catalogust blog

RKB 2026 fic - on the edge

2026-04-25T23:34:06Z

why

The backstory for this fic is that a long time ago the tgcf kink prompt bot (in this house we love the kink prompt bots) posted "Mu Qing + Shaving Kink" and I was like wait, you CAN sexualise shaving, this is genius, and it fits him perfectly, and so I became obsessed. But I never found a way to use this concept.

Then recently I saw the Mulian prompt in Rare Kink Buffet (...I was also obsessed with my own prompt at the time which was about nonsexual kink) and the fic just materialised itself. I went back in my notes to check and it seems like I didn't do any brainstorming or high level outlining at all I just went for it. Smh every Mulian thing I write is so random and impulsive (because their canon content is amazing and satisfying and does not make me yearn for fics)

You guys.... Mulian and service kink what could be a more potent combination.... I just love to see Mu Qing feeling every kind of way about Xie Lian at once

other thoughts

I felt a lot of wholesome enthusiasm when writing this because it's all kinks I wish were more popular especially armpits. Pits are such a bog standard kink which seems mostly absent from fandom and I want to do my part to change that!!!

I have complained before about how it feels like 90% of Mulian fics are clothes and personal grooming centric and probably set in a dressing room or bedroom and I'm sorry to say that I have become even more of a hypocrite because this is my SECOND one after look in my eyes (arguably third considering lose lose situation is also set in Xie Lian's bedroom and has some kind of mulian going on in the background).

But at least I am breaking it up a bit by having this one be from Xie Lian's point of view and having absolutely no yearning or awareness of power differentials or serious thoughts whatsoever. It was really fun to go back through and edit to make sure Mu Qing was sufficiently grumpy and paranoid at every moment though.

.........

Okay, that's it I just got a surge of motivation for my other long planned Mulian platonic nonsexual kink fic. In that one they do not set foot in a single bedroom, and it's postcanon so the dynamic will be more interesting than all my precanon ones. I have a slight regret about the juicy postcanon Mulian hidden in my longer Fengqing fic that absolutely nobody would click it to see and hey one solution is to write more. They deserve to get a lil freaky.

While I'm on the topic, I do wonder whether I would still ship them exclusively platonically if Hua Cheng wasn't Xie Lian's one true love and all. I think so. At the moment it is definitely a deep part of the appeal for me that it feels almost psychologically impossible that they would see each other in a romantic light. Rather than keeping it platonic because Hualian must be together (which they must), I feel like Hualian set me free to follow my "Confusing platonic ships" dreams when it comes to Mulian. I have had many other such ships down the years and usually end up saving fanarts of them kissing to my phone while symbolically shaking my head. Hooray for TGCF being how it is.

Fic - North Wind ch1

2026-02-07T14:47:06Z

I want to do a context blog post for just the first chapter of this fic because a. who knows when I'll write the rest (right now I'm partway through writing chapter 2) b. this is the chapter with 70% of the setup so I wanted to talk about where I got my ideas from.

Last year I was sitting on a bus brainstorming a Cuocuo pov fic because I'm edgy and love rare POVs and I wrote this

what IS the fxjl post canon relationship. They're both wrong it would be dumb if they never saw each other again and also dumb to be officially married

Wow.... insightful. Jk but I think most FX/JL shippers would agree with this sentiment. No wonder there's so little fic about them post canon because wtf do we do with you two? I'm hoping some of them would like my fic even though Mu Qing is there (big ask).

I outlined their entire interaction in the first chapter at that point, without knowing where it would go after. I should have known, if it's a bad idea for them to be officially married then that's exactly what I should make them do muhaha.

A week or two after that bus ride I read erotica romance novel The Widow and the Orcs by Finley Fenn (thanks to Tumblr for putting "what if Bridgerton added an orc" on my dash) and became obsessed with it. The plot of that book is driven by a guy (a guy who often rolls his eyes...) trying really hard to get his bestie laid which is my kind of thing. I was thinking up silly ideas for how I could get this for mq+fx+jl for months and I never figured it out but it definitely had some influence on the current fic. At one point it was going to be Mu Qing and Jian Lan getting fake married. Not as juicy!

