haha this is, of course, an omega fic, except it doesn’t take place in omegaverse. It’s CQL, after all the plot but before WWX leaves because censorship. WWX is hanging out around Cloud Recesses, kind of restlessly, hears about a yao, fights a yao, gets bitten by a yao, slays a yao, starts back completely oblivious to the fact that he’s in heat. The bite basically turns him into an omega, so there are modifications to his hormones/senses/body, namely that he produces slick and can smell other people really intensely and he’s very very turned on. 

By the time he gets to Cloud Recesses WWX still has not admitted what’s going on, but LWJ can see he’s sick, so puts him in bed, where WWX’s symptoms begin to advance until he’s basically incapacitated. LWJ is a good little Lan and does his research, finds out what’s going on, explains to WWX that WWX needs to get fucked out of it, offers to do it, WWX refuses because it’s humiliating to need help and also would be mortifying to LWJ who he assumes has never had an impure thought in his life. Then WWX becomes delirious and on the edge of death and LWJ fucks him anyway.

WWX is embarrassed about it afterwards but whatever, it’s cool, LWJ is never gonna talk about it, cool cool cool cool. WWX thinks he should leave after that but is fine making a very big deal about “maybe I’m still recovering, I went through so much after all, could I be a danger to society?” in a very dramatic way and LWJ is just LWJ about it so lets WWX do whatever he wants without saying anything about it. But then a few weeks later WWX goes into heat again and LWJ has to help him again, and neither of them knew the infection was still there.

So now they have to go find a cure which takes a while and WWX is going into heat every month or so, but they finally cure it. And while the first time felt like no big deal the fact that LWJ had to help him through all the heats makes WWX feel pretty bad about himself so he does what he had originally been intending to do and finally leaves Cloud Recesses so LWJ can like, do his job or whatever.

Except now, WWX, who literally had never given his libido even a passing glance before, finds himself suddenly awakened and he thinks “sure this is fine; I’ll just finally hook up with all these ladies I’m always flirting with!” and he tries to and it’s really upsetting for him. So then he’s like “well that’s fine! maybe I was a cut sleeve all along and never knew!” so he finds some cute guys and tries to hook up and it’s really awful.

So like, the curse is over, nothing putting him into heat, no reason to bug LWJ about it except WWX now realizes (yes, he takes this long; I realize that after the ending some people have a problem with WWX continuing to be this oblivious but I, for one, love it) that LWJ is The Only One. Except having burdened LWJ with all his gross sex stuff earlier WWX couldn’t possibly go to him and say “hey turns out I’m in love with you.”

So anyway like months and months later, there’s a cultivation conference and WWX is there and LWJ is there and LWJ notices that WWX is really, really weird and awkward around him and LWJ finally takes him aside and is like, “It’s still happening, isn’t it.” Basically he thinks WWX is still cursed and WWX is going into heat again because WWX’s restlessness around him matches how he’d get when he was about to go into heat. So WWX looks at LWJ and is like...”um. Yep. Yes. That’s it. Yes, it’s still happening. Still a problem! Great big problem...” And LWJ agrees to fuck him through his heat again.

Except of course, LWJ realizes that WWX has lied and is not in heat at all and thus realizes what a big idiot WWX is and they live happily ever after.

This one is a little more likely to get written because it’s almost all porn, but I would say it’s pretty low on the list. I did write like 6K! But because I’m me even though this was supposed to be a one-shot it’d probably end up as a 60K fic.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh thank you! For asking!

I don't think I'll ever finish this one but I'm in love with the concept. I wanted to write wangxian with either WWX or LWJ deaged, but I wanted all the angst. And I think that WWX is such that if you just de-age him into a kid post canon, you just get this happy go-lucky kid who seems like nothing's wrong. And he might say things that would hint at there being some very wrong things (either about living in the streets or about the Jiang household, depending on the age you pick), but I just feel he would not engage on that? Like maybe LWJ would be pretty sad about it, but WY would shrug and want to play. Meanwhile, post-canon de-aged!LWJ would be a very sad kiddo, but I don't think adult!WWX would engage with that either. He'd just spend all his time trying to get little LZ to crack a smile and avoid talking about any of the things that he knows are sad about LWJ's childhood until LWJ gets aged up again.

