i feel like people forget that sometimes characters in fic are written like that because it's a reflection of real life.
people have sex without setting boundaries. people have unprotected sex without talking about their sexual histories or producing recent sti tests. people play with kink without discussing it ahead of time or establishing a safeword. they have anal without 'enough' prep or lubeāthey may even prefer it like that.
and none of this is really a fantasy. it's all pretty normal. you can feel that it's inappropriately normalised, and you'd probably be right! but it is normalised: one study found that 58% of female undergraduate students on the campus studied had been choked during sex. 20% of those students said that they'd never been asked if it was ok; another 30% said they'd only sometimes been asked if they consented. fully half! (non-paywalled journal article on choking during sex here, including these numbers.) despite a rise in stis of all sorts, condom use is declining. (pdf link to the full text of this study about declining condom use in the us; aidsmap article about an australian study with similar results.)
even when people do talk about thingsāsex or anything elseāthey communicate imperfectly. 'yeah, but don't go too far' is consenting and setting a boundary, and also relying that the person you're talking to has the same metric for 'too far' that you do. for some people, 'the trash needs to go out' is a neutral, factual observation; for others, it's a request that the person they're speaking to take out the trash.
even when people understand each other perfectly, people react unpredictably to things sometimes! we behave irrationally! people laugh uncontrollably at funerals, or get angry at the straw that broke their back rather than the enormous load they were already carrying. they get scared and lash out at people trying to help them. when hurt, most people do not instinctively reach for therapy-approved grounding exercises and 'i feel' statements.
pretty much any bad choice that characters could conceivably make is a choice that people make in real life, on purpose, all the time. people do things that can have catastrophic, life-changing effects because it felt like a good idea at the time, or they're leaning into the vibe, or they just didn't think about it all that much, or an infinite number of other reasons.
fiction isn't intended as a guide on the best, safest, and most responsible ways to live your life, and fanfic isn't any different. it's not a narrative flaw to let characters do things that are messy or harmful or downright stupidāit's a reflection of what people are actually like, and not something that authors should feel they have to apologise for.
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there's something very uncomfortable about being in a fandom where all three of the main characters spend a substantial chunk of their lives disabled or chronically ill or both, and the show itself handles this far better than i would have expected, and the fandom handles it way fucking worse.
the frequency with which fics and meta reach for ableist rhetoric that the show itself avoids is absolutely mindblowing to me.
someone being disabled doesn't mean that the ending is unhappy. li lianhua, alive and happy but an ordinary person without powers isn't a bad ending. alive and happy and not in pain, without powers, and disabled in other ways isn't a bad ending.
also, though, an ending where he's dead isn't necessarily a bad ending, either. dying on your own terms isn't nothing. it is, in fact, more than many people get.
the other thing is that people who are disabled or chronically ill or mentally ill still deserve bodily autonomy. even if the people around them don't like the choices they're making; even if their choices cause the people around them pain.
taking away that autonomy and forcing someone to accept a treatment, even a possible cure, that they don't want is a pretty fundamental violation of their personhood. it's striking to me how often narratives in this fandom are like, 'we forcibly cured you against your explicitly stated wishes! be happy and normal again. ok, they lived happily ever after.'
i'm primarily an ot3 person. i am deeply invested in li lianhua being found on this beach by his ridiculous boyfriends and the three of them heading off into the sunset to have some kind of a life about it.
that life looks real different if li lianhua doesn't have agency of his own body. it looks sort of less like a life together, and more like captivity. and maybe you want that! maybe you feel like that's what has to happen! but if that's what you write, you should do so knowing that it's a betrayal and a violation, and that whatever harm li lianhua has inflictedāwhich is admittedly a lotādi feisheng and fang duobing are inflicting just as much in return.
disabled and chronically ill people still deserve bodily autonomy.
i know that it's at partly just that i do not generally post when i ride, but fang duobing, bounciest boy on the screen at all times, posting incredibly dramatically, is very funny and charming to me. he really wakes up and is like 'fuck yeah, every day is leg day, work them thighs!'
like, sir. please. you're gonna die. how far are you riding. how can you possibly sustain that, you cannot, it is impossible. how will you walk when you get off that horse. your thighs will be of steel, by which i mean utterly incapable of moving.
inspired by several recent conversations, because it's plaguing me.
for the purposes of this poll, a wip is any creative project (not work project, even if you do creative workāthis is just funsies stuff) that you have started creating and intend (or hope) to finish. the ones in the time-out corner count, as long as you're still kinda rotating it in your braināmental work counts as work.
how many wips do you usually have at once?