That influence from my beloved orc book is also why the story has this romance novel vibe. I've always said that fengqing are like the childhood friend and edgy bad boy love interests in a cliche love triangle, now we'll see if they are really up to the task... okay, I think you can guess that they are not up to the task.

Most of all I need to credit Bell's wonderful remix of my fic for being so heart wrenching and insightful on Feng Xin's inner state and making me feel literally so bad for him (okay, and I also felt bad for torturing him on purpose in so many of my other fics lmao) that I wanted to write him some sort of happier ending. That gave me the final impulse to synthesise all my different ideas with this more concrete and challenging goal of a happy ever after.

I didn't realise that having a difficult goal to work towards when plotting can actually be really helpful. Even if it makes me constantly think "oh god, I wrote myself in here and I don't know if I can write my way back out" it gives a lot of energy to the process.

The outline is done but it's long! We will see if I get there!

Recent fic recs 04-02-2026

2026-02-04T23:06:07Z

Compiled from maybe the last 2-3 months.

I know the format is a little strange, this is because I am archiving the low effort posts I make on Mastodon. I've corrected the capitalisation of fandom names and bolded them to help with skimming.

Mirror on Dreamwidth

I don't think you need knowledge of Heated Rivalry to appreciate this absolute monument to toxic twitter discourse and bad fandom behaviour

https://archiveofourown.org/works/76246531

Re: gen

A chunk of my ao3 bookmarks are gen but, I forget most fics after a few months so I find it hard to rec them

most recently I have to shout out the TGCF ling wen travel article https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719117

A fridge horror-y Jeeves and Wooster fic https://archiveofourown.org/works/123253

The Goblin Emperor rightfully has a lot of good gen fic, even diegetic historical source analysis https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622397 or recipes https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462516

This mostly pro wrestling fic author who I've been reading fandom blind, I think their writing is sexy

https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungefug/pseuds/ungefug

SVSSS fic: Sex farce about lqg becoming entangled in the horrors of yqy/sj

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63006016/chapters/167082178

I haven't read any of this author's fics but I love how they start every one with a preface about how they are just a translator and the fic was actually written by an evil wizard in the scottish highlands.

Like. In an old literature way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudotranslation

https://archiveofourown.org/works/70581866/chapters/183409801 (the first one)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/70589251/chapters/183430906 (the latest one with an even more involved backstory)

recently 25-07-2025

2025-07-25T19:42:34Z

This is my third draft of this post, I'm really clueless as to how I want to be blogging here. But anyway. I thought it would be nice to log some of the media I've been enjoying.

Recently I have a soft spot for historical fiction. Some of my current read/watch in progress:

My Memories of Old Beijing - Lin Haiyin: this is my Chinese reading practice, I can only get through it with DuShu.
The Apothecary Diaries: why did they take eunuch Jingshi away from us? Life is cruel.
The Honjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo: as an Umineko fan I love seeing how Umineko fits into the wider tradition of Japanese murder mysteries; I believe Seishi Yokomizo's works are actually referenced in WTC

Steven Universe! I've just finished s4. I originally planned to write this post after finishing the show but then I realised there's not only a fifth season but a movie and a sequel series... I have to set my post free!

I had watched the first few seasons while it was being released as a teen, but it's even better watching as an adult with horny gaze and understanding things. I feel like I say this a lot but growing up is awesome.
Constantly impressed by how good the pacing is and how much they can fit into a 10 minute episode.
Ruby is the funniest and cutest character with the cutest voice I'm obsessed with her. And Garnet is my fave of the regular cast, I love characters with high self esteem. The Answer got me crazy emotional. This part hasn't changed since I was a teen.
I ship everything and am looking forward to seeing the fanworks. I would ship Steven with everyone too if he wasn't so small... very tragic for me.

