Radiant Emperor Week

[radiantemperorweek]

What is Radiant Emperor Week?

Radiant Emperor Week is a fun, casual, week-long celebration of the wonderful world of the Radiant Emperor duology and all our favorite characters!

When is the event?

August! VOTE HERE for a specific week or weekend!

Radiant Emperor Week 2026 will be August 24 - 30th!

How does it work?

Prompt Submissions will occur April 16th to April 23rd - submit prompts here!

Prompt Voting will occur April 26th to May 1st - vote for prompts here!

Prompts will be released May 3rd to help get the creativity and excitement flowing! Find prompts here!

What counts as a creation?

Anything and everything! Fics, art, blackout poetry, meta, podfic, headcanons, moodboards, playlists–as long as you made it and it’s about the Radiant Emperor duology, we’d love to see it!

Are there any rules or guidelines?

Sure!

Don’t be a dick. This means ship and let ship, don’t like don’t read, no kink-shaming, no forcing your headcanons on others, no racism, no transphobia, etc. We want this to be a fun and positive experience for all.

Tag accurately.

Please add image descriptions to submissions and otherwise consider accessibility with respect to scene breaks, text formatting, etc.

Spoiler/label all NSFW content using tumblr’s community labels and the appropriate labels on AO3, if your work is cross-posted there.

Follow this blog for more details. Didn’t answer your question? Have a suggestion? Our ask box is open!

[macbethisms]

i love how utterly unrepressed zhu is. guy who grew up in a famine and now has insatiable appetites for everything

[nineveh-uk]

Sometimes I think that Wang Baoxiang should get over himself, and then I remember that apparently the entire population of Henan believes that Esen likes Ouyang more than him.

[cuckchair-dyke]

I need to write about ouyang's feelings about morning wood this is so important to me

[naysaltysalmon]

Terrible likeness - naysaltysalmon - a Radiant Emperor fic - AO3

Words: 3,066 Genre: Drama/tragedy Rating: M (body dysmorphia, sexual content)

Pairings: Ouyang/Zhu, Ouyang/Esen Characters: General Ouyang, Zhu Chongba/Zhu Yuanzheng, Esen-Temur

A/N: I wrote this fic months ago now but Tumblr hasn't been letting me post AO3 links for some reason, so here I am finally posting it!! Enjoy~

Summary:

“Did you let Fang Guozhen fuck you? You did, didn’t you.”

It wasn’t a question he expected to have answered, but he could already tell: The flush lingered in Zhu’s cheeks, and there was an unusual slackness in her spine, all-too-familiar in the months they’d been traveling together, shared clandestine moments together. The accusation had made her eyes widen with bemusement and consternation, but more than that, Ouyang had sensed it after the competition in front of all of those people, Fang’s interest in him. In the woman he presumed Ouyang to be, how this large and powerful man pursued every rare and interesting thing in his midst until it was in his bed.

Would he have pursued Ouyang still, had he known Ouyang’s true nature?

Or would he have become nothing in Fang’s eyes, a disgusting conventionality?

Ouyang trembled from the thought. A powerful man like that – he didn’t deserve to gaze upon Ouyang’s body, or the man Ouyang presumed Zhu to be.

Except it was all fake.

A lie.

A deception.

Zhu was using him for her own end, all along.

––

Ouyang learns from Jiao that Zhu is female, but things turn out quite differently.

[macbethisms]

my dealer: got some straight gas. this strain is called "the mandate of heaven" you'll be zonked out of your gourd

me: whatever. i don't feel shit

5 minutes later: dude i'm transforming, hurtling toward the blinding light of greatness away from the meaningless weight of my past. nothing can stop me because my will reshapes the world

my buddy baoxiang pacing: my brother's ghost is lying to me

[thestoriesthatweweave]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

My entry for Radiant New Year! A canon divergence au set in a world where the punishment of the Ouyang clan was just different enough to completely change the fates of all the principal characters...

(not in this fic though. in this fic we have awkward teenage flirting and Esen being an idiot)

[nineveh-uk]

Radiant Emperor fic I am not writing: gameshow modern AU.

Specifically, a Traitors AU. I want to see Zhu, Ma, and Wang Baoxiang at the final Round Table, he desperately trying to get her to accept that Zhu is a traitor - and then Ma votes against Baoxiang. Not that it matters in terms of the game, because she's also a traitor, but he's really going to need that post-game psychological support.

[mispatchedgreens]

at night they roleplay at being ghosts and that way they can't hurt each other. or something.

[glue-bubbles]

SPOILERS ?? firebending siblingism tragically mixed with the Radiant Emperor Duology siblingism

[rustpuppy]

if zhu teamed up with baoxiang instead of ouyang they would have been unstoppable. the schemes their combined minds would concoct.... i can scarcely comprehend....

[rustpuppy]

😭 OUYANG. please

[ouyangposting-quarantine]

Ouyang moodboard <3

[gatoraid]

The perfect sex scene doesn't exi–

[ouyangposting-quarantine]

it's always fun to think about how both ouyang and wbx's relationships with esen also in a way parallel the ways they feel about masculinity. as in, love, hate, feeling of rejection and betrayal and a longing that can never be fulfilled, all those conflicting feelings they they then deal with in amazingly questionable ways

they make me sick

[greens-your-color]

Thousands

Thinking about… how the recurring (and always insincere) obeisance of “Ten thousand years! Ten thousands years to the Great Khan!” fails as it was always doomed to fail by the very hollowness of the empire. How its insincerity is reinforced through the obsequious repetition of “a thousand apologies” and “a thousand greetings” to whatever figurehead is on a throne.

And yet: “Go into your next life. Live it and bear its suffering. Do it again with the life after that, and the next, and with each one find it easier. Until one day, in a thousand years, the force of the universe will bring you and Esen-Temur back together to start afresh.”

And: “He was burning, and it was the kind of infinite directionless pain that he knew would continue forever, even after death, through a thousand more years of suffering.

‘Esen, he thought. Wait for me.’”

Just…… ugh, what endures and what doesn’t!! The hollowness of empire and the endurance of love and of grief!!

[astrarche-x]

Happy Zhuyang sunday!! Inviting you all to celebrate by checking out my zhuyang playlist :3

ps. hmu if you need some lyrics translated :)