for the h/c prompt meme: Yunmeng sibs, someone waking up not knowing where they are, OR WangXian, frantically feeling for breath or pulse
I’ve written like one Wangxian thing in my entire time in this fandom, clearly I’ve got to get my shit together. Here, apparently I only write one thing for these two. For this ask meme!
The cave is damp and cold, but Wei Ying’s skin is hot, the shape of his jaw like a brand against Lan Wangji’s thigh even through the layers of his robes. The xuanwu’s resentful energy and deprivation and exertion and the blistered burn have finally conspired to bring Wei Ying’s strength to an end, and now he shivers on the stone, head in Wangji’s lap as they both grow cold with the weight of their sodden robes. Wangji’s voice is beginning to crack, which is academically interesting to him--he’s never spoken for long enough to lose his voice before, but Wei Ying’s rest is fragile, and when Wangji stops humming, he swims up to the surface of consciousness.
Wangji keeps humming, although his throat is dry and aching, and Wei Ying sleeps, and all he has to do is wait, wait for someone to come, for the other disciples to find help--
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, and Wangji looks down, and Wei Ying looks up at him with gleaming fever-bright eyes and black smoke between his teeth. “Go away,” Wei Ying says. Scarlet light is bleeding through his eyes, and his hand, bloodied, isn’t holding a sword but a dizi, and he’s still curled on the ground in black and red, with his head in Wangji’s lap, but--
“Wei Ying,” Wangji says, or tries to say. His voice is gone, broken by hours of singing, and no sound falls from his lips.
“Get lost!” Wei Ying snarls. He twists like water in Wangji’s grip, until he’s kneeling in pooling smoke and closing his fists in Wangji’s collar, and he shoves, hard. The only thing that keeps Wangji from tumbling to the stone is his good reflexes, latching onto Wei Ying’s wrists just as tightly, and--
Wei Ying’s flesh crumbles under Wangji’s touch, tears free with a wet ripping noise, and Wei Ying screams. His back arches, neck bared, and Wangji reaches out again, thoughtless, terrified, and pieces of Wei Ying’s body simply fall, as if torn away by invisible claws, and the screaming won’t stop, and--
Lan Wangji lurches back to consciousness, silent and shaking. He can hear his own breathing, ragged, shuddering over every inhale. His hands tremble like he’s suffered a palsy when he brings them up to cover his face, and his cheeks are wet under his fingers.
He presses one palm over his mouth to keep himself quiet--don’t wake A-Yuan, the habit of years, but--that’s not right, Sizhui is a grown man, da-shixiong of the sect. Wangji could move his hand, he could curl up around his marked chest and cry and no one would know except for himself and his silent walls.
“L’n Zh’n?” Wei Ying mumbles, and a slim hand reaches blindly out to touch Wangji’s shoulder.
The world grinds to a halt, shudders, resumes.
Wangji moves without thinking, rolls onto his side and presses his hand to the unscarred chest beside him. It takes a moment, an awful moment of wondering if he’s wrong, if this is just the latest shape of an old nightmare, but then--
Wei Ying’s heart beats under his hand, steady and slow with sleep. He feels Wei Ying’s chest vibrate when he hums, and one of Wei Ying’s hands comes up to rest over his hand.
“Lan Zhan,” he says again, more clearly. “It can’t be morning yet.”
“No,” Wangji says, and his voice sounds only slightly choked. “Go back to sleep, Wei Ying.”
A hand settles on Wangji’s cheek as Wei Ying blinks open his eyes, and he looks suspicious in the dim silver light of a nearly-new moon shining through their window. Then the stern look ebbs, and Wei Ying scrubs at Wangji’s cheekbone with one thumb.
“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says softly, still holding Wangji’s hand to his heart where his blood pumps and his lungs expand and his bones and muscles and skin all work together to make a whole and living person. Wangji has never touched something more miraculous in all his life. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Wangji shakes his head. He does not. He is not entirely sure he’s capable of talking about it. Wei Ying doesn’t question him, just nods sleepily and shifts his hand around to cup the back of Wangji’s head, tangled into his hair, so that he can stretch up and press their foreheads together. Wangji can feel the warm stirring of air as Wei Ying breathes, can feel Wei Ying’s heartbeat under his palm, and slowly, so slowly, his shaking begins to fade.
