Testing out the new Create Entries beta for DW before it goes live seems like a smart idea, let me know if anything looks odd on your end.

I've been in hibernation mostly, fannish and otherwise, but I wrote a small addition to the ongoing Dreamtime podfic that sef1029 is organizing and recording. It's an impression of Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan's evening, told in fragments by multiple authors, with the express intention of sending the listener to a peaceful sleep. I really like this idea and I hope it has some benefits to anyone who has trouble sleeping.

So I wrote a very short story for mumblemumble for fandomtrees, about Chu Shuzhi at a slave auction, being put on display by his Lord Envoy for Reasons.

And then mumblemumble wrote a sequel that goes into more detail about the things Chu Shuzhi would do for his Lord and what his Lord Envoy would ask of him, and it is glorious and you should all read it:

Aftermath (2360 words) by A
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei
Characters: Chu Shuzhi, Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Slaves, Submission, Loyalty Kink, And About Fifteen Other Kinks, Aftercare
Summary:

"Quiet," his Lordship commands, and the room falls silent. His finger settles under Chu Shuzhi's chin to tilt his head up, his gaze heavy on Chu Shuzhi, his eyes dark as a storm underneath the mask. "This one isn't mine to discipline anymore," he says coldly, causing a victorious murmur among the crowd.

Chu Shuzhi doesn't flinch. He doesn't move at all. He has to remind himself to breathe.

I started posting my long Guardian art AU, yay! It's about 85k which I'm still cutting into chapters, and I need to fix and expand some scenes toward the end so it's not quite done yet. But posting once a week or so will give me time to work on that.

Close Your Eyes and See Me (4006 words) by marycrawford
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Art School, Alternate Universe - No Powers, except the power of Art, Drawing, Painting, Professor Shen Wei (Guardian), Detective Zhao Yunlan, Undercover, Nude Modeling, Identity Porn, Romance, Slow Burn
Summary:

It seemed like a good idea to Zhao Yunlan at the time. Take a job as a life drawing model, observe the students, try to figure out if one of them murdered the previous art professor.

Get paid to sit on a chair, basically. Piece of cake, right?

Well.

This all started from a delightful prompt by cyberbrain in the Guardian Prompt Fest in May 2020. Yeah. It's been a while, but this story kept me company through the upheaval of the past years.

The guardian_wishlist event has started, and I signed up here. It's a lovely lowkey little event where you post wishes related to Guardian and adjacent fandoms (anything the actors have appeared in) and people comment on your wishlist to fulfill some wishes. You don't have to be signed up to the event to comment, you can just wander along the wishlists once they're live and see if anything sparks your imagination.

ETA: as trobadora says below, in a fest like this it's just as important to provide prompts for other people as it is to make gifts. For me personally, an event like this is a fic prompt and deadline generator, and the more prompts there are, the more likely it is that one of them will spark an idea for a story. So if you're thinking "I want to post a wishlist but I don't have time to do anything else" that is 100% okay and encouraged.

In the wishlist, you can ask for fic and fanart, but also things like screencaps from that one episode, or translations, or recs for things you would enjoy. This year I asked for fanart for other people's fic, because I have some favorites that would be fun to see illustrated. (This is where a transformative works policy on one's AO3 profile comes in handy.)

You can sign up until August 20th, and then comment on other people's wishlists right until September 10th, where all the comments get revealed at once.

I've been in a weird headspace re: fandom where I've mostly stopped reading Guardian fanfic because I love it so much, and it has such good writers, that reading anything awesome will do my head in as far as writing goes. (And I'm inching closer on finishing the AU I started, whoops, two years ago? Still a way from the finish, and then there's beta, but things are looking up.) I want to get this story out and catch up to everything I missed, damn it.

But here's a story from a while ago that lit my imagination on fire:

Follow You Everywhere (5091 words) by achray
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan, SID team
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Kuroshitsuji Fusion, Canon-Typical dark content for Black Butler canon, Canon-typical violence for Black Butler canon, black humour, Constant Innuendo, Demonic Contracts (Kuroshitsuji), Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan as themselves
Summary:

Never had Shen Wei known such enjoyment, in fulfilling the duties a demonic contract required.

