Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

【枫恒景】履冰 /【枫恒景】兄友弟恭

Although technically two works, is practically Part I/Part II of the same story.

General setup: Imperial drama AU, featuring crown prince Dan Feng, adopted male princess Dan Heng, royal nephew Jing Yuan being sandwiched and pulled around by these two while trying to keep the politics from brewing into a bloodbath as factions split the empire.

( Blahblah thoughts: )

So, was talking out this symptom of poor JY constantly being made to bottom regardless of his ship partners (WHY IS HE BOTTOMING TO YAN QING WHAT IS HAPPENING?!), and I've come to the conclusion Chinese authors just cannot conceptualize how a non-toxic, non-violent man tops during sex. Like...what is wrong with this country? Apparently happy consensual sex is unimaginable. Or just not kinky enough...

Meanwhile, I think I found one fic of JY topping, but like...it's very...meh. So...anyway.

On the more canon side of things, I'm highly amused at this line from JY's personal story: "景元出生于世代效力地衡司的家族中……家长会在幼儿周围摆上种种物事玩具任其抓取，以卜前途。其父母原本指望孩子继承衣钵，成为地衡司的学者或是执事官，景元却独独抓起了玩具刀剑。"

One, confirmation that Xianzhou people do have family units and babies are not popped out of petri dishes. Two, JY comes from a civil officer family, so him going down the martial path...man, that shit is ripe for angst and drama, but also explains JY's temperament.

Like...gah, this guy. He's basically every awesome Chinese hero archetype squished into one person. It's like...if you took 诸葛亮, 赵云, 岳飞, 包公 and threw their traits into a blender, this is the guy that comes out. (诸葛亮's tactical genius, 赵云's beauty and battle prowess, 岳飞's leadership and self-sacrifice, 包公's political savvy and moral compass...add to that his Buddha level zen at approaching basically everything...🥰😍) Maybe fans just have no idea how to deal with him on a fic level.

Edit to add: The more I'm reading into Imbibitor Lunae's character dialogue clips, the more I'm questioning "does Dan Heng actually like JY (as a friend or otherwise) or is that just like...pure civility?" Because man he is cooooold. He seems to at least have slightly more emotion when talking about Blade, whereas with JY, he's just kind of ... "meh, not my problem".

Edit to add 2: Dan Heng's clothes has a line from the poem that inspired JY's weapon. Dan Heng is a tsundere confirmed. HE'S TRYING TO WEAR THE GUY'S WEAPON, OMFG YOU LOSER!

So. 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.)

( Blablablah, yapping about fanon and headcanons )

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.