1, maybe 2 at most, it's called focus and you should try it
3 to 5, because i've discovered the magic of idea-effort balance
6 to 10, which lets me balance Big Projects with fun smaller ones
11 to 15, i'm an idea generation machine and this keeps it interesting
more than 15, i am unstoppable and answer to neither gods nor men
Voting ended onJul 6, 2024
no 'other' option. toughen up and pick an option. i believe in you.
also i know perfectly well that people have lots of justifications for whatever number of things they're working on, but these were the ones that came to mind when i made the poll, so they're what's here.
also please take seeing this post as an invitation to make a post about your wips and why you love them. i always feel super awkward and weird posting about things that i'm trying to create, but i love hearing about what people are working on and why they like it.
ok, you know what, fuck it, fic recs post. historically i try not to rec works in progress or things i haven't commented on and i'm throwing that fully out the window for this because honestly, fucking whatever.
if you're on this list and i haven't been fully unhinged at you in the comments, please know that it's because (1) i'm the worst and (2) i'm trying desperately to calibrate so i hit 'enthusiastic' and not 'kind of frightening, actually'. i swear that i have written at least several sentences of a comment for every fic on this list, it's just that i'm genuinely impossibly slow, sometimes. it's me, not you.
my previous rec post is here, in case you missed that. as a bonus, special for this rec list and as a concession to the horrors, i am attempting to guess how much any given fic will fuck up the average person. obviously this is a ymmv kind of situation, but i'm trying, at least?
everything else under a cut because i am longwinded.
and found by @dangerouscommiesubversive, explicit, every possible combination of di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua | li xiangyi; bless, but i am not typing all that out. starting off with a wip where i haven't left a comment in like four fuckin' chapters, breaking those rules real good. this fic is a fucking ride. i will admit that i wasn't entirely convinced by the premise when i saw the blurb, but i am nothing if not willing to admit when i was wrong, and i wasāonce againātotally wrong. this is the fic where i was like 'ok butā¦is anyone really, like, desperate for gen z li xiangyi?' and then i read it and i was like 'ohhhhhh fuck yeah, ok, i get it, i was actually fully desperate for gen z li xiangyi.' he is. such a little prick. i love him. there has been something unexpected and delightful in every single chapter of this so far, plus a number of impressively memorable one-liners. this fic is fun and distracting and at least as of chapter seven, i'm gonna say it's not even gonna fuck you up. (please note that this is only through chapter seven!)
and the days are bright red by @junemermaid, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. rip to my beloved tumblr mutual @junemermaid, because they're getting called out twice in this list, but: tough. this fic is so delightful. featuring: memories of slut era li lianhua, the mortifying ordeal of being known, an entire box of historically accurate sex toys, fang duobing and di feisheng communicating (sometimes silently) in a way that unsettles li lianhua (back from his months-long sojourn), some very hot sex that is both very much about sex and also about trust and being perceived, casual intimacy, and fledgling tenderness. there are Emotions in this, and they get moderately intense, but it's a very kind and surprisingly gentle feel-good fic.
a drink under a clear window by @momosandlemonsoda, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing and fang duobing/qiao wanmian. a fic that tackles the dreaded v-shaped polycule and makes it work. it seems like perhaps it shouldn't: fang duobing as the hinge, with di feisheng and qiao wanmian on either side, but actually it works perfectly, and is a lovely little glimpse at who they could become and the relationships they could have. i love the thought of qiao wanmian having come into her own as a leader in her own right, as more than just the representative of the ghost of li xiangyi, and this does a wonderful job of letting her be her own person. also, yes, ok, passing fang duobing back and forth like a party favour. this is a post-canon fic in which li lianhua is dead, but the fic itself a straightforward delight that is not at all fucky uppy.
