#3chen

[wifiwuxians]

song lan request backlog number 45: smoochies

[guqin-and-flute]

'Were Song Lan a nosy man, he might have wondered how it came to be that the traditionally strict Lan allowed such a madman to roam their territory with such impunity, no matter his status.'

SURE, BUD, YOU KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT

[aoxue]

Some 3chen 🤍🖤💙 for this year's @mdzsrbb! Which @mdzs-rabbithole brought to life beautifully.

Song Zichen stands on a small, residential path in Cloud Recesses. The sunlight glints off of the crossed swords he wears, and Lan Xichen’s heart pangs with sympathetic grief. When their eyes meet across the bursting pink garden, the man’s expressionless face still somehow conveys concern. --- Lan Xichen is still in seclusion when he begins an unlikely friendship with Song Lan and the teenaged ghost who walks beside him.

Piece By Agonizing Piece on AO3

[the-pudding-is-a-lie]

i3 for Lan Xichen, Song Lan, and Xiao Xingchen for the poly pose meme! I love me some 3Chen!

I have never thought of 3chen before but holy moly, I love this concept! Thank you for requesting them, this was fun to draw. :)

(I am doing this little poly pose challenge thingie!)

[image ID: digital lineart drawing of Song Lang, Lan Xichen and Xiao Xingchen from The Untamed/MDZS. They are in canon-adjacent outfits and hairdos. Lan Xichen and Xiao Xingchen are facing each other and have their fingers laced together. Lan Xichen's other hand rests on Xiao Xingchen's hips. Song Lan leans in from behind Lan Xichen, they are sharing a glance with each other. Song Lang reaches for their clasped hands with his own. They are all smiling and all look happy and relaxed. A decorative symmatrical pattern fills the background behind them. End ID.]

[aoxue]

no but also 3chen 3zun and songxiao 💖💖💖

Ask game

Going in reverse order! 💖

Ship: SONGXIAO

Ship it? I am a songxiao fan first and a MDZS fan second

1) What made you ship it? Those like, two minutes in CQL where it is revealed that Xiao Xingchen dug out his eyes and gave them to Song Lan and then immediately proceeds to kill Song Lan. And then after, watching XXC kill himself and destroy his soul after learning what he's done to SL, and SL going off to care for and nurture what's left of him for the next eternity. It is peak drama out here for these men. Shakespeare kind of nonsense. It did take reading up on details from the novel, since CQL does miss out on some of the key details (as most of the adaptations do), for all the pieces to come together. But then after that, also reading a lot of fixit fic! I have been gone for them ever since

2) What are your favorite things about the ship? It's about the mutual love, trust, and respect. It's the terrible selflessness. It's the devotion that transcends death itself. It's about having your own life with your own tasks and motivations and morals, but being so lucky as to find another person who understands you and is in sync enough that you can walk your paths side by side and work together toward the dreams you create together. And yet it's also about literally losing pieces of yourself for the sake of another person. It's about horrific acts done out of love with only the best intentions at heart. It's the way none of this tragedy would have befallen them if they didn't care about each other so damn much. It's two very attractive and extremely competent and good-hearted men in the most yin/yang relationship I've ever seen. It's the purported universal touch aversion with one (1) special exception. (This is fanon, but I really love the explicit conversations about consent and boundaries that these two have in fic, even for something as simple as holding hands. Aspec songxiao, also a great flavor.) It's the watching, dumbfounded, as the guy you like splits his sides laughing at wuxia China's most mediocre joke. It's home being another person. It's A-Qing getting to have two dads. I could go on.

3) Is there an unpopular opinion you have about this ship? As much as I think about these guys, probably multiple! I disagree when people say the relationship was weak to have fallen apart so easily, or when people vilify Song Lan for acting the way he did in the aftermath of the Baixue massacre. It's as if an outside entity carried out extreme acts of violence specifically tailored to ruin these guys' lives in the most hurtful way possible. I think that'd put, like, at least a little strain on any relationship between two people, probably. It might also make the direct victim of some of this violence a little upset, and perhaps liable to say a thing or two he doesn't mean in the heat of the moment. Seeing as he is a human person. Who knows.