But if LWJ were to go into the past, into WWX's childhood, and actually be there witnessing Wei Ying on the streets or Madam Yu's treatment of him, we'd see a lot more because LWJ would be so protective and defensive and angry in a way he would not need to be if de-aged!WWX was happening in the present post-canon. Likewise, I think WWX would feel both furious and helpless at the way little Lan Zhan's feelings get shut up and repressed if he was at Cloud Recesses in the time when LWJ was actually a child, in a way WWX wouldn't be if LWJ was de-aged in the present post-canon. Basically, if either of them is de-aged post-canon, they get to be in the protecting and loving environment the other would create for them, when what's sad about their childhoods is the difficult environments they each had.

But I really didn't want to do time travel, because things changing in the past changes the present, and that wasn't what I was interested in. I just wanted them to be able to witness each other's childhoods.

So, post-canon, they encounter some kind of demon that seems to have trapped WWX in his own mind, but LWJ can enter his mind to save him. This puts LWJ in WWX's memories of childhood and witnesses WWX in the streets, WWX running from dogs, WWX getting found by JFM, etc. At first, LWJ thinks he can only passively watch the memories, but kid!Wei Ying inside the memories notices him, and LWJ realizes that he can talk to Wei Ying and interact with Wei Ying. He can thus change the memories--to an extent. No one else in the memories can see him or interact with him, because the living WWX exists in these memories but the other people are static memories in WWX's head. So, for instance, LWJ can pick up Wei Ying and take him away from the dogs, but the dogs don't react as though LWJ is there at all. LWJ can stand up to Madam Yu and say that she's treating Wei Ying unfairly, but Madam Yu can't hear him.

But Wei Ying can, and Wei Ying isn't aware he's inside his memories. To him, LWJ is this magical cloud prince who just shows up sometimes and is very pretty and nice and kind to him. They progress linearly through the memories until 15yo!WWX meets 15yo!LWJ, then WWX realizes who the magical cloud prince is and begins to figure out that he's somehow trapped.

But wait! In fact, WWX was never the one trapped in his own mind by a demon, it's been LWJ all along, except LWJ wouldn't let WWX inside his memories to help him out of the curse, so WWX opened up his own memories to let LWJ travel through then, thinking along the terms of "I showed you mine; now you show me yours." It works, and WWX is finally able to travel though LWJ's memories in the same way as LWJ traveled through his, and then they break the curse.

It's from WWX's pov but starts in Wei Ying's pov when he's 6 or 7 (which is suuuuuuuuper difficult to write btw) and he just sees this pretty gege appearing at random times and calls LWJ in his head "man from cloud."

I didn't write much. Sadly, as much as I love the idea, I don't see myself continuing it. I love the idea more than the idea of executing it! Thank you for asking! <3

WIP Title Ask Meme

Prompt: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

I was tagged by @trickybonmot!!!!! Thank you for tagging me!!!

I am not going to list all of my WIPs because that might number in the hundreds, and I'm not even going to be able to find them all. So here are my WIPs from MXTX fandoms:

The climax of TGCF is like if Dumbledore had loved Tom Riddle and treated him with the same affection and warmth he showed Harry, but Tom Riddle still turns into Voldemort and tries to slaughter all the Muggles, and then Harry has to defeat Voldemort to prevent apocalypse, and then as Voldemort lays dying, Dumbledore just holds him and says, "I didn't love Harry more because he was good, and you were bad. I never loved Harry more at all. Good and bad don't exist. Harry is his own person and I loved him for himself, but I cared for him at first and showed him kindness because he reminded me of you, and you, I missed you. I just missed you, I always missed you, I love you. I never stopped loving you."

That's the kind of book it is, which some other books aren't.

The other best part of TGCF is when when Xie Lian realizes that Hua Cheng is Wuming, and Hua Cheng turns the words "it's you, not the state of you" back onto Xie Lian.

