![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cashewSo. I spent way too many hours awake and now my circadian cycle is all F'ed up. Meanwhile, thanks to tanithryudo, I spent almost all of the 13 hour flight (plus the 5+ hours of commute to the flight and back home) reading an imperial ton of dog shit (and dog blood) BL fic.
Don't ask about the dog blood, if you know you know.
Anyway.
I can't say I've found satisfying fic as of yet (and I'm not willing to look at English language fic right now), but there's a few that kind of sticks out from the sea of 🤮 and id fic, so uh...here we go? (Also, if you're wondering about the tag, see official screencaps. Cannot tell if ship is canon or just queer baiting.)
Fic number one!
拂晓 END
Per author notes: A bunch of headcanon of the events leading up to Sedition of Imbibitor Lunae. (Also, can I just say 饮月之乱 is so much cooler sounding than "Sedition of the Imbibitor Lunae"? Like, I can't even explain how much more oomph the Chinese name gets across.)
Pros: Let me count the ways...
Jing Yuan acts like an equal to the others of the High-Cloud Quintet (and again 云上五骁 just sounds so much cooler 😭) with exception to his master Jing Liu. Cannot verbalize how much I love that someone seems to get that Jing Yuan is actually an adult even in the pre-sedition era. Young adult, sure, but definitely adult.
Jing Liu's attitude of "touch my disciple and I will go 哪吒 on your skinny dragon ass" is basically my headcanon forever.
Jing Yuan being a people pleaser and has a self-sacrificing streak? Yes.
Honestly not enough fic from Jing Yuan's POV, most likely because writing from the perspective of a tactical genius is hard, but I love how well the story captured his thought process and gave Jing Yuan due credit for his a) tactical mind, b) emotional competency, c) social and political savoir faire. (I...I've become a Jing Yuan fangirl. 😭)
Fairly consistent grammatical style. Reminds me of 评书 style narration and dialogue structure. Having grown up on a diet of classical novels (such as the Four Classics, five billion renditions of Seven Heroes & Five Gallants, Generals of the Yang Family, etc.), seeing properly integrated vernacular and classical Chinese grammar without resorting to colloquialisms was a breath of fresh air after uh...the admittedly rough dialogue of the game's script.
Dan Feng also has identity issues and is a bit...woo-woo is also my headcanon forever. Yes. I shamelessly love the needless melodrama because something about this just satisfies all my tragic romance needs.
Cons: Unfortunately...
Some of the homophone typos really makes getting through certain sentences difficult. Also a lot of phrases were fairly difficult to parse and could use a lot more polish.
While I appreciate the confidence the author shows in Jing Yuan's apparently inhuman capacity to overcome trauma...holy shit. This is not for the faint of heart. I feel, perhaps, Jing Yuan can suffer just a little PTSD after the trauma conga line, instead of jumping back into the fray after like ONE day of recovery.
Random pin-yin replacements for characters. I'm not sure what was going on there, whether it's a failed keyboard or censorship avoidance. It was only like three or four times in a 40k+ word fic, but that definitely threw me for a loop.
Fic numero dos!
之子于归
Follow up to previous fic, this time during game time and time for Dan Heng to fix things.
Pros:
Dan Heng would like to beat Dan Feng into a pulp is always my jam. This is very in line with my personal head canon of why Dan Heng has verbal constipation when it comes to everything Jing Yuan.
The absolutely glacial development of the relationship thanks to Dan Heng being awkward AF and Jing Yuan deciding true love means letting go is...yes. I love misunderstandings due to both sides being convinced their love is unrequited. Drag the emotional torture out slooooooooowly.
Jing Yuan over complicating a simple problem? Yes, more.
References to canon BL doujin...yeeeeees.
Cons:
After 12k words fade to black?! What did I suffer through all this for? Where's my payoff?! Ahem.
Jing Yuan willing to retire makes me raise my brows. For me, one of the big draws of Dan Heng/Jing Yuan is the fact that both people have to balance personal desires with the bigger picture/their social obligations and exploring how they manage to overcome the obstacle to strike a proper balance is the thing that interests me the most. Having one guy just retire and thus making the issue a non-issue is not really my ideal solution.
I refuse to accept Dan Heng is capable of topping. Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.
Fic nombre trois!
致黯淡星
Using science to explain the identity paradox of Imbibitor Lunae.
Pros:
Honestly, I'm impressed with the wave-particle duality explanation of the 1.5 personality theory. I'm unconvinced, but I'm impressed at the integration.
As cheesy as it was, I liked the twin-star/twin-black hole metaphor for their relationship.
So many side characters working so hard for this ship. I have to say I like it when ship fic remember that there are other people in this world and our romantic pairing have to interact with them.
Jing Yuan suffering HUGE DAMAGE in battle. Yes. More of this. I love torturing this poor guy.
Jing Yuan having to suffer the ignominy of being caught in bed with Dan Heng. Sorry, this just cracks me up so hard.
More references to canon BL ship fic is always welcome.