“Here,” Wei Ying says imperiously, once he seems satisfied with Wangji’s steadiness. He braces both hands on Wangji’s chest and shoves, and Wangji goes compliantly, because right this moment there is probably little he wouldn’t do at the first sign of Wei Ying’s intent. Once Wangji is lying on his back again, how he usually sleeps, Wei Ying makes himself comfortable sprawled across his chest, with his face tucked into the curve of Wangji’s throat and their legs tangled together, all the warm length of Wei Ying’s bare skin pressed against him.
“Mm,” Wangji murmurs, and presses one hand to Wei Ying’s waist, the other coming to rest on his back where his heart beats steadily.
“Good?” Wei Ying asks, and his words drift softly against the thin skin of Wangji’s throat. Wangji presses his face into Wei Ying’s hair, and breathes.
So MXY is kind of lowkey simmering under the surface a good amount of the time, but he stifles it for the most part without thinking about it - partly out of self-preservation, but also partly due to someone in his position not really having any existing outlet or validation for that anger, if that makes sense? So much of Mo Xuanyu is who others tell him he is. (Adjacently, he has so much trouble recognizing sexual desire in himself - and even more so considering acting on it as an independent agent - because it’s all wrapped up in what others want, or what others project onto him.) His anger just kind of... has nowhere to go. :/
@audible-smiles once brought up the headcanon of MXY having BPD, and I’ve adopted that as well. He’s very prone to splitting on people - “people” primarily being JGY, who’s one of the few people to be nice to him - so he tends to let resentments pile up until they burst through in seething episodes of anger. But he tends to cycle between externally projected anger, and then remorse and self-loathing for feeling that way. Very black-and-white oscillation between other people being bad, or him being bad.
I would love to see MXY fuck shit up, but I don’t see him being good with physical violence (i.e. combat). He’s not very comfortable in his own body, for dysphoria/dissociation/etc. reasons, and I think it’s significant that his biggest act of violence is targeted against himself - with the intent to harm others, but through making his body a passive weapon for another entity. I would love to seem him maybe channel some kind of similar energy, but with more agency and control over himself (and without, yknow, shattering his soul D: ). But he would be suited towards the kind of violence that’s more about force of will than physical prowess.
■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon
Nie Huaisang was raised to be fundamentally accustomed to having other people clean up after him. As such, he’s rather careless when it comes to keeping things perfectly neat and tidy - he’ll casually toss his outer robes across the nearest piece of furniture, say, or leave wine glasses strewn about the area, because he’s got servants to deal with that. But he is rather meticulous about where his notes and personal effects are kept. He’s got an organization system going (especially when he’s in full revenge mode and keeping tabs on JGY), but it’s comprehensible only to him.
He likes to have his little comforts close to him and generally has a little store of wine tucked away somewhere in his chambers.
El caos es la ciencia de las sorpresas, de lo no lineal y lo impredecible. Nos enseña a esperar lo inesperado. Mientras que la mayoría de la ciencia tradicional se ocupa de fenómenos supuestamente predecibles como la gravedad, la electricidad o las reacciones químicas, la Teoría del Caos se ocupa de cosas no lineales que son efectivamente imposibles de predecir o controlar, como la turbulencia, el clima, el mercado de valores, nuestros estados cerebrales, etc. Estos fenómenos a menudo son descritos por Fractal Matemáticos, que captura la Complejidad Infinita de la Naturaleza. Muchos objetos naturales exhiben propiedades fractales, incluidos paisajes, nubes, árboles, órganos, ríos, etc., y muchos de los sistemas en los que vivimos exhiben un comportamiento complejo y caótico. Reconocer la naturaleza caótica y fractal de nuestro mundo puede darnos una nueva visión, poder y sabiduría.
Principios del caos
El efecto mariposa: este efecto otorga el poder de causar un huracán en China a una mariposa que agita sus alas en Nuevo México. Puede llevar mucho tiempo, pero la conexión es real. Si la mariposa no hubiera batido sus alas en el punto justo en el espacio / tiempo, el huracán no habría sucedido. Una forma más rigurosa de expresar esto es que pequeños cambios en las condiciones iniciales conducen a cambios drásticos en los resultados. Nuestras vidas son una demostración continua de este principio.