I felt those words were supposed to be powerful the first time, when Xie Lian said them to Hua Cheng, but they didn't really work for me then. Sure, who you are deep down matters, but it also really, really matters what you do. So while it seemed a nice sentiment, it didn't really resonate with me.

But when Hua Cheng says that to Xie Lian, we understand the states that Xie Lian has been in--not just the state where he was about to commit genocide. And not just the state where he was drunk and falling in the mud and being kind of a fool.

In particular, we saw the state in which he was a shitty friend and shitty son and didn't communicate and grew small and immature and petty and cruel. The state where he screamed at his mom when she wanted to help him and find out what was wrong, then slammed the door in her face. The state where he doubted the friend who had given up literally everything for him and threw it in Feng Xin's face.

That is the state that will always stick with me, because stories like this really like to show a good guy going full-on dark, or--more rarely--a good guy going full on Fool. What you don't see as much in stories like these is a character like Xie Lian, who has been the most graceful of all, falling from grace into someone who is simply small. He's small. He's petty and thoughtless and selfish and immature.

Except, when he is being that way, your heart is absolutely breaking for him. You love him even more. You understand why this is happening to him and you, the reader, are crying for him and bleeding for him and loving him, loving him, loving him. You feel, viscerally, how deeply he is suffering to behave this way. You love everything he is even when he's being a dickface brat to Feng Xin and his parents.

Such that when Hua Cheng says "I love you, not the state of you," you get a new and deeper and kind of...incalculable, overwhelming sense that this is actually true, that we will all be our best and be our worst and that no matter which of those states we're in, we can still be loved. Not because of our actions, but because someone can just love who we are. Not because we're good deep down. But because we're us.

Humans aren't out there with their rulers judging whether you're good enough or kind enough or worthy enough. We just love because we're us and we love you because you're you.

One of the best moments in TGCF is when Xian Lian is lying stabbed in the road in Lang-Er Bay, seriously thinking about committing genocide, and the merchant bumps into him, drops his rice, cusses and yells at him, and then a bit later comes back and apologizes for being angry and gives Xian Lian his bamboo hat. The reason it is the best is that we expect one moment of kindness. This is what happens in a book like this. We know that Xie Lian has to have an epiphany about humanity to draw him back from the brink of utter and complete darkness. We know he has to have a catalyst that makes it so he does not commit genocide and decides to save everyone instead. This is how these stories go. But in these stories, that moment is usually given to us by an innocent child. Or it's given to us by someone who is just a purer soul than all the rest. In the set-up for this scene, you fully expect the one who will give Xie Lian the will to save humanity will be the water merchant who has been wanting to help Xie Lian the whole time he was lying in the road with a sword through him. That water merchant has been shown to be more compassionate than the rest and has been held back by his wife, who fears the God of Misfortune.

And yet, in TGCF, that moment is not given to us by a pure, innocent child. It is not given to us by one person who just happens to be kinder than most. It's not. It's not. It's given to us by just your every day guy having a shitty day who is just as cruel and nasty to Xian Lian as everyone else, but who takes a moment to calm down and sees this pathetic loser in the rain and is like "hey, I lost my temper, sorry, don't be a pathetic loser, here's my hat, stopped getting rained on and looking so sad, go home."

It's not this pure shining moment about the inherent goodness of humanity. It's this pure shining moment about people doing shitty things and people doing kind things and how that's all mixed up within us and we're always both. It's that that gives Xie Lian the will to survive and sacrifice everything to save all humanity. It's not because there is good alongside the bad but because we're always both, and Xie Lian knows that he is both, and he thinks that's worth saving. He thinks it's worth being obliterated for.

When he's not obliterated for it, he lives for it instead.

Vid Rec: I've Got A Theory

Back when I was reccing vids I was saving the best for last and then lost steam. Just know that this vid is just as funny yet also as poignant as the original song from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even if you know nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's a great vid. And even if you know nothing about The Untamed--well, I feel a little sad you don't get to have that in your life but I guess it's not for some? Seems fake but okay