Music - I should've done a music of 2024 post but I didn't so let's squeeze it in here

My album of 2024 - RUSH! ARE U COMING? by Maneskin (2023). Horny music soothes my soul.
My other Album of 2024 - Bingo! By Alex Winston. One of my favourite artists is back! This interview unlocked the album for me.
So far in 2025 it's been a lot of Muni Long and Bandori (Ave Mujica, Roselia, Mygo, Poppin Party).
Also Carly Rae Jepsen and Lady Gaga. Listening to pop classics makes me feel so culturally educated, and also specifically like I'm studying for the next time I go to karaoke.
I am happy I got to see IAMX live; this artist is dear to my heart. Even if the show had bad sound mixing and an underwhelming live band. Getting to see the aesthetics, think about the music, and buy cool merch clothes helped me figure out some things about how I want to dress and look.

Other books &etc:

Peerless - Meng Xi Shi: caught up to vol4. I loved it at the start cause they were so mean and evil to each other but now I don't understand why Cui Buqu has caught feelings for Feng Xiao who just sexually harrasses him.
Ballad of Sword and Wine - Tang Jiu Qing: vol1 only. Shen Zechuan is too badass and mysterious for me.
Paradise Lost - John Milton: still very early in, Satan has just decided to head to Earth. I want to listen to an audio drama adaptation of this.
Dimension 20: Cloudward Ho: managing to keep up every week, it's still funny but makes me miss the ultra tropey gimmicky seasons. I'm watching a little bit of Mentopolis with waifu and it's night and day.
The Count of Amaranth Moor vol1 - Faun V. Hartley
These Deathless Shores - P. H. Low (dnf)
Gather Together In My Name - Maya Angelou
A Small Place - Jamaica Kincaid

I feel like a recs and links post might be better than an opinions compilation like this. I'll try that next time. It might be pretty short (I have not being getting out much, metaphorically, on the internet).

(Comments @ Dreamwidth)

A new version of goldgust.net

2025-06-24T19:29:34Z

I decided to frankenstein my two former 'goldgust'-related sites together, one being (the OC information part of) my art site, the other being my blog. This is the result!

I wanted a personal website to be the central hub for the goldgust identity. Both of the former sites were a bit over-specialised and not quite suited for that. This is meant to be a general one which can instead easily fit whatever content I felt like adding to it. For example, I might want to add links, recs, meta, fan shrines, host my fanfics here, etc. eventually.

(One help in doing this was switching to Eleventy for generating the site, which I find to be a little more structure agnostic as opposed to Hugo (my previous SSG) which expects you to have all posts of the same type in a single folder and automatically generates list and tag pages for them etc. The more agnostic the engine, the more you have to do yourself to get things working, but at this point I am ready to make that trade off.)

What about the art from the art site? I'm going to leave the art site up at a different url and there are still some things there I'm proud of. I just don't want it as part of the main site because it's not part of my online activities anymore.

I would like to move away from the goldgust username altogether, I'm just not sure what I would use instead.

2025 MXTX remix fic

2025-04-26T21:54:06Z

The customary post for the latest fic

Also on DW

Where did this fic come from

The concept for this remix was so pleasingly basic to me. Switch Nan Feng for Fu Yao, then keep everything else the same, especially the backstory/setup of the fic. I've been wanting to write a fu yao fic for ages.

I had also just watched dandadan so I wanted to write dick theft. I toned it down a lot from my original vision because I thought it was too weird for an exchange gift to a stranger. But I kept it in to the extent that I did because it was like... thematic or something.

you see the author of the original put it as an offhanded line at the start that mu qing WASN'T SURE if he would lose all his power by breaking his cultivation. Of course we know from canon that Mu Qing really was willing to give all this stuff up, he took the cursed shackle, he threw himself in the lava, etc. So it's possible to imagine him making this choice. But it's an interesting detail. Then another thing in the original is this idea of excess (excess spiritual energy, double penetration...)

So, aside from being goofy porn it's playing with this idea of having or not having things (like your dick)

What was it like writing

God. In hindsight, I should not have remixed a pwp and especially not into another pwp. I did not know at the time how difficult they are to write. I was also like "if I don't include dp then I won't have enough connection to the original :((" which I probably shouldn't have worried so much about. I don't want to write any more penetrative sex for a year now I've. had. ENOUGH!!!!!!

