark none of the things. Except maybe resources like the Liang Primer My subscriptions have gone way up, too – 33 people have subscribed to me, up from 5 in 2016. (I didn't write down the stat for 2017, boo.) Modao Zushi fandom people seem to like subscribing to works, too – I did admittedly start actually posting WIPs, but a bunch of my oneshots have subscriptions as well. Perhaps people are using them also as private bookmarks? (Highest subscription count was 54, for Rediscovery, Reconstruction.)
In other Modao Zushi news, I have 7k of fic that stalled back in ... September? I started writing it in late August, then stalled on like the 4th of Sept when I realized I'd have to write the Sunshot Campaign again, and I didn't wanna. Then I wrote Rediscovery, Reconstruction plus ~10k of other WIP stuff, including my Yuletide fic. So I'm posting the first bit of words beneath a cut, to see if anyone has any opinions on it. (I'm not expecting any – very few people on DW are in the fandom.)
Upon rereading, I discovered that my writing skills have leveled up in the interim, and Lan Wangji is perhaps a little OOC. Completely unbeta'd and unrevised. The finished product will pair up more people than the fic's main characters, and I realized that ship tags are technically spoilers, so I think if this ever goes anywhere, I'll first post it without any ship tags! The readers can then nail-bitingly observe Jiang Cheng's love life! (I do, however, promise that Wei Wuxian will not end up with an OC of any stripe.) Setting is very technically omegaverse without betas, but given that heats don't exist, it's just people who smell of things with normalized mpreg. Qianyuan = alpha; kunze = omega.
"Why?" Lan Wangji snapped.
Wei Wuxian continued bandaging his leg with the forehead ribbon. "Your clothes are too shredded up to be useful, and besides, it's just a forehead ribbon. Surely your leg is more important!"
Lan Wangji's expression tightened. "Let me die."
"Lan Zhan? Lan Zhan, no-" What happened to make the second jade of Lan like this? The burning of the Cloud Recesses? "Hey. The Cloud Recesses' people are still there. You can rebuild it, better than it was. Or just like it was, if you don't want to change. Anyway, wouldn't your uncle be upset if you didn't come back?"
If anything, Lan Wangji's expression became worse. Wei Wuxian squeezed his uninjured knee and continued, "Hey. Let's mend your leg. I guarantee you'll feel better once you can walk again!"
"...won't," Lan Wangji said, like all the fight had left him.
This was alarming. Something else must've happened, but Wei Wuxian could only finish up bandaging the leg and then try to gently pry out what the matter was. As he finished it up and placed the first of the medicinal herbs from Mianmian's pouch onto the wound, Lan Wangji objected again, but so much time between his legs gave Wei Wuxian another reason for his upset.
Lan Wangji was a kunze.
Wei Wuxian had thought they were both qianyuans and not thought more of it, but they'd been fifteen while Wei Wuxian visited the Cloud Recesses. It was possible Lan Wangji was merely a very late bloomer, though most kunzes became so around thirteen or fourteen. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were both qianyuans and should've been able to pick up on a kunze, it was true, but their noses had been effectively distracted by Lan Qiren. Relatives typically smelled similar; it was possible they'd simply missed Lan Wangji's burgeoning sweet scent of kunze due to it blending with Lan Qiren's. Lan Wangji's own scent of frosted-over sandalwood on a cold winter's dawn Wei Wuxian must've misidentified as coming from burnt incense.
It really must have been dreadful; Lan Wangji would have planned up a lot of things that'd be cast into disarray by suddenly blossoming as a kunze. Wait, did Wen Chao go exclusively after girls, or did he go after kunze boys as well? Having to suddenly dodge Wen Chao's affections would be terrible.
"Hey. Lan Zhan. It's okay, you'll survive. Your uncle's a respected cultivator, and he's a kunze, too. And there's a lot of respected married kunzes as well." Or Lan Wangji had encountered further trouble, from Wen Chao or elsewhere. "If ... something ... unfortunate ... happened, I'm sure your uncle could help you with, um, kunze things. And I guarantee I won't take advantage of you, come what may!"
Lan Wangji closed his eyes and winced. "Why must you torture me more?" he hissed, like a hurt animal, but didn't interrupt Wei Wuxian placing the medicinal herbs on his leg.
...actually, I might as well dump another of my ideas here! Name magic is always a cool thing, and Modao Zushi affords us true-names in an easy way: birth names! (Cons: I would have to write an entire fic referring to Jiang Cheng as Jiang Wanyin, but whatever, I'm sure readers would manage.) This one has a plot that's based on post-Sunshot Campaign stuff, which the translation hadn't gotten to yet at the time I acquired the idea. (21.9.)
The child was one month old. Its mother could now bathe herself, and her child, but first it was time for a ritual.
They'd selected their child's birth name over the past month without greater fuss. It fit all the requirements: when used together with the surname, it wasn't part of a common phrase used in invocations, and wasn't an obvious choice. With excitement buzzing in her heart, she took the traditional bowl of water and the brush, and carefully pushed aside her baby's robe as her husband held him. She took the brush, dipped it in the water, and wrote the characters of his true name over his heart. Her husband whispered their child's name in his ear, the first and hopefully last time it would be spoken aloud.
Their little baby, upset from the cold water, cried, and her husband soothed him. She herself filled a bathtub and bathed for the first time since childbirth, shedding off all the sweat and gunk accumulated on the skin and letting her hair snake loose in the water like kelp.
After she and her child had both washed, it was time for the next piece of ritual. The child sat in a basket while she and her husband wrote invocations with the newly-given true name. May my son be smart, she wished. May my son be powerful, her husband wished. They set alight the papers in silence and watched the smoke curl towards the sky.
On their son's fifth birthday came the next piece of ceremony: the bestowing of his courtesy name. He'd spend a few more years as alternatively little one, little treasure, or bunbun, but slowly he'd start to be known by it.
As for My Unconquerable Soul, that one's been on the backburner, also due to needing more stuff to know about the translation. I have one aside written and two more planned, as well as an outline for the rest, but ... I needed the vacation from it all. Let's see over the winter break.