i’m trying not to spoil you for any more things!! lol I’ll just answer this carefully. and yes, it’s not a Huge Ship for me but I definitely ship it
1. What made you ship it?
there’s a specific moment where the camera spins around both of them you’ll know it when you see it
OH also have to cite a moment in the novel where I was like ‘jiang cheng is acting almost Literally Exactly like the jealous love interest from mxtx’s first book... over wei wuxian. well that’s a whole delightful Thing’
2. What are your favorite things about the ship?
okay so I’m a fan of people going literally insane because they can’t handle their feelings, and jiang cheng @ wei wuxian as the story progresses is very much that. I love the... crunchy messiness of jc kind of coming from a place of feeling inherent ownership of wwx, like I for one love to lean into both the ‘brothers’ and the ‘ship’ aspects because the combo there of ‘I adore you in complex ways and I thought we’d always be there for each other and look out for each other and you were mine because we’re brothers but then that doesn’t pan out and it just severely fucks with my whole life’ manifesting in ‘i want to Keep You in every way possible and i’m obsessed with you in every way possible’... *chef’s kiss*. it’s all very Gothic, which is the vibe of all my favorite sibling and sibling-esque ships
realizing that this is all making it sound kind of onesided and i can rock with a good semi-onesided chengxian but i’m absolutely fine with it being requited as well, it’d just take... some work
3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
as always i don’t really know what counts as ‘unpopular’ (and the first thing I thought of would be tripping too near to spoiler territory) so I’ll pass on this for now :P
We emerge from the mists of Ireland - where we’re on retreat with next to no internet - to lay this offering at the feet of one of our favorite people and wish her a very happy birthday! @brazenbells we love you, thank you for two consecutive years of helping us write our boys, and for letting us throw them at your own.
Without further ado, the crossover smash the fans (us, mostly) have been clamoring for! Thanks, Ted.
-
King Abran's throne was as vast and glorious as his kingdom. Made of teak, varnished until the wood seemed to glow with an inner fire, inlaid with gold and etched with scenes from myth and legend and the founding of his dynasty.
And upon it, his wrists heavy with bangles, his fingers dripping rings, his eyes dark with kohl, lounged the crown prince, golden and glorious as a lion at rest. His eyes were lion-tawny too, and his neck was straight and proud, easily bearing the weight of the shining crown that rested upon his brow.
“See,” said Matt, angling his phone so Nico could get a better look at himself. “You look way better in all this sparkly shit than I do.”
Nico slid off the throne with a gentle chinking and untangled the gold-ish polymer crown from his hair. Beneath the gilt, it was dark brown, but for the stark white streak Makeup had sprayed there two hours ago. “Yeah, the casting choices feel a little strange. I can see why everyone on Twitter was pulling up those fanart comps to complain about it. Still not as bad as the, uh - ”
“I know,” Matt said morosely, taking the crown back and putting it on wonky. “I don’t even tan.” They’d dyed his hair again but thankfully drawn the line at trying to make him any less pasty. Manufacturing sexual tension with someone who looks like a stretched out Oompa Loompa might be beyond even Nico’s prodigious talents.
“I’m billed above you though. That’s progress.” Nico tried to get the crown to sit right but succeeded in tilting it drunkenly to the other side. “And, hey, it’s not every day you get a big-budget fantasy epic with a queer romance.”
“They cut out the incest. And most of the sex.” Around them, the studio walls yawned tall and green; the only solid things onset were them and the throne, and the throne was mostly resin.
“There wasn’t that much sex in the book,” said Nico, who’d picked up the novel as soon as the casting call went out and gone through making characterization notes on every page.
Matt, who’d read the first draft as it was posted on AO3, complete with thirteen chapters of kink that hadn’t made it into the published version, sniffed and forbore from commenting. Some hauteur was probably in keeping with playing Gael anyway. More in keeping with Tigris, though, which was further evidence Ted Nord couldn’t cast to save his life.
“I mean, I love it, it’s a really interesting role, but I’m finding it hard to get to grips with,” Nico had said, on the first day of shooting. “Spending your whole life pretending to be being vain and shallow, because it’s not safe to be anything else. Wearing a mask so long you must start to wonder whether you’ve become it. What does that do to a person?”
“Dunno,” Matt had said. “Did you see Ray Lelacheur’s Vogue cover yet? Terrible shoes.”
Now that Nico had abandoned the regal warmth that had settled on him as if it was second nature while draped over the throne, he was stirring the pages of the script again, frowning at his lines. Tigris had been the most he’d had to stretch for a character to date, he’d told Matt, though he’d earnestly added he liked the character’s ‘chewiness.’
