My brain is empty and I can't concentrate on anything serious, so I started watching Granting You a Dreamlike Life on Youtube, which is nicely HD and has smooth English subs. It's a soap opera, full of the kind of "romance" cliches that drive me crazy, and the only reason I keep watching (I'm at...ep 10 I think?) is because it's got Zhu Yilong and I'm a sucker.

That said, his character, Luo Fusheng, is a delight - for once he's playing someone who lets his emotions spill all over his face, even if he also still loves to hide them away behind a smile and tell people he's fine after he got shot (aka: the Zhu Yilong special). SO much fun to watch, he's incredibly alive in every scene.

Plus, there was a fight scene where he kept listening to and appreciating (badly dubbed, but never mind) Chinese opera while downing guys right and left with careless competence, and I love that kind of thing.

Also his hair got wet:

fandomtrees just went live after a week's delay, and there are 8 Guardian stories!

I had too little oomph to sign up, but I was treated extremely generously last year, so I can only pay it forward. What I really needed this year was a deadline, to get anything done at all, and it worked!

For laireshi, who always has the best hurt/comfort prompts, I wrote:

Snowmelt (2790 words)
(Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan)

Shen Wei felt heavier when he was unconscious. The idea was ridiculous, of course. Or maybe it wasn’t. If anyone could find a way to make himself less of a burden, it would be Shen Wei.

I wrote two stories for the guardian_wishlist event. For sakana17, a sequel to a previous short story about Shen Wei's extremely opinionated tailor:

Seamless (4181 words) by marycrawford
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan, Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Fashion & Couture, Tailoring, Shopping, Unexpected Inlaws, Established Relationship
Series: Part 2 of Made By Hand
Summary:

Zhao Yunlan waited to see if Lao Xie would take the bait. He had a whole speech prepared, dwelling on the fit of Shen Wei’s pants and the taut elastic of those garters spanning his biceps. Maybe he could get Shen Wei to blush a bit, or fidget, or give him one of those looks that promised retribution later.

--
Or: Shen Wei introduces Zhao Yunlan to his tailor.

On the last day before the deadline I managed one more little story for sasamelons, for the "Da Qing being very cat" prompt that spoke to me:

spoils of war (766 words) by marycrawford
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Da Qing & Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Da Qing (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Bugs & Insects, Jail for Father for Ten Thousand Years, Cat Tribe Best Tribe (Guardian)
Summary:

Zhao Yunlan has had a Very Long Day, and Da Qing has left him a present.

There were a LOT of great prompts on everyone's wishlists, and I bookmarked several pages to come back to later. (Asking for a friend, who is me: if you're working on a long (50K-ish) fic that is unrelated to this event but fits someone's prompt ideas perfectly, is it an imposition to gift it to them when it's finally done? 👀)

I had a day today, nothing terrible just busy, and it ended with a family Zoom across timezones and continents where everyone talked over each other. The best moment was getting our cats to wave at each other.

Today is also the solstice and the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which means that all the gifts for guardian_wishlist just went live.

I want to comment on the fabulous fics I received, but I'm completely out of brain, so I will leave anything requiring...thought...? to tomorrow. Today, let me draw your attention to the pics and gifs, which all feel like they were chosen specifically for my tired synapses to appreciate:

- mumblemumble's Zhu Yilong murder barber gifs with bonus! picspam of Zhu Yilong with cute animals
- ober-affen-geil's gifspam of Shen Wei protecting and caring for Zhao Yunlan
- sakana17's curated collection of Zhu Yilong 🍑, that is to say, butt shots. Mmmmmm.

Please have a wonderful solstice/festival/full moon, and thanks so much to everyone. <3

I have a rice cooker for the first time ever, and now I want to make All The Rice Dishes. It's tiny, because in a two person household we eat at most a cup of (uncooked) rice a day, and it has fuzzy logic magic. It's a Cuckoo model, Korean, and it's adorably shaped like an egg, which makes me wonder if it's going to hatch into something that will throw all our other appliances out of the nest.

Please hit me up with your rice cooker tips, tricks, recipes? So far I've only made basmati in it, but I've been watching this Chinese (subtitled) cooking channel and she does some amazing things. If you're in Europe, tips for good asian rice brands would also be welcome - my Aldi basmati is okay but unexciting, and I want to branch out to other flavors. We have a big Asian supermarket in town, so I'll probably have choice paralysis.