I was SO excited to have an easy way to write mu qing/fu yao though that I couldn't turn back even when I got lost in the sauce. It's a treat to have a fave who is not only self absorbed enough to fuck their clone but has enough complexes to make a real production out of it too. I got to write the first fic in the mu qing selfcest tag! The agenda (begun in look in my eyes) advances.

Shout out to The Only Hand You'll Ever Need which is the original selfcest fic to me. The iconic, the one and only. I still think about the part where he looks at his own back.

other notes

There was originally going to be a lot more about perfume in the fic. I had this idea (you can still kind of see it with the sweets scene) that Fu Yao would be like.. the creative director of everything. He brings them what clothes to wear, he was going to choose scents for them too to like set the mood for them. In the end it fucked up the pacing too much. Some day I will get to write in detail about characters wearing sexy perfume....

2025-04-26T00:00:00Z

date: 2025-04-26T22:49:50+01:00

Experimenting with using Dreamwidth as my 'primary' fandom blog again and archiving here.

At one point I was determined to combine this blog with my art website, but I don't draw digitally anymore so no need for that, which means DW's features are sufficient for everything.

DW's data export feature is still terrible though which is why this is the archive.

fic writers 20 questions meme

2025-04-14T18:29:41Z

Crosspost from DW

Tagged by the various people who did this meme and said they tag everyone

\1. How many works on AO3?

\2. Total word count on AO3?

157k (approx 50k of which was written in 2024!)

\3. Top five fics by kudos?

Exclude all the enstars fics that I exiled to a pseud. I have been meaning to move them to another account entirely but I'm lazy

guilt and duty and whatever (FMA) - 352 kudos, my second ever fic, winning by being 9 years old
comfortable position (A3!) - 168 kudos, also old
lay down your load, 'cause every day it's gonna grow (The Old Guard) - 97 kudos, TOG fandom was very nice to me
stuck inside my fantasy (TGAA) - 96 kudos
seeing the light (enstars) - 92 kudos

I care a lot more about comments than kudos, and I care a lot more about interactions from people I know / know of than from complete strangers. Posting digital art and generally being online for a long time has taught me how stupid and fickle online engagement numbers are.

Also I'm very lazy about promoting my work which is toxic in its own way

\4. What fandoms do you primarily write for?

Whatever activates my fan braincells, tgcf is winning right now. writing for canons with a distinctive prose style is the best (tgcf is not this)

\5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes, unless it's super memey/copypasta

\6. Angstiest ending?

This is hard because I'm such a fan of downer endings. I guess the worst would be the ones where even in canon the angst never gets resolved, so for recent fics that would be stuck inside my fantasy (kazuma never does tell ryunosuke his secrets) and you and a bottle (gestures at mlc)

\7. Fic with the happiest ending?

The Last Bite has the most 'earned' happy ending, to me, although I don't think I necessarily pulled it off when writing it...... even if I did I could've milked it more... kicks a rock

\8. Do you get hate?

No lol I'm not popular enough please send me hate please stroke my ego

I have got negative comments but they missed the point so they weren't good hate

\9. Do you write smut?

Yes. To be honest, I write a lot of smut which I don't put 100% effort into being sexy (or funny, dark or whatever it's actually meant to be) and it's just a vehicle for jokes/conflict/whatever.. I want to write more sincerely horny stuff and put more effort into sfw plots or keeping things nonexplicit when I don't care about the sex itself

\10. Do you write crossovers?

No. I wouldn't be opposed to a setting transplant but I'm not into "what if X and Y met!?" I'm barely into that with characters from the SAME canon who don't meet.

\11. Ever had a fic stolen?

\12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

\13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes Tea for Three for the enstars shipping olympics :) I think we all did some writing and collabed on illustrations too. It wasn't a deeply collaborative process though, it would be fun to try that someday.

\14. All time favorite ship?

