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extrapenguinDear 520 Reverse Exchange Writer (or other sentient),
I have already provided you with prompts tailored to your skills. All of this is extra natter. Some of it is duplicated from the suggestions I gave you. Read it if you wish, don't read it if you don't.
General likes
Narratives of reconstruction: fixing something, whether that be a country, a piece of equipment, a relationship, or a person. (Examples: Nirvana in Fire, Zuko's arc in Avatar: the Last Airbender)
Journeys of discovery, whether the discoverers be the characters or the reader.
Redemption arcs. Rehabilitative justice.
Narratives where something happens; plot. External conflicts. Casefic.
Comedy of Errors -type things.
Crack taken seriously.
Engineering, especially of the sort that keeps civilization running – sewage, maintenance, transport etc – plus fault analysis and infrastructure design stuff
Characters expressing caring for each other by feeding each other/giving each other tea.
Good mentor figures/teachers who have their students' best interests at heart and succeed.
Class issues and other tensions between origins and current presentation (eg. alien whose species is considered monsters in disguise as a human).
Worldbuilding!
Tea.
Competence porn.
Enthusiasm in general.
Xenobiology, aliens, very alien aliens.
Loyalty, loyalty kink, people loyal way past the point of reasonableness.
Loving descriptions of small details/of how systems run; insertion of Shown Their Work details.
Happy endings.
If you are debating between writing in present tense and past tense, I prefer past tense.
Blather on why I like the characters
I love Zhao Yunlan's keenness, his smartness, and the way he's basically at the Olympics level of communication! He's smart and excellent at schmoozing and social maneuvering, and he loves his alien boyfriend to pieces. Like, seriously: he outright tells Da Qing he won't pry about Shen Wei's secrets and lets Shen Wei tell them to him at his own pace.
In the series, we see him very often attempt to keep Shen Wei from harm(ing himself), and fail, so my preferences run towards Zhao Yunlan's agency not being thwarted. Let him manage to get Shen Wei to relax and open up a bit, let him manage to cradle his perfect alien in love. (Yes: Zhao Yunlan gives Shen Wei his jacket. No: Zhao Yunlan gets tied up as part of a BDSM scene.)
Shen Wei, on the other hand, is someone who's gone through much, much more formative trauma (orphaned, lost his brother, grew up in a war zone, probably a child soldier) and as a consequence will just accept whatever shit hand he's been dealt without so much as a complaint. He also doesn't really see himself as quite worth the same as other people, hence his self-sacrificial tendencies. Then he meets Kunlun, who becomes a symbol that there's still hope and happiness in the world, and maybe Shen Wei can be something other than a weapon for five minutes before the next battle, and experience some of that youthful freedom he never got to have. In addition to this, Kunlun likes him back, and likely was bb Shen Wei's romantic (and sexual) awakening, as I can't see bb Shen Wei as anything older than (the Dixingian equivalent of) a teenager.
So, I want Shen Wei to be happy. I want Shen Wei to be so happy he doesn't know what to do with himself, I want Shen Wei to be happy without having to organize anything, I want Shen Wei to have the chance to take a day off and know that nothing depends on him and nothing is needed of him. I want Shen Wei to slowly practice opening up and let himself be looked after and eventually realize that yes, he's a human, too, not just a weapon.
Together, I love how they know how to love each other even while they argue, and the way they get over difficulties and how they make a wonderful team! I also, however, want the dynamic to be something more equitable than "Shen Wei does all the work in bed and outside it".
As for Ye Zun, he had an even less optimal childhood (brainwashing victim, abused, child soldier, maybe a rape victim) and he's less functional than his brother. He's made his brother his obsession ("Only I can kill him!" "In my heart, there has only ever been you.") and seems to have some sort of Thing about Zhao Yunlan, too, based on that. He's over the top, and like his brother, he hides himself behind masks so no-one can see his true face.
