#lotusmoon

All the options in the world and he wants the bossy old lady who yells at him like he's a dog that got caught tearing up the bed

ref

Then I had a silly thought about him doing it to Mei Xing

I've been planning JCA ↺ for a while, and the Order of the Immortals was one of my earliest concepts for the fic because to make the story work I needed to make some changes to the arcs that would make it distinguishable from the original cartoon. I thought that since we see Daolon Wong and Yip as separate examples of Evil wizards, more Good wizards would be an appropriate addition

This was followed up with the question of, if there are more Good wizards in the world, where were they when the Demon Sorcerers were being released? I came up with the Order of the Immortals, a secret society of Wizards that were entrusted with the power of the Immortals as guardians of humanity in case anyone tried to free the Demon Sorcerers.

I started brainstorming the characters, including ideas like Uncle being part of this society but not having the Chi of Lü Dongbin, making them all different ages and with different occupations. I had a lot of them pretty much fully figured out and even had concept designs in mind for them just as characters before I even started thinking about 'now that I have these guys, how does their presence affect the Demon Sorcerer arc in individual episodes/chapters?"

While plotting out the intricacies of how their encounters with the Demons go, I just happened to think: Wouldn't it be funny if one of them fell in love with and kidnapped the wizard that was meant to banish them? Suddenly I had a great subplot that would be very different from what we saw in the original canon. But Mei and Tso Lan were not my first choice lol. I actually had three candidates for which of them would be paired off

After I immediately called myself out that these guys were all in consideration because my monsterfucker ass thinks they're all hot af, I eliminated Bai Tza and Haoyu because in Bai Tza's case it was really only an option because Bai Tza's hot. She would never in the original cartoon, and even considering the changes I'm making to the Demon Sorcerers themselves in the plot of JCA ↺ she would still never.

So Dai Gui or Tso Lan. The decision had to come down to the Demon Sorcerers themselves in ↺ and it was still really close. Dai Gui x Qiangwei Tian is a quintessential beauty and the beast story where Dai Gui pursues Qiangwei simply because he thinks she is beautiful. There's a lot of fun things that could have been done with Dai Gui crushing on the plus size single mother, but ultimately it was just that. Kinda fun, but there's no real narrative value in Dai Gui falling in love with Qiangwei outside of just maybe being able to draw some funny memes. I still sort of crack ship them in my head

But with Mei and Tso Lan, and the changes that are being made to his character independent of the Order of the Immortals plot, has room for him being in love with a mortal to actually mean something to the greater themes of the Demon Sorcerer arc and his personal motivations within it. As I started to explore what their dynamic could actually look like I found it's really compelling for both of them and the pipeline from 'haha wouldn't it be funny if' to 'ah hell, I think they have one of most interesting relationships in the entire story and I'm actually invested in them' has been quite the journey.

They're not endgame in the sense that they're meant to be a healthy ship that I expect everyone to flock to when I get there, and certainly there's not gonna be any sort of Tso Lan heel-face-turn for Mei's sake, but I'm just utterly fascinated and obsessed with them in my head.

Bonus: They were never in consideration for the 'what if' plot but I won't lie, part of me crack ships Bolin and Tchang Zu for no other reason than I think it would be really fucking funny.

Tso Lan x Mei Xing art edits