Matt, who’d struggled equally hard to locate the generosity of spirit and ease of power that was Gael, continued to think that Ted was just as bad at casting to type as he was to aesthetic.
Nico tossed his white-streaked hair back from his forehead and dragged on his black velvet cloak. “Will you run this scene again with me? I keep not getting the timbre of his ambition right.” He mouthed a few lines, twisted a green gemstone on his finger, and cast an agonized, kohl-rimmed look at Matt. “How do I channel the appropriate volume of petulance, the feeling of a man deprived what by all rights should be his?”
Matt draped himself over his rightful throne, trying to arrange his limbs with the same boneless grace Nico had achieved so easily. “Remember when we were at that falafel truck last week and it took twenty minutes for your order to come and you started cursing god?”
“Suck my dick, Rose,” said Nico reflexively, but looked thoughtful.
“Later,” murmured Matt, and closed his eyes to wait.
-
“Spy,” snarled the prince, rounding on his cousin. Tigris stood his ground, jaw set against the taller man’s fury, lip curling with defiant derision. “You intrude here, in my father’s house, not content to be left to your life of indulgent luxury, so desperate for attention -”
Tigris’s eyes flashed, enraged despite himself. “Attention? You think that is what I crave? Heavens forbid I seek a world beyond the gilded cage my uncle keeps me in, indulging me like a spoilt puppy and giving me just as much freedom. Attention? I would give my eyeteeth for less! If one could trade condescending oversight for actual knowledge of how our kingdom is run-”
“Our kingdom,” repeated Gael. He cocked his head to the side, curiosity warring with the outrage in his noble features. “You truly think it so, do you? But our father-”
“Uncle,” said Tigris, under his breath.
“Our uncle -”
“My uncle,” said Tigris helpfully. “Your father.”
“My - okay, your -” Matt stopped. “Gawd. This doesn’t work at all.”
“See? It doesn’t work half as well without the incest.” Nico flicked a gem-encrusted finger at Matt’s nose.
Matt wrinkled it and adjusted the hang of gold chains over his collarbones. “You say this like I’m the one who made the script changes. And for the record, Cindy was as cut up about it as you are.” Cindy, script doctor extraordinaire, had also lurked the story on AO3 as it sailed up the ‘Original Fiction’ rankings, and was as distressed as he was about the loss of the throne sex scene. “It’s not my fault transgressive familial kink hasn’t crossed over from the hets yet.”
“Kink shmink, it totally shifts the dynamic.” Nico flapped his cloak emphatically. “Adopted cousins isn’t close to the same sort of layers of resentment and entitlement being a bastard half-brother would be.”
“Right,” said Matt, who’d definitely only re-read chapter 12 seven times for the entitlement, and not the way Tigris hissed ‘brother’ while bound to a bedpost. “The morality groups would lose their shit, though. Probably it was the right call.” It was impressive enough his agency had let him sign the role at all; he’d already rocked the boat enough asking if his casting was whitewashing.
“The morality groups are gonna lose their shit over the gay factor anyway,” said Nico stubbornly. “In for a penny...”
“What about the negative associations of homosexuality with sexual taboos?”
“What about double standards?”
“Sure, it’s a double standard and it sucks, but you gotta start somewhere. It’s a story about being an outcast and fighting for scraps of dignity, fighting to be seen as human by people who want you to be less than that, and that’s gonna resonate with a lot of kids. You gotta lay the groundwork then fuck your brother.”
Nico raised an eyebrow and Matt shut up quickly; he, or rather his agency, had made a point of never letting him be drawn into these kinds of debates. “And I think compromise robs art of its power. What does the author think?” They both glanced across the set to where a woman in a peacock-print dress watched as Ted struggled to coral the child actors for the carnival scene. Her expression, behind her glasses, was unreadable.
“Dunno.” Matt ran his hand through his hair. The dye had dried it out and he winced at the brittle, dead-grass feel of it. “Only time we spoke, we both tried to get each other’s autographs and it was really awkward. Bet she’d have some notes for you, though.”
“D’you know, Rose, that’s not a bad idea.” Once resolved, Nico was all action and he stood, script pages fluttering to the floor, velvet cloak swirling around his ankles. The jut of his jaw said that nothing short of poor falafel truck service would defeat him.
“Ask her to show you the predicament bondage scene,” Matt told him helpfully. “There were some really important character beats in that, I thought.”