What I want for Ye Zun, therefore, is that someone be kind to him! I want him to realize he hates his gege only because of the lies the Rebel Leader fed him, and then start at dismantling all the other lies the Rebel Leader fed him about Yashou and Haixing being enemies of Dixing. He wants to destroy the world because it was mean to him, so make it be nice to him instead! I imagine Zhao Yunlan could get at at least some of the issues with his insight on people. Shipwise, I enjoy an "Everything gege has, I should also have, including Zhao Yunlan and including gege" take.
Favorite canon interpretations
I prefer Shen Wei to be as close to his stated age of 32 as possible in the present, and for him to thus be pretty young in the past – late teens, that sort of thing. I also really love the 10k year "dirt nap" and how it means Shen Wei is also a time traveler, though into the future and with no way back. For Dixing-human differences, please don't break my suspension of disbelief – if they had large differences in e.g. basal body temperature, the SID could just install infrared cameras everywhere to catch them. (And don't make them ghosts – we know they eat, sleep, and excrete, just like humans.) I do, however, like it if they have some alien in them, like non-24h circadian rhythms, or subtle biological differences only observable up close/if one knows to search for them that might pop up and bring some color to Zhao Yunlan's life.
Prompts, "I have always wanted to write a science fiction novel!" edition
How do Dixing powers actually work – what is the scientific basis of it?
If the Hallows could create a closed timelike curve of a worldline that yanked Zhao Yunlan to the past and back, what other exotic spacetime geometries could they make?
What sort of spaceship did the ancestors of the Dixingians and Yashou come over on, and where from? Why? Were they fleeing from something, or consciously aiming for Earth?
What if Shen Wei did his time skip because he was on a relativistic space rocket (i.e., he was on a spaceship that accelerated at 1 G for 5k years, did a gravity assist swing back, and decelerated at 1 G for 5k years, which maths out to shipboard time being a reasonableish 18 years)?
Honestly, I'd be happy with anything that contained weird physics mindfuckery, commonly accepted or only speculative!
Why did the Dixingian-Yashou schism happen? Why did they take human forms? If they already looked like humans, why?
I have already provided you with prompts tailored to your skills. All of this is extra natter. Some of it is duplicated from the suggestions I gave you. Read it if you wish, don't read it if you don't.
General likes
Narratives of reconstruction: fixing something, whether that be a country, a piece of equipment, a relationship, or a person. (Examples: Nirvana in Fire, Zuko's arc in Avatar: the Last Airbender)
Journeys of discovery, whether the discoverers be the characters or the reader.
Redemption arcs. Rehabilitative justice.
Narratives where something happens; plot. External conflicts. Casefic.
Comedy of Errors -type things.
Crack taken seriously.
Engineering, especially of the sort that keeps civilization running – sewage, maintenance, transport etc – plus fault analysis and infrastructure design stuff
Characters expressing caring for each other by feeding each other/giving each other tea.
Good mentor figures/teachers who have their students' best interests at heart and succeed.
Class issues and other tensions between origins and current presentation (eg. alien whose species is considered monsters in disguise as a human).
Worldbuilding!
Tea.
Competence porn.
Enthusiasm in general.
Xenobiology, aliens, very alien aliens.
Loyalty, loyalty kink, people loyal way past the point of reasonableness.
Loving descriptions of small details/of how systems run; insertion of Shown Their Work details.
Happy endings.
If you are debating between writing in present tense and past tense, I prefer past tense.
Blather on why I like the characters
I love Zhao Yunlan's keenness, his smartness, and the way he's basically at the Olympics level of communication! He's smart and excellent at schmoozing and social maneuvering, and he loves his alien boyfriend to pieces. Like, seriously: he outright tells Da Qing he won't pry about Shen Wei's secrets and lets Shen Wei tell them to him at his own pace.
In the series, we see him very often attempt to keep Shen Wei from harm(ing himself), and fail, so my preferences run towards Zhao Yunlan's agency not being thwarted. Let him manage to get Shen Wei to relax and open up a bit, let him manage to cradle his perfect alien in love. (Yes: Zhao Yunlan gives Shen Wei his jacket. No: Zhao Yunlan gets tied up as part of a BDSM scene.)