More Jing Yuan POV. I love when authors can get into this guy's head. I love that even in the most dire of circumstances, Jing Yuan is still thinking his way around and out of situations. And again, kudos for giving Jing Yuan emotional competence and political savoir faire. This characterization is definitely difficult to write and I'm glad to see it properly depicted.
Cons:
Not a very big fan of intersex Jing Yuan, especially when it's an obvious excuse to write het sex instead of gay sex.
Again, Jing Yuan bottoming for Dan Heng just does not work for me, although at least Jing Yuan is taking the lead and topping from the bottom.
It's all a simulation reveal is kind of a let down. Plus actually dying then becoming a being of pure energy is a bit too fantastical for me. I know, I know, it's a world with universe traversing high speed rail and magic and self-rejuvenating reincarnation and stuff, but still. No.
And finally, a few observations after reading some really weird stuff...
Fandom really likes making Jing Yuan a bottom. Somehow, even when he's the alpha in an ABO fic, he still managed to be bottoming. I'm not sure why fandom is so intent on making him taking it up the butt so hard.
I also see that fandom has latched onto the squamates have hemipenes thing. Is a kink I approve of.
On the other hand, the feminization of obviously masculine presenting characters is...no. I get the most recent thing is make characters intersexed because that's the current hot button issue, but given it's used as a kink and rarely an exploration of actual gender identity...just no.
Dan Heng/Dan Feng fans definitely drives most of the ship fic, so wanting more Jing Yuan focus is rough.
Blade/Jing Yuan is uh...actually I would like to see more of this, if only because the two of them are the only ones who actually share any parts of their past. Like, I get that Blade barely remembers, but it seems like he hasn't completely lost all of his memories, so there's room for some heart-to-heart and exploration of the past through this ship.
OK, I get we know pretty much nothing about Bai Heng, but I'd like to see how a ship between her and Jing Yuan would've gone down. She sounds like a cool big sister type who would've been a sweet first-love kind of thing. There are few het ships that I would be interested in seeing, this is one of them.
Finally, am seriously tired of authors writing Jing Yuan being a kid for a good chunk of the High-Cloud Quintet era. Like, seriously, I'd rather the team got together after Jing Yuan has became an adult so he's treated as an adult by the team members rather than as a child (with exception to Jing Liu, of course). The infantilization of Jing Yuan is really annoying.
 |   Tags: |
no subject
Date: 2024-07-01 15:58 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 03:20 (UTC)Have you considered writing your own...? *hinthintnudgenudge*
no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 17:06 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-04 03:47 (UTC)You can always write it in English...? I mean, there are English fic, too...
no subject
Date: 2024-07-01 18:53 (UTC)This is why I also don't read any fic with Yanqing in it. It's like the game forces me to dislike him.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 03:23 (UTC)Yanqing cockblock confirmed.
I have to say, Yanqing sadly isn't a very likable character. Bailu is younger but definitely more likable because she's clearly overcome a lot more difficulty. Not really sure what Yanqing did that makes him worthy of the attention from someone who has a ridiculous amount of life experience and suffering behind him.
Like, I just don't buy Yanqing is remotely similar to Jing Yuan as a child, since Jing Yuan as a kid seemed to be pretty quick witted even when he didn't have the life experience to back up the intelligence. Meanwhile, Yanqing feels like generic hothead shounen sidekick...
no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 16:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-04 03:49 (UTC)Maybe he's just there to pad the pulls, so the game can squeeze more money out of the players. Because they can factually say you have a chance of getting a 5-star, but then fuck the player over with pulls of a character that objectively gets no love from the fanbase.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 02:23 (UTC)August, 4800 BTA/3300 SC ― The Xianzhou fleet together drafted the Treaty of Harmony, defining laws and punishments, promoting loyalty, and supporting the needy. Order was gradually restored, just as in the legend of the great unification during the Primeval Imperium days. A policy on reproduction and settlements was also drafted, allowing any of the eight ships to settle on fertile planets unpopulated by short-life species to build self-sustaining colonies.
Basically, immortality + limited resources makes for an obvious recipe for overpopulation issues. The Xianzhou fought whole civil wars over allocation of resources. So most likely, any reproduction on the Xianzhou ships themselves are probably really really heavily controlled. (Probably to the effect that most people think it's way too much of a bureaucratic hassle than it's worth until they're retired and got nothing else better to do, is my headcanon).
(And wrt to Vidyadhara, there's like 2500 years between Yubie and Dan Feng's era. Assuming average of 500 year lifespan, so that's only 3 other high elders (most likely less) between them.)
no subject
Date: 2024-07-02 03:27 (UTC)I'm convinced all baby making is happening under very tight control and everyone is a test tube baby!
Re: Vidyadhara elders - Fans seem to be putting the generations at 2 more incarnations between Yu Bie and Dan Feng based on the stories I'm reading. Which also means that the Xianzhou long lived people live about twice as long as a Vidyadhara and supports my Dan Heng bottoms theory.