Imprevisibilidad: debido a que nunca podemos conocer todas las condiciones iniciales de un sistema complejo con detalles suficientes (es decir, perfectos), no podemos esperar predecir el destino final de un sistema complejo. Incluso los pequeños errores en la medición del estado de un sistema se amplificarán drásticamente, haciendo que cualquier predicción sea inútil. Dado que es imposible medir los efectos de todas las mariposas (etc.) en el mundo, la predicción precisa del clima a largo plazo siempre será imposible.
Orden / Desorden: el caos no es simplemente desorden. El caos explora las transiciones entre el orden y el desorden, que a menudo ocurren de manera sorprendente.
Mezcla: la turbulencia garantiza que dos puntos adyacentes en un sistema complejo eventualmente terminen en posiciones muy diferentes después de que haya transcurrido un tiempo.
Fractales: un fractal es un patrón interminable. Los fractales son patrones infinitamente complejos que son auto-similares en diferentes escalas. Se crean repitiendo un proceso simple una y otra vez en un ciclo de retroalimentación continuo. Impulsados por la recursividad, los fractales son imágenes de sistemas dinámicos: las imágenes del Caos. Geométricamente, existen entre nuestras dimensiones familiares. Los patrones fractales son extremadamente familiares, ya que la naturaleza está llena de fractales. Por ejemplo: árboles, ríos, costas, montañas, nubes, conchas marinas, huracanes, etc.
edgewitch replied to your post “has anyone circumvented the whole “should i tag this relationship as...”
not sure i've noticed it myself, def seen someone complain about it as a phenomenon
thelightofthingshopedfor replied to your post “has anyone circumvented the whole “should i tag this relationship as...”
I’ve done that when the characters start as friends and then get shippy, or when I ship them but in the actual fic they don’t get further than flirting a little, or when nothing actually shippy happens in the fic but my stated intent is to go in that direction, or some similar situation where the shippy aspect is there if you’re looking for it but can be ignored if you’re not. Didn’t realize until recently that people have problems with using both tags in those situations too. ��
miseriathome replied to your post “has anyone circumvented the whole “should i tag this relationship as...”
People get mad af if you use both & and / for an ambiguous dynamic lmao because one will conflict with how THEY'RE reading the story. But like it makes a shitload of sense to me as a good tagging practice to cover a wide array of bases, for publicity and also to give information about the contents?
I feel like I should be less surprised than I am that this is something people get mad about, because I KNOW already fandom is intense about “it’s EITHER ROMANTIC OR PLATONIC, NO GREY AREAS” (particularly wrt tagging). But yeah these are all good points - I think it could also be useful for “the slash gives these interactions a particular framing/external context/intentionality that they wouldn’t necessarily have otherwise, but they don’t inherently have to be read that way.”
(And that’s sort of what tags already do - give information about the author’s intention that the reader wouldn’t normally pick up on. That’s something I also struggle with re: tagging certain fics “[Identity] Character” - how much of that has to be explicit in the fic? And how much of it is just stuff that gains meaning based on my stated intentions?)
I’ll confess that “one will conflict with how they’re reading the story” is kind of weird to me - like, there are plenty of relationships where I don’t mind having some ambiguity as to their nature? And in general, there are so many places in fanfic where I’ll just mentally correct stuff I don’t like or that doesn’t fit with my headcanons, if I like other stuff going on in the fic? Idk it’s just strange to me.
so you piqued my curiosity, and, looks like there are 76 works on ao3 tagged with the fandom "Jolene - Dolly Parton (Song)" and 51 works tagged with the character "Jolene (Jolene)", which, wonderful, love that
oh! looks like there's also a canonical fandom tag for "Jolene - Lil Nas X (Song)"
Yesss, love this so much. Thanks for researching and sharing your findings!
The way I feel the loneliness when I’m practice witchcraft is... cozzie. Don’t get me wrong, I love having company, to teach, to read tarots to a friendly face. To cook a family recipe with the loved ones. But being by myself on the edge of a cliff, my palms of the hands facing the sky. On the nostrils, the odour of seawater and mugwort. It’s the perfect witchiness!
my “block post” button is suddenly gone, and that’s all that was making this website tolerable, so if this ain’t fixable, I’m gone...but XKit Guy has always come through in the past, so we’ll see I guess
