#yabanwrites

What got Mu Qing looking at his screen like that? Find out reading chapter 6 of Rotting Waters, available today!

Art by @tiiracotta. The full piece is inside the fic.

At last, Heavenly Damnation, my metal music Hualian modern AU, has an update!

It's been around sixteen months (goddamn!) but we're back. As a token of gratitude for your endless patience, have a video reenactment of the post-canon of this fic, as recorded by @tiiracotta during Ilosaarirock festival 2024. The band playing is Terveet Kädet.

Many thanks to @arsenic-addiction for stepping up as beta-reader!

Read the update here.

Here's a short Hualian dragons fic I wrote for "Tails and Scales: A MXTX Mythological Creatures Zine" last year. It's my first ever contribution to a zine, I'm very happy about it!

Summary:

It's New Year's Eve, and the rituals of humans have made Xie Lian resurface once again. While he stares at the night sky, expecting nothing new despite the change of seasons, someone above stares back.

Hi! Of course, let's see: both In Memoriam and Scars surged from my curiosity about how Wei Ying (and Lan Zhan, plus the rest of the cast) processed Wei Ying's change of bodies in the long run. The novel shows some of it, yes, but it's such a strange occurrence! Surely there's more to it than saying, "alright, this happened. Moving on~"

Specifically for In Memoriam, I thought about the people who used to know Mo Xuanyu. His family was killed at the beginning of the novel, and no one in the Jin clan cared about him, but there are more people in the world. Someone had to remember him dearly from his childhood years, right? I thought of their reaction upon learning that who they used to know as an odd yet sweet child of the local gentry is now a completely different person. What an unholy aberration it must look like for someone outside the Jianghu who can't even imagine the power of cultivation! That's why I chose a former nanny, someone humble who looked after the clan's kids when needed, isn't well-read nor has contact with the Jianghu—she might even be wary of cultivators. She's gentle and a little superstitious, and would definitely die of horror and shock if they told her what happened with xiao Xuanyu. Her last wish is to see him because she's had dreams of something terrible happening to him, and thus her family decide to lure Wei Ying to the Jin territory with an outrageous story in order to ask him privately to help, so the old lady can leave the world with no worries.

That said, I never planned to make the fic about their meeting, but rather, of the before and after, and the narration is a third person vaguely close to Lan Zhan's perspective. Wei Ying goes to see the nanny without giving it much thought, but the experience makes him face the fact that he was shoved into an already started life that had memories and significance and an identity, and he comes back pretty shaken. Most of the fic would be about how he and Lan Zhan come to terms with it together.

I find writing for MDZS pretty intimidating. The worldbuilding and characterization are both very solid, I don't find as many crevices to get in as with TGCF. I don't know if I'll ever post any of these ideas. Have a preview of what I have written, to compensate, and thanks for asking!

——————

“I am talking nonsense, aren’t I? I'm sorry, Hanguang-Jun,” he said and leaned on Lan Zhan’s chest, looking up at him with eyes filled in equal parts with mischief and adoration. “I really want to see them try to explain their scheme to my face, and they won’t dare doing so in front of you. They are not worth your time, anyway; it would even stain the reputation of the Gusu Lan Clan to meddle with such affairs, don’t you think?”

“They will try to kill you.”

Wei Ying smirked and stretched a bit in order to get close to Lan Zhan’s ear.

“Let them try,” he purred, malicious. “Let me have some fun.”

Lan Zhan could feel Wei Ying’s slender fingers slide across his chest, drawing his collarbones and making little circles around his burnt scar. He didn’t falter.

“I’ll behave, I promise.” Wei Ying smile turned into a kiss against Lan Zhan’s neck. “I’ll be good, very good. I'm only ever naughty with you.”

“Stop it.”

“I can’t fly on a sword, so I’ll take Little Apple with me. It'll be a good bonding experience.” Wei Ying sat straight to see Lan Zhan in the eye and offered him the most innocent, purest smile, exquisitely fabricated. “Your uncle will be happy to have some peace; maybe you yourself will remember how much you enjoy silence and how bothersome I am.”

“Wei Ying…”

“Isn’t it true that I am bothersome, and that I love to bother you, and that you love to be bothered by me?”

Lan Zhan couldn’t stop the smallest smile from briefly appearing on his face. Wei Ying noticed it, and he was delighted.

“It is true, it really is!” he said, and leaned forward to point one finger at Lan Zhan’s chest. “Yet don’t tell me you don’t feel at least a bit tempted to have one day of your little five-to-nine clan rituals without my sabotage.”