the floating clouds, no resting place, again by @junemermaid (not sorry), technically gen and no ship, but functionally pre-di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the hair-washing fic. ohhhhhh. i started jotting notes for this post the day that i finished this fic, and i really thought that they were in any way comprehensive, but instead, what i typed and left as a note to myself was this:
and honestly. you're right, hypothetical reader, that doesn't totally make sense, but i stand by it regardless, because i apparently had that thought in [checks date i last saved the file] fucking august, and i'm still nodding along with myself. that is that this is like. this fic is very beautiful and will make you ache and will leave you slightly better at the end of it than you were at the beginning. it may also make you cry; this seems to me a fair enough trade.
the floating lotus by @anndramarama, not rated, di feisheng/li xiangyi. pre-canon stuff doesn't always work super well for me, but i really enjoyed this one, featuring di feisheng and li xiangyi when they're both so young and arrogant and full of themselvesāand stupid and naĆÆve and young and almost hopeful in a way that they're often not, in fic, for all that they were barely but children at the point of the donghai fight. they just seemā¦vulnerable, i guess, in this, in a way that i find touching. seasonal bonus: a ghost story, of a sort. given that this is set pre-canon, i think it's hard to come in any softer than bittersweet, which this very much is.
from here one's hand could pluck the stars by @howlingmoonrise, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing. sex pollen fic! also featuring, a little surprisingly, given the premise, incredibly explicit and enthusiastic consent. look, this does what it says on the tin. di feisheng gets sex pollened. fang duobing is left to stay with him. the obvious ensues. unfortunately, it is also devastatingly charming? fang duobing is earnest and sweet; di feisheng is suffering beautifully terribly and trying so hard not to impose on fang duobing. they're both trying so hard to be respectful of what the other person needs, but they're also still bratty and argumentative and exasperated/exasperating, and it's very entertaining. this will fuck you up none percent, and may even make you laugh.
my war is done by @orchisailsa, explicit, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. another wip, with the first of three chapters posted, but please understand that this chapter is nearly 15k and so fucking good and compelling. li lianhua lives! and returns to find that things have changed in his absence, and perhaps that he has also changed in his absence, and now wants things that he had told himself he didn't mind not even having to lose. bonus: road trip andādelight!āonly one room at the inn. also some other stuff that i'm not spoiling, but that made me absolutely gleeful. this is definitely a work in progress, and while i don't think there's anything particularly upsetting in the chapter, it does end on something of a cliffhanger. i personally do not feel that this is an upsetting cliffhanger, given the information about the fic that's presented in the tags, but it is technically a cliffhanger.
awkward paragraph break, but it's also important, i think, to mention the absolutely stunning (and not at all safe for work) companion piece to my war is done, you'd be there calling my name, by saki the cup bearer, who i don't think is on tumblr. it's fucking incredible; i am very decidedly not an artist but i cannot begin to imagine how much effort went into this. just. holy shit.
not unlike him in shape and form by @philologicalbat, explicit, fang duobing/li lianhua. ok look. i fucking love when things are deeply emotionally messy, and this is so emotionally messy. li lianhua who's been attracted to fang duobing and not doing anything about it, then discovering that fang duobing is shan gudao's son and is very much going to do something about it. he wants in this, and he's cunty and manipulative and mean about it, and sometimes also almost sweet, almost tender, and i love that, because i feel like li lianhua is very often an object of desire and very rarely gets to desire. i love how human he gets to be in this fic. this is not a sweet or gentle fic, but it does end in a moderately tender place that is tentatively hopeful, i think.
unbecoming heir by @bettercostume, explicit, di feisheng/princess zhaoling. i am taking your hand in mine and begging you to trust me. i know what this fic looks like. it's noncon and a weird pairing and you might look at it and expect it to go in the obvious direction and: it does not. this fic is so good that it makes me angry. it makes me miserable and everyone in this fic is trying so miserably, miserably hard, and it's fucking devastating. i spent literally thirty minutes earlier today yelling at my wife about it. i cannot rec this fic strongly enough. this is not a happy fic, but it is a good fic. it will absolutely fuck you up. this is very complimentary but also you will be fucked up.