I think it's still enstars hokuwata (coughs blood and dies)

\15. WiPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

A howl's moving castle howl x calcifer fic

I also have a hokuwata fic set in second year where they skip school to see hokuto's mom which a) never writing enstars fic again b) In enstars 2 they kept revealing more things about hokuto's mom and I haven't even kept up!!!! I'm a fake hokuto's mom fan at this point

\16. Writing strengths?

I like my concepts a lot. I think I'm good at coming up with fics which have a nice connection back to canon and pay proper attention to canon (which is a different thing than getting the details right, I fall down on that all the time)

Sometimes I get positive comments on my dialogue but tbh I think my dialogue is just okay whereas many other people's is not good enough :/

\17. Writing weaknesses?

EVERYTHING!!!!??? to start with, I haven't had enough practice on plot or fics with a large cast, I feel that my writing style is very plain and fanfictiony and my pacing tends towards too fast. My default is to write like I'm being charged per word.

\18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?

I guess this is relevant to my tgcf fics at the moment.

For me it feels weird to include a word of another language in dialogue or narration when a character is speaking and thinking in a language where that thing is actually familiar. Since I write in English I would usually rather have a slightly incorrect word or an awkward translated phrase in English than the correct word in the original language (especially if that language is Chinese because the most you can do is put in a pinyin without tones, which is still not the correct word, just wrong with extra steps).

I don't know if this is the best way of doing things (the "pancake" in TLB haunts me...)

\19. First fandom you wrote for?

Naruto, it was narusasu hahahahaha I still remember there was no plot, and Sasuke accidentally went into Naruto's mind realm where he goes to talk to the nine tails

\20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Favourite execution - no speculation in those eyes (TLT, silas missing scenes) but it feels like cheating because the plot is just a list of canonical events

Favourite overall - I think the most me-ish fics I've written are the ones like no speculation where I'm just going DID YOU CONSIDER THE IMPLICATIONS OF CANON!?? So recently, stuck inside my fantasy and Money, Time, Patience, Love. There is another one I have coming up, stare ahead and long which may be my favourite because it's kind of that but also a lot more indulgent. on the other hand it's a very embarrassing fic so it would be even more embarrassing if I said it was my fave... Not confirming anything

Blank:

How many works on AO3?
Total word count on AO3?
Top five fics by kudos?
What fandoms do you primarily write for?
Do you respond to comments?
Angstiest ending?
Fic with the happiest ending?
Do you get hate?
Do you write smut?
Do you write crossovers?
Ever had a fic stolen?
Have you ever had a fic translated?
Have you ever co-written a fic?
All time favorite ship?
WiPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
Writing strengths?
Writing weaknesses?
Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?
First fandom you wrote for?
Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Fic - the last bite

2025-03-22T20:53:48Z

Context post again for my latest fic

I try not to use these posts to bash my own writing too much but I have to get off my chest that this one is not up to my standards and I would not have published it if I didn't think that publishing was also an important part of the learning experience of writing a chapter fic. It suffers from my classic problem of not having been started with a serious attitude (even though I was and am sincere about the story. Just, as a piece of writing craft I didn't take it seriously I guess) as well as issues arising from being written over such a long time.

BUT IT'S OKAY BECAUSE I HAD THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Where did this fic come from

This fic exists because you cannot throw a stone on ao3 without hitting a fengqing postcanon reconciliation and get together fic and none of them ever left me satisfied. Fengqing don't NEED to reconcile. The grudges they have are much more founded in their issues with themselves than with each other.

Have you noticed the arc of their relationship in canon is not about directly reconciling but about discovering new things and getting to know each other better. My faves were a miscommunication plot? This is unbelievable.

(This is why it really ticks me off when fic authors claim that Mu Qing confessed that he wanted to be friends with both Xie Lian and Feng Xin at the end of the books or that he reconciled with both of them. HE DID NOT DO THAT. He confessed to Xie Lian only, Feng Xin was eavesdropping!!! Go reread the conversation after FX shows up and they never talk about their own relationship or feelings for each other! they just go back to being mean and rude instantly)

To put it another way, why couldn't they have reconciled during the 800 years gap? They clearly care about each other and have opportunities to interact, and 800 years is enough time to try different things. If there was a solution, they would've found it, which proves that there was none. Instead, they had beef all the way until Xie Lian returned because their beef comes from not reconciling with Xie Lian.

