Summary: When the library’s alarms went off, Lan Qiren wearily expected to arrive to find an apologetic Wei Wuxian—possibly with one of the young disciples who looked up to him—explaining that No really I didn’t mean to touch that, I’m so sorry, let me reset that for you.
Kay's comment: This was actually really funny, though I would give it a light gore warning. Really enjoyed it and the flavour of a good uncle Lan Qiren who has considerably warmed up to Wei Wuxian post-canon.
Excerpt: “Shufu.” Lan Wangji let out a long breath. “A creature attracted to Yang energy appeared unexpectedly. We may have, ah. Overfed it. Until it burst.”
There was a wealth of understatement in Lan Wangji’s words. Lan Qiren stared at the lattice-worked carvings that edged the library’s ceiling and attempted not to imagine the sequence of events. Or how Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian had ‘overfed’ such a beast. “I see,” he said neutrally. “Have you identified the source of this creature? I’m surprised it could appear within the wards.”
“I think it snuck in with us,” Wei Wuxian admitted. “There aren’t any obvious holes in the wards, and I don’t think it manifested from any texts in here, though admittedly I haven’t had time to check yet. Also, um, you can turn around? If that would help.”
pov lan qiren, post-canon, canon era, blood and gore, aftermath of violence, coitus interruptus, good uncle lan qiren, nerd wei wuxian family feels, slice of life, everyday means everyday
~*~
(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)
Here are two truths and a lie:
Chu Yunxiu is Misty Rain’s captain.
Chu Yunxiu is dating Ye Qiu.
Chu Yunxiu is happy to have the Shu twins on her team.
Of course, a lie can become true if you believe in it enough…
(A Chu Yunxiu character study.)
IMAGES: Clouds from Rawpixel (ID: 9581058); Misty Rain logo from The King's Avatar Wiki (stretched slightly horizontally and traced)
MATERIALS: Domtar Earthchoice multipurpose copy paper, cream, 11"x17" cut in half to form short-grained letter size paper; Recollections' Gilded Ink paper pad; Cialux bookcloth, black; heat transfer foil, gold; 2mm binder board; waxed linen thread, 30/3 size; wheat paste (this time I used 1:4 flour to water ratio, and heated until conditioner-like consistency. An improvement over last attempt.)
PROGRAMS USED: typeset in LibreOffice Writer; title page mocked-up in Procreate then designed in GIMP; imposed with Renegade's Community Imposer.
I spied this fic towards the top of the kudos and kept it in the back of my mind while trawling for more HanYe fics. Thought, well it's gotta be there for a reason so should be good! ooh look aroace queerplatonic relationship 👀👀 Definitely bumping up to top of Read Next!
The amazing thing I've found about The King's Avatar is that the CP possibilities are endless! The characters are both friends and rivals, there's respect and history and it all mixes and clashes creating more possibilities and chemistries than I've ever seen in a fandom before. The fact that AllYe is so popular (and not just in an NSFW way) is testament to it, and also, in part, what drew me to this fic. Asexual representation is scant, aromantic even more so — especially in fandom (in my experience of it at least).
If I were to add a tag to describe Castles in the Sky it would be 'heartwarming'. Shadaras' writing and characterization is wonderful, and I really enjoyed the both the story and the aroace representation. They took a character with relatively little content (in comparison to others in fandom. I have not read the source material) and gave her a voice, dreams, and made me really care about her. I was touched, and after finishing it I jumped to my laptop and set about turning it into a physical book.
So, onto the details.
The thing that stuck out and stayed with me the most about the story was the aroace aspect (Shadaras fed my smol aroace heart so well), so that's what I focused on design-wise.
The title page features a large black ring, referencing the black ring worn usually on the middle finger of the right hand as a symbol of asexuality. The colours of the asexual pride flag are also represented: the text is purple; the clouds colour the page in shades of white and grey; and the ring is black. For the endpapers/cover backing I chose paper that mixes green, purple, and blue: green for the aromantic pride flag; purple for the ace. I also found the green-blue mix of colours to be rather fitting, inspired by the description of Misty Rain's HQ with the "cool blues and greens of Misty Rain's walls" (chapter 5: Transformations). While I personally find CYX's relationship with YX significant, her relationship with her team is just as important.