until you are its primary evidence by @ilgaksu, mature, di feisheng/fang duobing/li lianhua. the single most effective use of what is effectively a prologue that i've ever seen in fic, are you kidding me. this fic is nothing at all like what i expected it to be, and is something far better than what i could have imagined. it's fang duobing's point of view, which is a rarity already, and it's so well done, and it allows him so much humanity and so much anger and grace alike. there are so many tricky things about this ficāthe prologue, the fact that it's set in the amnesia arc, fang duobing's pov, the fact that it actually addresses canonical disabilities and illnesses without being fucking weird about it, the tension between the three of themāand it's all balanced so well. this has some emotionally heavier moments but ends tentatively happily; tentative only because it's set during the amnesia arc, and, well. we know what comes next.
as a final note: if you wrote one of these fics and feel that i've wildly misinterpreted the emotional tenor of the ending, please message me in whatever way you prefer and i will correct it. i would not normally presume to guess how things are likely hit people, as i am in many ways not anyone's ideal reader, but today it seemed like it was kinder to at least try.
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hey not to be deeply weird about it but just to check, has everyone else already seen this interview with xiao shunyao in which he (correctly) argues that actually di feisheng is a deeply loyal and affectionate character, and also that li xiangyi gives di feisheng a reason to live?
fuck, ok, i'm watching episode forty again because i am nothing if not supportive when someone i know needs to devastate themself, but it does mean that i have once again watched the 'i'm a little hungry now. go make me a meal,' exchange.
i have noted before that this scene kills me, because it's the one time that fang duobing doesn't let li lianhua distract him. he sees the attempt at the distraction, he thinks he knows what's happening, and he says 'actually, no, not this time,' and he brushes it off.
li lianhua hands over the 'recipe book' knowing full well that if fang duobing opens it, he'll see what it is. he'll see what it is and he'll know what it means, because how could he not?
you have to wonder if part of li lianhua hoped he would. if he hoped that fang duobing would open it and realise what it was, because that would change things. it would have to change things. it's a quiet, miserable bet that he makes with himself: he knows fang duobing well enough to know that he won't look.
and he wins. fang duobing runs off, hoping against hope that he can still fix this, that he can still save li lianhua. he won't realise until he comes back and finds li lianhua gone and opens the book on the table to realise what he's been left.
you have to assume that fang duobing spends the next three months, if not longer, playing this back with a lot of what ifs in his head. what if he'd listened. what if he'd waited. what if he'd looked. it's the last thing that li lianhua ever asked of him, and he brushed it off.
li lianhua, on the other hand. fang duobing brushes him off, sets the book on the table and runs off to find guan hemeng. li lianhua wins his bet with himself: he knows fang xiaobao just as well as he thought he did. he knows him well enough that he can tell himself that he'll be fine.
he's known all along that it would end this way. he's known all along that he was dying and he would leave. he knew fang duobing wouldn't open that book, and he didn't; he freezes li lianhua and he leaves. and li lianhua watches him go, protesting, and when he thinks fang duobing is out of earshot, he goes quiet. he sighs. it worked just like he knew it would. he slumps a little bit. (maybe it worked just liked he hoped it wouldn't.)
ok, i'm being so brave and making the rec post that i told anon i would do like three days ago.
the obligatory caveats. this is not comprehensiveāi haven't read all the fic in this fandom, and i've barely looked at anything not in english. my reading habits are pretty broadāi'll read almost any pairing, and am generally willing to suspend my disbelief to do so. i am not usually an au person, though this fandom is doing its absolute damndest to prove me wrong on that point.
also i haveā¦moreā¦fics that i felt i should rec somewhere, so probably this is rec post one, but ten felt like enough and also saying things in public where people can hear me is, it turns out, absolutely excruciating. please no one be mean to me about this post, especially if you wrote one of these fics, because if you are i will simply fill my pockets with rocks and take to the sea, ok? ok.
excited to find out what i manage to do that ruins the formatting, links the wrong fics and/or people, or otherwise breaks things in this post. please tell me if i've fucked up, or if your fic is on this list and you would rather i keep your name out of my mouth, or whatever.