---

Ship: 3ZUN

Ship it? Yes, but only casually, I admit

1) What made you ship it? As a CQL native, the dynamics are clearly worked into the show, especially xiyao, as well as some nieyao, and they make an impact, for sure. But honestly, a large part of it also comes from the 3zun fanwork I've seen people produce? There is some STELLAR stuff out there about these guys. It's helped win me over.

2) What are your favorite things about the ship? It's the way all three of them would like to make things work, and all three of them care about each other, but each have their own approaches to life that are so in conflict with the others. This post sums it up really well for me: NMJ was raised to live honorably and die young, JGY was raised to survive and be secure, and LXC was raised to take responsibility for everyone around him. I really like the xiyao dynamics of "I've done every evil thing someone can do, but you are the one living person I hold sacred" and "you helped me at my lowest and I see you the way nobody else does (which is simultaneously a truer version of you and STILL ALSO an awful facade)." The utter betrayal while still genuinely caring for a person and then dying in front of them, leaving them to unpack all of that on their own for the next however many years. nielan presumably hit the sect heirs to friends to lovers/sect leaders thrust into power too young and dealing with the heavy weight of what their fathers left behind beats. nieyao had something going for them before it all went sideways and pretty soon you're monologuing to your ex's severed head in your secret evil lair/closet. Not a great look, Yaoyao

3) Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I know that's part of the appeal for some people, but once we move from Meng Yao to Jin Guangyao, the nieyao leg of 3zun gets a pretty dicey and it becomes a harder sell for me. When JGY's main objective becomes maintaining a secure position in the Jin clan (including defaulting to JGS's opinions, which NMJ is known to disagree with, vocally, and semi-frequently), it's hard for me to get them to a place where I'd find them compatible enough to ship. And certainly when JGY starts to sabotage NMJ, that's a total no-go for me :/ I'm keeping them away from each other

---

Ship: 3CHEN

Ship it? Yes!

1) What made you ship it? I don't actually remember an inciting incident, exactly? I am sure it had to do with happenings on the lanlan discord. Probably comes down to being a lanlan appreciator, but also songxiao being my #1 at the end of the day, and wanting, as ever, for Song Lan to catch a break, perhaps even some slack. I really do think these three would work very well together, especially after all they've been through by the end of MDZS. There is so much healing they can do together. They've all been dealt a really rough, but kind of similar, hands. Lan Xichen and Song Lan have the grief and survivor guilt over their respective dear friends/bfs that they can process together (and for the ship to work, I think this step needs to come first before XXC reenters the picture). Lan Xichen and Xiao Xingchen both had their good faith taken advantage of, which led to the deaths of innocent people and men they loved, and they have similar guilt to process. Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen have their shared history (see: everything above), and they're dealing with different sides of the same traumatic events; they also have a lot of work to do to learn how to exist around each other again comfortably. Put all 3 of these guys in the same place, and you have a lot to work with, I think. Also, Song Lan has two hands (let him have two beautifully kind and loving boyfriends)

2) What are your favorite things about the ship? The dynamics and healing potential explained above! But also, I think the characters are fun together. They're all good boys who would all love and support each other. They're all enormously skilled cultivators, and would be a match for each other in that regard. None of them care about social status in their judgements of people. Xichen is well versed in sect politics and policy, while songxiao are the type to effect change through direct, small-scale action, with Song Lan being the more practical and Xiao Xingchen being less limited by societal expectations; working together, they could improve things for a lot of people more effectively than they could apart. I like Song Lan's steady, serious devotion with Xiao Xingchen's softness and light silly streak and Lan Xichen's good humor and patience. I like Song Lan being able to step outside when he's had enough touch for the moment while his bfs can keep getting their cuddles in, and then blushing as hard as a fierce corpse can when he comes back indoors and gets one little kiss on the cheek from each of them.

3) Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? It's a small ship, so I'm not sure… But I think A-Qing should be in the 3chen picture. (I also think this about post-canon Yi City fixits generally.) If you're working in canon conditions, and you're doing the work to resurrect Xiao Xingchen in some creative way or another, why wouldn't you bring A-Qing along, too. She's probably easier to bring back than XXC. She also deserves better. She could have THREE dads. Imagine

[guqin-and-flute]

Post-Canon Song Lan/Lan Xichen Meet (by blowing up a ghost)

[EDIT: Now titled The Brightest Sparks That We Remember]

[Chapter 2] [Ao3 link]

[CW: Very brief child death and eating people mention]

Song Lan could feel the buzz of wards in the air against his deadened skin and stopped. Darting further into the bamboo, the ghost that had managed to stay maddeningly just out of reach during his entire pursuit heard his footsteps pause and glanced back over its shoulder. Seeing him stopped, it stretched its too wide mouth into a ghastly, bloody smile, laughed like a rusty sword and continued on into the shadows of the deeper woods.

For a moment, Song Lan hesitated, weight on the balls of his feet. He wanted to pursue. This thing had been terrorizing a small village deep in the remote mountains of Gusu and he had been hunting it tirelessly for 2 days now, running it ragged through twisting passes and across frozen peaks, giving it no recourse to continue its slaughter, weakening it considerably.

It certainly couldn’t turn around and feed on him--he wasn’t the right kind of corpse.

But now, he was near civilization again, apparently, and the single minded hunt of evil was ceding to the rules of the human world again. He had to consider things like land ownership and propriety, and if he, a fierce corpse of some considerable power, tripped the wards to some cultivation sect or Temple land, he would have to explain himself. If they even allowed him time to do so before trying to eradicate him.

His hand tightened on Fuxue’s frigid hilt in his hand, no warmer from his touch than the snow around him. The night was bitterly cold and bright, though neither made a difference to him, the full moon bathing the snow into brilliant midnight scintillation between the proud stands of bamboo. These wards were strong and old--he might even have chased the thing far enough to be near the Cloud Recesses. Of course someone would have been alerted to the thing's crossing and could deal with it themselves. However, it was rude to chase something onto another’s land and have them clean up after you. But one had to balance that against the rudeness of trespassing in the first place. And while his few interactions with Hangaung-jun had been…cordial, if unorthodox, there was no guarantee he would be met with anyone who knew him, if this even was the home of the Lan.

But this ghost was powerful and quick and had eaten several of the children in the village already and killed several men. Truly vicious.

Fuxue waited patiently while he considered. On his back and on his belt, Shanghua and the spirit pouches remained quiet, unforthcoming. Only sometimes did he receive a nudge from one of the 3, a vague impression or a fleeting emotion. He hoped that it was a sign that their souls were slowly condensing and healing.

Indecision kept him stone still, listening to the crunch of footsteps disappearing rapidly deeper into the bamboo, out of sight, now.

Until he heard a cry of fear.

Without another thought, Song Lan darted across the boundary after the ghost. Dimly, he felt the snap of the wards fizz over his skin, raising the hairs on his arms, the smell of ozone and a glacial tang flooding his nose. It did not matter. Someone was in danger.

Swift and silent as a shadow, he sped across the snow, weaving between the bamboo trunks--instead of fading, that smell of ozone and ice was growing stronger--until he broke into a clearing and found a man, surrounded by drifting snow.

He had his back to the moon with a long fall of black, unbound hair, ghostly, as graceful and distant as the moon. This pervading, lightning-struck scent of spiritual power was coming from him. Were it not for the vibrant thrill of yang qi Song Lan can feel thrumming from him, he might have thought he was the arrival of another, more powerful ghost. His hand was extended, long and elegant, a flake of the scattered snow lit on his fingers. No. Not snow, he saw, now; ash. The man had smeared it with his thumb, leaving a light gray streak across his fingertips and snow did not fall from an empty, star strewn sky.

