*slides into your inbox* PLEASE tell me about the tian yao eating disorder fic with nainai like that sounds like it was made to scratch my brain
i'm so glad that you specifically have asked about that one!! that fic is the one i've been referring to as bodyfic here. it was born from two specific moments in canon:
the moment where yanhui asks tianyao what his favorite food is and he tells her he doesn't like to eat
the moment where tianyao eyes the fish that yanhui is cooking
my thought process went like this: if he doesn't like to eat why is he eying food?? what if he needs to eat while he's unable to nourish himself like a dragon would??? what if he has to and hates eating the whole time????
and voila! a fic was born! bodyfic explores the time before canon when tianyao is thrust into life with a fundamentally changed body. there is heavy emphasis on the trauma and self-loathing related to that. it's dual perspective, switching between tianyao and nainai. he is Not Eating Enough and nainai is trying desperately to keep him alive, while grieving for A'Fu the first.
funnily enough, the eating disorder was my first and most driving thought about the fic and it's the part i'm having the most trouble writing 😅 but i'm deeply deeply enjoying diving into the other implications of the change in tianyao's body. if we are going to trace influences, your work would have to be on the list!! you don't shy away from tianyao's hard feelings about his body in if all encounters are reunions long overdue (link for anyone who hasn't read it) and that absolutely feeds my fascination with this. (hey i. really love if all encounters are reunions long overdue. like. so much)
now for a snippet! here is tianyao and nainai meeting:
An old woman stands only two arms lengths away from where he is sprawled. He was hurt easily before, nearly annihilated, despite his thousand years of cultivation and wholeness of body. Dragon body. When he'd still been a dragon. Now he has nothing and he is nothing. He could be put out like a candle flame. So when the old woman steps closer, he doesn't hear her words. He doesn't wait to interpret her outstretched hand. He scrambles backwards. Bares his teeth. Su Ying reaches towards him, to skewer his heart, to yank it out. He clutches his chest, curls around it. His other arm he extends, his bloody palm out, fragile and useless. The sword pierces him all the way to his jaw, clanging against the bone. Su Ying draws it down the length of him as though he were a fish to be roasted for dinner. With a spell, she takes his skeleton out of him, bone by bone, his tendons and ligaments tearing, audible despite his screaming. Even now, she refuses to touch him. Fingertips touch his own. He jerks away. "I want — " "I want you dead!" Su Ying shouts from the sky. So do I, he thinks, his clanspeople dying around him. So do I. "— to help you. Will you let me do that?" He looks up. The old woman's hands hold no weapons. Everything is darkening; he can't see her face. Bamboo stalks hinder any fleeing he would do, pressed against his back and sides. He rises to flee anyway. He is not conscious to feel his body hit the ground.