first, a very special mention to the mlc reference guide by @yletylyf. this is such an incredibly comprehensive and generous resource. you want a timeline for this show that does an incredibly poor job of maintaining its own timeline? it's here. you want episode summaries? they're here. you want all the people and places? they're here. if you're writing fic, you want this guide, because it's so much easier and faster than scanning episodes or subs files to figure out the name of one specific guy or whatever. it also means that at least occasionally you work on the thing rather than accidentally rewatching the same scene five times, or hypothetically watching two to four episodes without even really thinking about what you're doing. the reference guide is the unsung mvp of fandom.
beyond porch and portal, difanghua, teen, by willowdream. this is the vampire au that i didn't know i wanted? the author posted it and their note was like 'i'm trying to be the change i want to see in the world,' and i was like ok sure, i'm not really convinced that the change i need is vampire aus, but i'll give it a go, and then i did and was like, oh shit, i'm eating fucking glass about this vampire au, i'm chewing on my own fucking fingers, i'm so fucking normal about this, i need another hundred thousand words of this and also seventeen more vampire aus in my inbox by monday morning. i literally finished reading it and scrolled right back to the top to read it again. i have no idea why this fic hits so hard, but it took me out at the knees. the voices are perfect. something about it is just impossibly compelling.
äøå®ēé é¢ļ¼åę ęøę | restless distance, without return, fang duobing/qiao wanmian, mature and teen, by @difeisheng. this is technically two fics but they're short and you should read both of them because they're such a brutal, perfect encapsulation of grief, and a really beautiful acknowledgement of the ways that fang duobing and qiao wanmian can be read as reflections of each other, separated by a decade, and it just fucking guts me. i dunno. it's about the grief! it's about the yearning! it's about someone who understands parts of you that you wish didn't exist! i think i've reread this like once a week for the last six weeks and i feel like it gets overlooked because it's not A Ship but like. it could be. it should be.
dance the silence down, fanghua and feihua, explicit, by @momosandlemonsoda. this fic. ugh. ok. i'm breaking my own rules. i had two when i started writing this post: no works in progress, and no reccing things that i haven't left a comment on, like a goddamn grownup. this one fic is breaking both of those rules and i feel bad about it and will hopefully spend like, all day tomorrow just commenting on every chapter or something, but i have to do this. this fic is so good. this fic ruins me. this fic is 63k, still a work in progress, and also if i were losing the whole internet tomorrow and i got to keep one fic in all the world and it was the only fic i could have for the rest of time, it might have to be this one, even as a work in progress. i ignored this fic for so longāby which i mean probably two of the four months since i first watched mysterious lotus casebookābecause i was like, i don't like aus, and i especially don't like rock star aus. (or sex work aus, and you're never gonna fucking believe what else this author is writing and what else i absolutely cannot get enough ofāthis is a sneaky bonus rec for all i wanna do is wrong, another fic that i feel so so so normal about!) but then i was like okkkkkkk but. maybe i'll try it. people seem to be nuts for it. and then i read it and i was like OH HOLY SHIT PEOPLE ARE FULLY CORRECT TO BE ABSOLUTELY UNHINGED ABOUT THIS and normally, honestly, i wouldn't bother posting a rec like this because it's like 'oh haha have you read the five most popular fics in this fandom?' and it feels so redundant, but i know for a fact that a friend of mine who finished watching the show yesterday is reading this post, and even if everyone else has read it, she has not! anyhow as a former music person and a former diner cook, this fic like. i don't know. i feel like it broke me but also fixed me? i literally criticise writing professionally and every time i try to talk about this fic i find myself speechless because it's so perfect to me. i am deeply unwell about this fic. every time a new chapter comes out i sit down and read the whole thing again, yes, all sixty-thousand-plus words of it. some nights you go to bed and you're like 'what's the fucking point?' and then you're like 'no wait, there will eventually be more of dance the silence down,' and somehow that makes things suck a tiny bit less. my wife has made me take out like six sentences from this rec because they're too intense and too weird about it but i need you to understand: you have to read this fic.