-
“You think you’re too good for me, don’t you?”
“What?” Matt looked up, taken completely off guard. He was stretched out in Nico’s window seat, deeply absorbed in a thinkpiece on why Kai Bourke would have been a better casting choice for Gael, and thoroughly agreeing with it. Seeing his boyfriend prowling towards him with a look of cold fury and a bare chest was enough to stop him mid-anonymous comment.
Nico stalked across the room towards him, the taut anger etched in every muscle creating a frayed grace that was almost violence. “That’s the worst of you, your highness. It’s not that you hate me. It’s not that you think less of me. It’s that you think nothing of me at all!”
Finally cottoning on, Matt swung his legs around and tried to remember his lines; it was hard, he truly couldn’t remember what part of the script this was. That in itself was unusual. Matt would hardly claim himself a natural thespian or even a diligent professional, but memorizing lines had been a skill drilled into him since he was eight years old and it was a tough habit to shake. Still, while Nico’s words - Tigris’s words - sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn’t for the life of him place them in Ted and Cindy’s script.
“But I’m going to make certain you don’t forget me, brother,” whispered Nico, and that was just it, Matt realized. It wasn’t the script at all. It wasn’t even the book. It was the original.
“You read it?” he mouthed, as Nico’s hand wrapped around his wrist.
“Shocked to learn I’m literate?” spat Nico, but favored him with the shadow of a wink. No shadow around his eyes this time, no gold woven into his hair, but he was more Tigris than he’d been on the soundstage.
It was, simultaneously, extremely Nico.
Matt tried, experimentally, to free his wrist and found he couldn’t. He shivered, feeling his pulse jump, knowing Nico could feel it too. “Was that an attempt to dig deeper into the artistic truth of the work, or to mine it for weird, kinky shit?”
“Yes,” said Nico, bearing him down onto the cushions, beautiful and vengeful and careful not to knock Matt’s laptop off the seat.
-
One of the advantages of shooting a gay film with your boyfriend - one Arose had certainly never intended - was that when Nico turned, grabbed Matt by the lapels, and kissed him on the red carpet, everyone laughed and smiled and Matt knew the gossip mag headlines would be jokes about dedication to the craft and not shock sexuality scandals. His father probably wouldn’t- okay he’d definitely mind but it’d probably be a side note in a meeting about how to capitalize on the film’s success.
And it was a success; some desperately hot sex aside, reading the story - the real story - had apparently been what Nico had needed to pull it together. All the pride and fear and desperate clawing longing of a tiger caged that had risen like a heat haze from Tigris’s story, and Nico had captured it, had reveled in it, and put it on the screen for all to see.
Matt straightened his tie and winked to the paps - just a joke between bros, nothing queer here - and resolved to fuck Nico senseless in the restrooms after the premier. Nico laughed and stuck his tongue out. He’d left the white streak in his hair for the red carpet, as stark as the collar of his suit, and Matt had to say, it was growing on him.
brazenbells replied to your post “my boss ripped out a permanent crown eating a starburst and she just....”
There are a lot of times when I suspect you actually ARE part of an all-fae law office and writing about Cockatoo is just an attempt to throw everyone off the scent.
clearly it’s not working, now I gotta send someone to make you forget
brazenbells replied to your post “Hey gang, how would you, yes, YOU, like to have your writing seen by a...”
Tell me more! I am happy to talk about how charming and gorgeous you both are.
Kelsi, if you ever need a reference for ‘being a person who is a human treasure and also very good at writing sexy madness’, you know where to find us.
Here’s the scoop: our agent is putting our manuscript out on submission soon, and she wants reader testimonials to pitch not just this book, but all our writing. We have to figure out our hashtag brand so we can market not just for this series, but for anything we write, across genres!
Which brings us to (self-consciously) soliciting commentary from folks who've read our work in fandom who can be like ‘yo when you read something by Junion (tm) you can guarantee it’s gonna be 1) humorous and 2) involve handsome men with missing limbs’ etc.
brazenbells replied to your post “I thought ‘it would make a dog laugh’ was a reasonably well-known...”
Not only have I never heard this or anything like it, I also cannot figure out what it's supposed to mean!
In reference to a contemptible, painful or otherwise embarrassing sight, ridiculous enough to make a dog, which is not an animal known for laughing, laugh.
‘You should have seen so-and-so doing such-and-such, it would have made a dog laugh.’
Part of the reason I was trying to look it up was to get a more concise definition, but I suppose if it’s something I somehow made up or picked up from some obscure place that’s the only definition I’m going to get.