When choosing which cover each endpaper goes on, I thought about how the story begins with CYX and YX's relationship, and about how after it's established we see her team and it's future at the forefront of her mind. Following that line of thought I put the paper with more purple on the front cover (purple for aroace CYX), and the more green-blue paper on the back (Misty Rain's colours).
The process of foiling the cover took me 3 hours (the length of the movie RRR — good movie actually, would recommend. Which is surprising because I usually find Oscar movies rather boring). The foiling was done with a heat pen. Three hours is not the norm: first, I had the foil backwards and foiled my template instead of the cover; then, my power banks kept dying, so I had to take charging breaks, and I also went over everything again just to make sure that I didn't miss a spot; and of course I was also watching a movie while working, so that ate up some time too.
I had initially planned to bind it as a casebound book, but I didn't have enough time to do it (I was about to go on vacation and wanted to read the book in my downtime). Instead, I did a Coptic binding. The covers were pulled from the press and foiled leaving me 5 hours of sleep to spare.
I went simple on the outer covers to contrast the fun paper on the inside of the covers. I used black Cialux bookcloth instead of my green-blue 'petrol' Iris bookcloth for the contrast, and because it picks up the black from the title page. The text foiled onto the cover is a simple sans serif (Raleway, the same as used inside), and the image is Misty Rain's logo from the donghua. (Image came from The King's Avatar Wiki. It was stretched slightly horizontally because it seemed a bit squished compared to other versions seen on Google, and then traced). Using the colourful paper inside was a practical choice: I couldn't get two covers out of one sheet of paper, but one sheet would do the inner covers with some material leftover.
The sewing and construction of the book was done while camping — I'd packed up what I needed and brought it with me: the signatures (folded and punched); the finished covers; thread; a needle; and an awl. As for the actual sewing, it's supposed to be Coptic but don't look too closely. This was the second time I've tried Coptic stitching and I didn't have any instructions with me. (My first Coptic binding was a thin 2-signature notebook I did a few weeks ago. It was for taking notes at the event I was at, Pennsic War 50).
Book is primarily set in Alegreya. It's currently my favourite body font, and has a matching sans serif family. The fonts used in the title page are Raleway and Catchy Mager. Raleway is also used for titles, headings, etc. Segoe UI Emoji was used for any emojis that cropped up throughout the text (Pretty sure they're the same emojis as seen while reading on my phone and laptop). Catchy Mager was purchased from MyFont. (The first and only font I have ever bought, but I saw it used in a fic's title art and fell in love.)
Lastly, onto The Comedy of Errors, or: When-You-Finally-See-All-the-Typos-and-Mistakes-Once-You're-Done-and-Can-Only-Laugh-While-You-Cry-Inside.
Appendix's footer says 'Epilogue', so I must have missed something with the paragraph style for the Appendix heading.
Forgot about using Segoe UI Emoji font and did not include it in the About the Book.
Missed fixing the archive info for gnomen in the Author's Notes — the copy/paste of metadata into Notebook to remove formatting also removed the commas and spaces between tags.
Because I hadn't planned cover materials/design before printing, there isn't a section for that in the About the Book. Also the reason why the artwork on the cover is not credited in it, as I had not planned to use it.
fic prompt: wen qing + being given flowers (by whoever tickles your fancy. if choosing is too much brain: pick a jiang!)
Wen Qing comes home from work to the sight of Jiang Cheng shirtless & apparently digging in her yard. It's a good look on him but she has no idea what he's doing there; he seems pretty engrossed in whatever it is.
She steps out of her car, locks it, & then clears her throat when the beep fails to get JC's attention. He looks up and, seeing her, flushes all the way down to his shoulders. WQ didn't need to know that about the way he blushes.
"What are you doing here?" WQ asks.