in this dream, there is a lover to share this life with, fanghua, g, by @lianhuajing. alternative ending for the end of episode 27, in which li lianhuaāprecious man who has yet to discover a hill he's not willing to die onāapologises to fang duobing the only way he knows how, and it's wildly upsetting for everyone (but it's ok and it doesn't end miserably, no one panic). this is a delightfully angsty treat, and i love how conflicted fang duobing is in itāi feel like it's not something that i've seen explored a lot, but this poor boy really fuckin goes through itāhis best friend and his childhood idol are the same person but are lying to him about it, and his dad's not actually his father and has been lying to him about it, and his best friend/childhood idol may have killed his father, andāyeah, is lying to him about it. like? someone give this poor man a hug and a cup of tea and a snack and a blankie. i love that we get to see some of his internal conflict in this.
quintessence of dust, feihua, teen, by justthereforit. this plays with one of my very most favourite tropes in the world, which is the one where the heart is a physical object and a physical form of trust and control and surrender andālike. this is so good. it's set in episode 13, which is, for me, one of the absolute peak angst points, and it absolutely nails it. di feisheng who's upset and vulnerable and frustrated and angry, li lianhua who knows he's going to die and can't bear the thought that he's going to take anyone else down with him, and they're both just so fucked up. chef kiss. i love it when everyone is emotionally wrecked and continually like 'ok no, i can take one more knife in my soul to protect someone else', and this absolutely delivers on that.
under moonlight, we change our futures yet again, feihua, explicit, by @thesilversun. the wedding room! obviously we have to have a wedding room fic, right? i'm not going to lie: i'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief for wedding room fics, but in this one, it's actually a wonderfully, horrifyingly plausible setup. it walks a really fine line of keeping people in character, and acknowledging the inherent horror and seriousness of the situation, and also providing some desperately hot sex, and also managing to get the emotional beats of it, too. it has a sequel, which imo really has to be read as the conclusion to this fic, and it's just as good. it's possible that some of what i'm saying here is 'i love vulnerable-inside crusty-outside di feisheng' but like. i do. i love it so much.
what's sealed away, feihua, teen, by @bbcphile. AMNESIA FIC yessssss, a-fei my beloved, fics that handle brain damage/memory issues/amnesia well my beloveddddd. i love the a-fei arc, but i also have had a number of brain injuries and some other stuff that means that my own memory isā¦not so great, so i sometimes really struggle with how often amnesia in fiction is played off either as nothing to worry about or as a funny thing where everyone's in on the joke except the person who has amnesia. this fic is a great and sometimes very visceral exploration of a horrifying experience, and a really fantastic study of a-fei/di feisheng as a character, as well as the relationship that he has with li lianhua. a-fei trying to balance the trust he has in the sense memory of his body with his understanding of his relationship with li lianhua with li lianhua's reaction toāeverything, reallyāis really well done and wonderful/terrible to read.
ęåŖęæé¢ęå¤§ęµ· | i wish only to face the sea, g, by foreverstudent. ok so you wanna fuck yourself up some more? go read this. this is canon divergence from episode 39, and fang duobing has learned too well the lessons he's been taught, and sees the shape of things before li lianhua ever touches the wangchuan flowerāso he sets about making sure that he won't be able to throw it away. this is agonising and gorgeous and maintains the canon relationships while developing the narrative differently. i wept literal tears. i was like 'ok that's it the worst part is over!' and then i remembered that there was another part coming and then i started crying. anyhow, it isāas ever, with meāabout the devotion.
ęä½é·ę±é , åä½é·ę±å°¾ -- i live upstream, you live downstream, fanghua, teen, by @rimbaudofficial. ok so this is Not a fic that i should like, because i am a massive academic failure and despite being in my forties have regular nightmares about having to re-engage with academia for like. any reason. HOWEVER. as noted, i read indiscriminately, even when i'm like 'reading this is a terrible idea and will be upsetting for me personally!', so i was like 'well, how bad of an idea can it possibly be?' and then instead! it was. incredibly charming? it was so fucking cute? the fang duobing characterisation in this is somehow just perfect to meāhe's simultaneously confident and vulnerable, and also just so deeply committed to the weird clueless guy who he's decided is meant for him. di feisheng and li lianhua have a perfect weird-bros friendship. i would read another ten chapters of this and i would love it.