But they already seem to have reconciled with Xie Lian as much as they could by the end of canon. And y'know they show up together in the epilogue and hang out and have cute banter together (why did I get emotional typing that). So... starting from the basic fanfictional premise of "they're into each other" can they just get together postcanon with no issues whatsoever? I mean PROBABLY but I hate get togethers. So my first thought was, ok, what if they were already together?

At this point the first chapter of the fic appeared in my head and made me so worried about their break up that I needed to figure out how they would get back together EVER, so that was my motivation to write the whole thing. Like, they've been stuck together by circumstance for 800 years and now the happy ending arrives, they have a free choice of whether to stay together, what's gonna happen?

What was it like writing

It's not the first TGCF fic I started writing, but it's near enough. Thinking through a fic which takes place over such a long timespan was very exploratory and gave me a foundation for the rest of my fic ideas and fannish thoughts.

Finishing a long term project for the first time also felt good. I had to really figure out how to make that happen, it was not just a question of effort and discipline. Sometimes when you procrastinate that thing you wanted to do for months, it's because you subconsciously know there is a problem with it that still needs to be fixed...

In this case, it was adding all the fun stuff with XL. I knew he needed to be in the fic but it took me a long time to acknowledge that he needed a big role (of course he did! this is a fic about Mu Qing!) It was always meant to be one story which you suddenly realise is a different story halfway, but I leaned a lot harder into that in the end and stopped shying away from making it even slightly complicated... (I think that sudden change is also why I got my first ever hate comments. Exciting. perhaps next time I write something long, I'll put more thought into managing reader expectations.)

I am still haunted by the fact that the premise of this fic is basically 'there are literally no other problems in the entire world postcanon, only mu qing's problems' because it means I didn't get to dig into anyone else's postcanon character much... I'm so biased only my blorbo gets his feelings considered :( at the same time, it was baby's first longer fic and I probably would have died if it got any more complex. I just accept it as a thought experiment with simple premises. It is a mess but there are lots of fun moments.

extra notes because I did my 14 months so I get to have an extra long blog post about it

Why is there so much food?

My outline started completely character based and I needed to add some kind of real life physical element. I picked food just because I like food and it's something that naturally attracts emotional significance. There is a little canon bit of Mu Qing rejecting food (...drink) which I wish I could say inspired me, but actually I found it after:

Fu Yao, on the other hand, never touched the tea Xie Lian had pushed in his direction and had been languidly cleaning his fingers with a white handkerchief this entire time.

In the feast at Puqi Shrine at the end of the story, you also see Fengqing picking up their bowls of chicken noodles to eat together, but quickly putting them down after discovering the ghost chefs' wacky cooking methods. Did they get a bite in? Well, in this fic, the answer is no.

Mu Qing's cultivation

Originally, I was going to claim that 'don't do sex and drugs kids' was just something Mei Nianqing said to stop all his rich spoilt students from getting servant girls pregnant. But a while later I had to sigh and admit that the cultivation restrictions in TGCF are so important that I couldn't disrespect them like that.

At the same time, this is another place where I wanted to do something different than many of the fics I read which either made Mu Qing breaking his cultivation with sex into a nonissue with the power of love and handwaving, and/or had a very.... christian vibe to them which I didn't find fitting for his character.

Anyway, the route I went down was very much having my cake and eating it i.e. Mu Qing gets to fuck, it's still damaging his cultivation but it's not all or nothing. I really enjoyed getting to use sex as just another aspect of 'oh no, my connections to other people are destroying me' and all that. I guess the binary nature of losing one's virginity in the eyes of society is the last thing I'm disrespecting.