Lan Zhan frowned slightly. Perhaps Wei Ying was the one in need of a break. He had always been a walking terror, ill-adapted to discipline and routine. Maybe the night hunts were not enough to compensate for the rather domestic, uneventful rhythm of the Cloud Recesses. That was understandable, but why did he want to go alone? 

“Lan Zhan, are you pouting at me?”

It's time for another Hualian modern meet-cute! Witness the blooming of the most convoluted (kinda?) parasocial relationship, featuring: -Air traffic mayhem -Mistaken clothes -Only one bed -Videoblogging -A gay wedding -Explosives?

Summary: Hua Cheng’s flight gets off to a bad start when the airline arbitrarily gives half of his first class couple’s pod to a stranger. To add insult to injury, he arrives back to his seat only to find that the intruder has mistaken Hua Cheng’s jumper with the plane’s pyjamas! Before he can kick up a fuss, though, something in this man’s face strikes him as familiar…

Wait a second, isn’t this the super cute guy from the last video that Hua Cheng watched while at the lounge before the flight?

Heavy spoiler warning for Heaven Official's Blessing. Hi! Right, so, The Newcomer. I came up with the idea around two years ago, while re-reading the Ghost City arc. Do you remember how the mortal who's betting against Hua Cheng when Xie Lian arrives uses his daughter's lifespan and fate in marriage as a wager? It established fortune/fate as a sort of currency in the world of TGCF, a notion that later got reinforced by things like:

-How Hua Cheng can transfer luck in games of chance to Xie Lian -How Shi Wudu could use He Xuan's divine fate to make Shi Qingxuan ascend instead -How Jun Wu physically took Xie Lian's fortune away from him with the second shackle and scattered it among mortals (or so we hope, because Xie Lian asked for that to happen, but with Jun Wu, you never know) -How Jun Wu can put his resentment to bake in the Kiln and cook curses of horrible misfortune with it, which was what made Hong'er's brief life so miserable

The whole thing is quite intriguing. Does the Gambler's Den have a vault of good and bad fortunes in different areas of life, that they've been hoarding for centuries in order to offer them as rewards to new patrons? How, where, and from whom did Hua Cheng learn the magic required for such a thing? Does part of his extremely good luck come from gambling earnings, or is it all his, and the house has its own separate reserves? Is there anyone able to audit these transactions and confirm that there's no cheating and everybody involved gave their informed consent, which seems to be the requisite for the magic to work without breeding resentment (as opposed to a stolen fate, like the Blackwater case), or do they have to believe in what Hua Cheng says because he's too strong to be opposed or challenged?

If I have those questions, surely some characters in the story could have them too. Cue the new Earth Master, formerly an overseer of a big mining operation at the service of the Chinese empire, who swears that he was coerced into betting his extraordinarily auspicious fate in marriage in the Gambler's Den, and claims that Hua Cheng used it to marry Xie Lian, because otherwise there's no way "any respectable god would agree to marry such a vile monster." He ascends shortly after Hualian get married, which in turn is not too long after Hua Cheng's return. Many gods are still resentful towards Hua Cheng for his past deeds and the fanfare of the bells singing him praises every day, so they rally with the new Earth Master to see if they can take him down. Naturally, Xie Lian doesn't believe any of it for even an instant. He's devastated by the turn of events, and when he's told that he should not only stay away from the case because he's biased, but also stay away from Hua Cheng altogether until they determine if their love is legitimate or the product of a fate switch, he almost gets into his second calamity era and locks himself in Paradise Manor, refusing to leave until the case is closed (he's too strong for anyone to force him out, so at least there's that).

As I mentioned, Ling Wen takes on the case to get some fresh air and see if that can get her out on parole. She's in terrible terms with Hua Cheng, but I think she's too pragmatic to try to use the chance to get back at him. Instead, I think she'd be genuinely interested in finding out whether the old fox is as cunning as people paint him to be.

That's what I have defined so far. The rest is rather nebulous because there are a lot of possibilities, both in regard to what actually happened, and also in regard to the POV(s) I want to focus on. I could stay with Ling Wen and show how the Earth Master mirrors the men who looked down on her and mistreated her through her life, or I could focus on Hualian, or do a mix of both... I have started the story two or three times, testing the waters, but I'm still unsure.

Thanks for asking!

——————

Here's a reimagining I wrote of the scene in book 4 where Xie Lian gets drunk at the graveyard. Mind the tags, please.

Summary:

Didi (弟弟): Younger brother.

Drunk for the first time in his life, Xie Lian accidentally falls in an open burial pit and finds that he’s not alone.