It was when the man turned, sensing his approach, that brought Song Lan to a dead halt, frozen at the edge of the clearing. Had he breath and a heartbeat, it would have skipped, locked. His hand shot to the pouch hanging on his left side.

Xingchen? Xiao Zhen?

But then…no.

No. He saw, now, in the pouring of moonlight above them, though they were of a similar height, this man’s jaw was stronger, his shoulders wider, the slope of his nose wrong. And the broken soul beneath Song Lan’s palm still fluttered, weakly, like dying embers in its pouch. This man was tall and handsome, as he had been, but he was not his Xiao Zhen.

It must have been the regal sweep of the eyebrows, the celestial, remote sort of beauty both the men shared that had made Song Lan see…what he yearned for. Of course his love had not somehow materialized on some strange mountain peak in Gusu. Had some part of him truly been secretly clutching the hollow hope of his miraculous return? Since when had hope had a roost in him in these last 10 years? Even in the 2 he had finally been set free from Xue Yang’s control, he had not noticed its arrival. But now he certainly felt its wounding.

If Xingchen were to return--and even this was not certain--it would not be for a long, long time.

The man was watching him, silently. Song Lan sheathed his sword and bowed, using the movement to draw one of the talismans he had made from his sleeve so he could trace faintly glowing words in the air with his finger, lingering like ink through water. “Song Lan apologizes for troubling this cultivator with his affairs.”

The ash that had fallen had been what remained of the ghost’s soul after it was forcibly dissipated by whoever this was, the cry of terror and surprise had been its last breath, not a victim’s. All that was left now was to apologize for trespassing and be on his way. Since he hadn’t been attacked already, he may yet be able to handle this amicably as it was unlikely that whoever this was could not sense his true nature if he could so thoroughly destroy a ghost of that level without blinking.

There came a long silence as the man studied him without malice or chill, face closed and Song Lan bore his gaze stolidly. Finally, the stranger said in a low, hoarse voice. “It’s no trouble.”

He certainly cut something of an odd picture, standing there in the snow of the deep woods in just a few layers of white robes and unbound hair, not introducing himself and not asking why Song Lan has trespassed. Something about him was distantly familiar--perhaps someone he had met in passing during his life or someone who had visited Baixue Temple. No matter. The ghost was destroyed and his work was complete. Just as he was preparing to explain his farewell and bow, the strange cultivator suddenly turned his head as if hearing something from deeper in the woods, though Song Lan could sense nothing. Then, he turned back. “Please follow me,” he said quietly and turned to disappear through the gently swaying bamboo behind him.

For the second time that night, Song Lan paused, considering his options. The man had not glanced behind him to see if Song Lan was following and the boundary line of wards was not more than a few hundred yards across the woods in the opposite way. Whatever the man had sensed surely couldn’t be so fast as to catch him before he left if he himself hadn’t been able to catch wind of it yet. He could simply leave and be on his way, leaving this moonlit clearing and this odd cultivator behind.

Shanghua twitched. Startled, he automatically reached up and wrapped his hand around its hilt, opening himself up for whatever play of emotions or energy. But there was nothing. Perhaps it was just reminded of its master The Bright Moon and Gentle Breeze with the full moon so round and bright overhead. Sometimes he would imagine he knew what Xiao Xingchen would say in some instances, the memory of his voice keeping him company as the man had so long ago. Seeing Song Lan hesitate, now, he would have smiled serenely and said, Keeping a new friend waiting is rude, don’t you think, Zichen?

Song Lan supposed there was no harm. He could fight his way out if need be. He followed the man, slipping in through the bamboo after him.

[guqin-and-flute]

AI produced 3Chen Name Art {  Lan Xichen  /  Song Lan  /  Xiao Xingchen  }

[guqin-and-flute]

So, LanLan could also technically be ChenChen.

And if XXC healed enough to come back at some point...it could be ChenChenChen. (琛尘臣)