I've signed up for guardian_wishlist, a nice lowkey fic/art/anything challenge that works like fandomtrees: you sign up with a wishlist, the mods post it, and anyone can comment on that post with something that fits your wishes.

fandomtrees was a blast, and I hope this will be as well. Signups are open until the end of the month, but there's no need to sign up yourself if you only want to make treats for other people. (I'm a big fan of that option: I'm hesitant to sign up for many types of challenges, but the option to make treats is always exciting.)

I finished watching Nirvana in Fire and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Now I want to rewatch it, because this is one of those shows (like Guardian) that will reward rewatching, for sure. And I still have a ton of faces and complicated hairdos to draw.

After I watched the ending, I went looking for something short and cheery on AO3, and found the perfect story to satisfy my immediate needs:

Accustomed To Disguise (5710 words) by orphan_account
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe/Xiao Jingyan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Gay Chicken For Great Justice, The One Where Lin Shu Stabs Himself In The Back
Summary:

Jingyan tucked his hands into his sleeves and said with serene and infinite calm, “I am going to kill him.”

That was a delight and exactly what I needed, so it's a rec from me. It's a shame to see that the author abandoned the work, I always find that a pity, but on the other hand I'm so pleased that it's still there for me to find and enjoy.

Okay, so I know I said that I understood everyone (who is related to the Emperor) in Nirvana in Fire is called Xiao, and it's not a diminutive but a family name?

Yes, well.

When Mei Changsu is yelling after Prince Jing and calling him "Xiao Jingyan" not once but twice, in the most emotionally charged way possible, IN THE SNOW, I may forget about these things.

I know, I know, it makes sense that he's not actually calling him by an affectionate diminutive in this scene, because it would blow his cover to kingdom come, but still! I have been TRAINED (by Shen Wei) to respond to people being called 'xiao' in emotionally charged moments!

Also: ( this may need a spoiler warning )

I started watching Nirvana in Fire! Things I found useful to know about (no spoilers edition):

-- the guy in white with long hair who has the nightmare and wakes up in ep 1 is NOT the guy in white with long hair who is doing some extremely acrobatic katas a little bit later.
-- lots of people are called Xiao, which in this case is an actual surname and not a diminutive. (Except for when Ancient Empress Grandma or Handsome Warrior Friend call our hero Xiao Shu and I melt - that's the kind of Xiao I already knew about!)

I am going in mostly blind otherwise, though I have friends to ask questions if needed, and a link to the Nirvana in Fire starter kit. I don't usually like a lot of spoilers for a show - small tips like the 'guy in white' thing are helpful, but otherwise I figure I will have more fun if I don't know every last detail about who is related to whom and who murdered whose grandfather and so on, because the show will presumably tell me. Knowing that this is a 'Count of Monte Christo' kind of story does help a lot to get me hooked in, too.

When I started watching Guardian, the main thing I needed to hear was that despite the editing in ep 1, Xiao Guo is not the protagonist - it really looks like he is for a hot second, and that would have thrown me out immediately - and then I got told about the tropefest that is episode 8, like a lure to draw me in.

And similarly, Prince Yu gets such a lavish introduction scene (complete with assassination attempt!) that even when you sort out the two guys in white, you could still think that this guy is the actualfax hero. Until Our Hero gets his epic "gliding in on a boat, playing the flute, to face down warships" moment, and then we know where we are.

So far, after the first four episodes, Warrior Princess Nihuang is my favorite, but I feel like that's a given, she would be anyone's favorite. She kicks ass, commands armies and has the best hair ornaments, I mean come on! She tells our hero after he held her hand a little too long For Reasons, "On a normal day, I would have cut off your hand"! I luv her.

killabeez posted: The Kirk/Spock Fanfiction Archive is Moving to the AO3

Reading about the K/S archive migration, I realized I had once posted a story on the K/S archive that I never copied anywhere else, so today I put it on AO3:

The Wake, (719 words), rated T, no warnings.
Summary: After Spock's sacrifice, Kirk and McCoy share some Romulan wine.

(I also dropped a note to the Open Doors archivists that I was going to import this story myself, so it doesn't get archived twice. More details about what to do with stories you do or don't want to be archived can be found in killabeez' post.)

Every time I'm stuck in the middle of a story, I say "next time I will learn to outline". Because if I could outline, if I could outline PROPERLY, then I would have a plan. And if I had a plan, then I would be able to stick to it. (This is the point where the gods begin to laugh.)

Instead I'm stuck in the middle of a story again, and trying to come to terms with the idea that maybe outlining isn't how my brain works. But it's so frustrating! Because I want to know what happens next, but the person who knows what happens next is stubbornly not telling me. She's the worst.