Shen Wei, on the other hand, is someone who's gone through much, much more formative trauma (orphaned, lost his brother, grew up in a war zone, probably a child soldier) and as a consequence will just accept whatever shit hand he's been dealt without so much as a complaint. He also doesn't really see himself as quite worth the same as other people, hence his self-sacrificial tendencies. Then he meets Kunlun, who becomes a symbol that there's still hope and happiness in the world, and maybe Shen Wei can be something other than a weapon for five minutes before the next battle, and experience some of that youthful freedom he never got to have. In addition to this, Kunlun likes him back, and likely was bb Shen Wei's romantic (and sexual) awakening, as I can't see bb Shen Wei as anything older than (the Dixingian equivalent of) a teenager.
So, I want Shen Wei to be happy. I want Shen Wei to be so happy he doesn't know what to do with himself, I want Shen Wei to be happy without having to organize anything, I want Shen Wei to have the chance to take a day off and know that nothing depends on him and nothing is needed of him. I want Shen Wei to slowly practice opening up and let himself be looked after and eventually realize that yes, he's a human, too, not just a weapon.
Together, I love how they know how to love each other even while they argue, and the way they get over difficulties and how they make a wonderful team! I also, however, want the dynamic to be something more equitable than "Shen Wei does all the work in bed and outside it".
As for Ye Zun, he had an even less optimal childhood (brainwashing victim, abused, child soldier, maybe a rape victim) and he's less functional than his brother. He's made his brother his obsession ("Only I can kill him!" "In my heart, there has only ever been you.") and seems to have some sort of Thing about Zhao Yunlan, too, based on that. He's over the top, and like his brother, he hides himself behind masks so no-one can see his true face.
What I want for Ye Zun, therefore, is that someone be kind to him! I want him to realize he hates his gege only because of the lies the Rebel Leader fed him, and then start at dismantling all the other lies the Rebel Leader fed him about Yashou and Haixing being enemies of Dixing. He wants to destroy the world because it was mean to him, so make it be nice to him instead! I imagine Zhao Yunlan could get at at least some of the issues with his insight on people. Shipwise, I enjoy an "Everything gege has, I should also have, including Zhao Yunlan and including gege" take.
Favorite canon interpretations
I prefer Shen Wei to be as close to his stated age of 32 as possible in the present, and for him to thus be pretty young in the past – late teens, that sort of thing. I also really love the 10k year "dirt nap" and how it means Shen Wei is also a time traveler, though into the future and with no way back. For Dixing-human differences, please don't break my suspension of disbelief – if they had large differences in e.g. basal body temperature, the SID could just install infrared cameras everywhere to catch them. (And don't make them ghosts – we know they eat, sleep, and excrete, just like humans.) I do, however, like it if they have some alien in them, like non-24h circadian rhythms, or subtle biological differences only observable up close/if one knows to search for them that might pop up and bring some color to Zhao Yunlan's life.
Prompts, "I have always wanted to write a science fiction novel!" edition
How do Dixing powers actually work – what is the scientific basis of it?
If the Hallows could create a closed timelike curve of a worldline that yanked Zhao Yunlan to the past and back, what other exotic spacetime geometries could they make?
What sort of spaceship did the ancestors of the Dixingians and Yashou come over on, and where from? Why? Were they fleeing from something, or consciously aiming for Earth?
What if Shen Wei did his time skip because he was on a relativistic space rocket (i.e., he was on a spaceship that accelerated at 1 G for 5k years, did a gravity assist swing back, and decelerated at 1 G for 5k years, which maths out to shipboard time being a reasonableish 18 years)?
Honestly, I'd be happy with anything that contained weird physics mindfuckery, commonly accepted or only speculative!
Why did the Dixingian-Yashou schism happen? Why did they take human forms? If they already looked like humans, why?