"I meant to finish earlier," JC says, which isn't an answer, but before WQ can start yelling he continues, "You said you didn't have time to figure out landscaping & Wen-xiong told me what kind of flowers you like." He gestures around the yard, pointing out the new flower beds & bushes. WQ decides she'll let him live after all.
You did not specify fandom, so you're getting my first thought hot take which is Christopher Robin growing up and opening a cafe/bakery where he names all the specials after his childhood friends from the Hundred Acre Woods. Probably there's a romance element? Maybe with the wild-haired tattoo artist across the street whose flash art is full of tigers and aliens and snowmen...
Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!
Fuckvella (also known as A’Fuck) -- my magnum opus, a 32k+ monster I wrote in a fit of passion where Lan Wangji, I dunno, fucking flies on his sword after Wei Wuxian in CQL. Idiot. Wrote out some yummy headcanons and debuted my dumb-dumb OC, the obligatory Lan doctor every fic needs.
Hawk -- the reason I crawled back out of fanfic retirement to finally make an AO3 account. I wrote it because my friend and I were chatting about whose kids the Mo Dao characters would be if they were Percy Jackson-verse demigods! It’s currently on hold, but I promise I’ll get back to it and finish. Because of its origins, this fic is very near and dear to my heart.
WWX is in a coma, and I will make you suffer about it -- a really personal, almost memoir-style fic; because while diaspora Chinese fans have been writing beautiful modern AUs of WangXian, I feel a conspicuous lack of the China of my childhood. Oh, also, I hit you in the feels and A-Yuan gets raised by the Jiangs, because we deserve this scenario.
MY FMV!!!!!!!!!!!! -- please turn on your English CC if you don’t understand Chinese! I translated it myself!!!!!! I’m very, very proud of it, even if I do eschew Bilibili norms and make a very typical Cdrama-style MV.
I tag @theleakypen @shadaras @flamingwell and whoever else wants to join in :)
“If you would put my hair up, I would appreciate it.” Lan Wangji shifted until his back was to Nie Huaisang, the full flowing length of his hair easily within reach. “I— I was not allowed to do so myself, during the initial recovery, and on days when everything is too much…”
“I understand,” Nie Huaisang said quietly. He gathered Lan Wangji’s hair in his hands, and wished he had the time to braid it as artfully as he knew how. At the same time, he was glad not to need to worry that his braiding would reveal something it shouldn’t; the Qinghe Nie braided relationships into their hair, and Nie Huaisang wasn’t sure if he’d be able to resist marking Lan Wangji’s heartbreak for those who could read the subtle patterns to see.
Instead, Nie Huaisang pulled Lan Wangji’s hair up into a simple bun. He didn’t bother with anything more complex than a length of cloth to wrap it with, and only a single straight pin to hold it in place; from how Lan Wangji talked, anything more complex would make it harder to remove later. Still, he did it neatly, with the proper braids along the nape of Lan Wangji’s neck; those were for stability, both literally of the hair and symbolically of the heart, and Nie Huaisang thought Lan Wangji needed that.
-Ch. 2, Blossoms Amidst the Snow, by Shadaras
The Thousand-Blossom Courtyard was blooming in defiance of winter’s final grasp. Plum trees stretched pale pink flowers towards the sky, bright and beautiful against gray stone and overcast skies. Nie Huaisang had always loved this courtyard; since becoming sect leader, he’d been slowly but surely planting more flowering plants around the Unclean Realm. The contrast between the simple military design of the buildings and the unrestrained beauty of the plants elevated both, in Nie Huaisang’s opinion, and he didn’t care what anyone else thought.
Lan Wangji stood in the middle of the courtyard, looking up at the blossoms. Nie Huaisang observed him quietly, looking at the calm profile of his face. He was wearing blue again, pale as the winter sky but more promising than the mourning-white he’d clung to during seclusion. Snowflakes dusted his hair, speckling the long dark strands like stars. Nie Huaisang rarely thought consciously about how beautiful Lan Wangji was, but right now he looked like he had stepped out of a painting meant to celebrate the oncoming spring, and Nie Huaisang wanted to appreciate him the same way he would any such piece of art.