With all that said, it's like two sentences in the fic. I probably could've included it in more places. Regardless it was one of the biggest bonuses from writing that I finally found myself a way in to this topic, and now I have other ideas for it too.

further ideas

My favourite is the sequel about Xie Lian humiliating Mu Qing more under the pretext of friendship. like 'we're SUCH good friends I'm going to subject you to some really weird shit' especially his cooking. When it happened in ch 5 in the original fic that was real humiliation but they could do it as a kink thing after. I think they would both get a lot out of this (and so would Hua Cheng) (my favourite part).

I also have ideas for a closer look at banishment era fengqing and for feng xin's pov of their 'reconciliation' after they ascended, but they're basically just ideas for how to fit as much angst into a pwp as possible...

more fics roundup

2024-09-07T23:02:22Z

Two old fics that I impulsively decided to set free and two procrastinatory ficlets. You can tell my self control has been down the drain...

empty bones (from 2020)

link

I still find myself from 4 years ago funny yay. this one was originally planned to be longer (going all the way to the canonical murder suicide) (wtf is JCTN actually) but now that it's been 4 years I was detached enough to just clean up and post what I had.

stuck inside my fantasy (from 2021)

link

I love Who Needs Friends and I love it as a songcall for the fic. It's one of the few cases where I actually listened to the title song a lot while writing it. The combination of joyless success and tortured certainty that the other person will be horrified by the inside of their head, then the bridge with can I make you stop talking, how can I make you stop calling, which sounds so vulnerable and desperate like they just can't figure out how to cut this friend off... OOHHH it's so perfect.

This is an interesting one for me because it draws more directly than usual on images and feelings from my own life. I had a lot of fun with that, I suppose because it's the only way I will ever share these things? But I put them together in a way that has nothing to do with me, so I don't feel exposed (seriously, nothing Kazuma goes through in this fic is anything I have been through, except literally being a uni student I guess). That combination of 'it feels real to me' and 'it's impersonal and contributes correctly to what I wanted to say' might be why I'm so proud of it. Should I aim to do this more?

One thing I can see in hindsight is that I wasn't so comfortable with themes (ugh ~themes~) when I wrote this. It feels like a collage of different scenes more than a unified story even with my devices for linking them together. Also I used some crazy long sentences back then.

omegaverse played straight

negatives

link

This is a fic about Xie Lian's hole (laughs madly at my immature joke) as in absence. You can argue that all fengqing before XL's third ascension is about this.

The backstory is that I saw that there was fengqing omegaverse week going on, thought "what would it take to make such a story compelling to me?" and then realised the answer to that was embarrassingly obvious. Just give them the secondary gender designations that I think suit them best!!!! I'm drawn to ships that feel like they have some fundamental incompatibility which they're struggling against, fengqing is one of those and now I get to physicalise it! WOOOOO

I am patting myself on the back for opening my mind and engaging with the trope sincerely despite how uncomfortable I was with it before, but perhaps I still haven't truly done that considering nobody got railed...

hirahira dokidoki hajimari no kisetsu etc

link

While writing Negatives I realised that the events of this one must have definitely happened in that universe, and proceeded to horny grip meme about it for the next few weeks (I am always horny grip about mulian that's my secret). Eventually I thought "castration!" and that's when it all clicked. Omegaverse is so bountiful in its possibilities.

Shunjou Romantic is another songcall I'm way too pleased about. I'll never get tired of combining the cute blushy first love flowers and hand holding aesthetic with their flavour of crushing dysfunction 🥰

In both of those fics I think the 1000 word limit was a bit of a detriment, both pacing wise and for exploring the concept to a satisfying extent. I would be more comfortable at 1500-2500 and I suspect there's some sort of sweet spot even shorter than 1000. But at least it stopped me procrastinating too hard.

Very often with fics all I want is to communicate some very small concept (insert my tangent about how writing a story feels kinda like writing a mathematical proof did at uni). In Negatives it was the last line or so, in spring fever it was... I got distracted from it so I won't say what it was lol. In general the prospect of getting my idea out quickly in a short wordcount is appealing because hello exorcising brain worms. But you know what would be even better? Giving every story the wordcount that serves it best and not clogging my ao3 with weird random things! So we will see if I employ this tactic again in the future.