One singular fic, singlehandedly.
What are your favorite things about the ship?
I mean...I have a very specific weakness, as is probably evident, for Xue Yang's startling soft spot for people who are genuinely and without ulterior motives nice to him, and Jiang Yanli is...well, she is nice, but I also like taking this in a place where she is at least slightly more jaded than she is in canon, and a little sadder and older.
I also have a weird stubborn headcanon about Xue Yang specifically having kind of a soft spot for older women who are nice to him; I've written before about how I think generally they're less threatening to him than men off the bat (not unthreatening, but less threatening historically, might've been different if his formative trauma hadn't been exclusively involving adult men). And I think that plays very well here, particularly with Xue Yang getting absolutely fanatically, murderously attached to Jiang Yanli. When Xue Yang is loyal to someone (he's not loyal to many people) he does tend to go pretty hard on it, and here I think that could potentially be rewarded.
Also Jiang Yanli is remarkably chill about her two brothers being objectively speaking scary and violent (to other people) and while, yeah, that's about them being her brothers it does make me think about how I think she'd be very good at not taking Xue Yang's outrage bait tests. He says something outrageous to try to provoke a reaction and she just goes with it a la "xianxian is three years old." I feel like Xue Yang would also find this hilarious.
obviously I'm not saying this is a ship where everything is fine and good, it is inherently messy and in a universe where it happens at all several things have already gone wrong for Jiang Yanli in particular. but. I think Jiang Yanli should get to have a fucked up murderer deeply devoted to her well being. As a treat.
Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
That I ship it at all, probably. I feel like the other one might be just about how I don't want, like, dark Jiang Yanli, but I also don't want a Jiang Yanli who is totally clueless about who Xue Yang is and what he's capable of. I want a Jiang Yanli who has taken a look at the worst of what the cultivation world has to offer and still has a soft heart, but the steel that was always in her spine is a little closer to the surface.