It's a crossover with a manga/anime series I had never heard of, and it doesn't matter because I found the story entirely comprehensible and deeply delicious. And then I fell into a hole and read a whole bunch of the manga, and watched the anime as well. Good times.

And now Guardian has been removed from Youtube, again, which sucks, since it's just so handy to rewatch a scene or an episode through Youtube for a quick fix. And to attract new fans.

But fandom has access to all the beautiful HD files with fan-curated subs. (That link goes straight to a Mega download site that I share with permission!)

sef1029 posted: Sunflower auction (for Ukraine) now open

I liked seeing elenothar's fanfic year in review post, and it made me want to do one too.

January
Two stories for fandomtrees:

Threat Level: Bears for laireshi. Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. The one with the bears.

the food of sweet and bitter fancy for shipperslist. Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. The one with the outside POV.

February
Three stories for sundial_exchange:

Tailor-made for sakana17. Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. The one where Shen Wei visits his tailor.

A Tolerance for Pain for xparrot. Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. The one where Zhao Yunlan is lost and Shen Wei goes metal.

like thunder under earth for dorinda. Guardian, Chu Shuzhi & Shen Wei. The one where Chu Shuzhi is wounded and doesn't need any help from his Lord.

May
The Wake. Star Trek: TOS, Kirk/Spock. Not actually new fic, this is a tiny dialogue-only story I once wrote for a K/S con.

September
Two stories for guardian_wishlist:

Seamless for sakana17. Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan. The sequel to Tailor-made: Shen Wei takes Zhao Yunlan to his tailor.

spoils of war for sasamelons. Guardian, Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing. The one where Da Qing leaves Zhao Yunlan a present.

October
The Catboy's Day Off. Fanfic for an original AO3 series. Irredeemable filth. The one where a catboy gets more help than he can handle.

Most of the year I've also been working on a Guardian AU in fits and starts (the one where Shen Wei is an art teacher and Zhao Yunlan becomes his model). I really hope that I can post it in 2022, I want to get the plane out the hangar!

And from this list, it's quickly evident how much I enjoy fanfic challenges and writing treats for people; having a deadline to work up to has been a saving grace in a year when it's been so hard to concentrate and get anything done. I have a story for fandomtrees this year, too, but it won't be live until tomorrow.

Slightly more brain today means that I realize yesterday wasn't the solstice but the equinox. Neither of those words have ever held any real meaning to me though, I must admit. The Dutch word for solstice is pretty, but we don't seem to have an equinox equivalent, just like English doesn't.

I got three wonderful story gifts for guardian_wishlist !

I didn't even think to put this in my prompts, but I love "5 things" fics. There's just something about the structure that makes interesting things happen, and both of these use it beautifully in different ways:

Domesticity (2414 words) by buriedbybooks
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Da Qing (Guardian), Zhu Hong (Guardian), Lin Jing (Guardian), Jiajia (Guardian), Guo Changcheng, Chu Shuzhi
Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Domesticity, soft moments, Fluff, SID escapades
Summary:

Five times Wēilán was caught acting married and one time it was just them.

in the smallest of ways (1837 words) by china_shop
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Zhao Yunlan & Da Qing
Characters: Zhao Yunlan, Shěn Wēi, The SID Team
Additional Tags: Caretaking in the smallest of ways, Missing Scenes, episode 14, Episode 19, Family, Lowkey get-together, Five Times
Summary:

Five times Zhao Yunlan looked out for Shen Wei.

And elenothar  took on the prompt of "Shen Wei's students Find Out" and boy, do they. I adore Shen Wei's student Jiajia, and to get her PoV of events as well as Zhao Yunlan's and Shen Wei's is so satisfying:

One for the conspiracy theorists (4638 words) by Elenothar
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Jiajia & Shen Wei (Guardian)
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan, Jiajia (Guardian), Li Qian (Guardian), Da Qing (Guardian), Lin Jing (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Identity Reveal, Post-Canon, dragon city university students, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Protective Shen Wei (Guardian), hei pao shi in professor shen's clothing
Summary:

Shen Wei's identity is revealed to his students in the most dramatic way possible.

(No grad students were harmed during the writing of this fic.)

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 recently fell down a Wikipedia hole, and one of the shiny bits of treasure I dug up was this letter from Dorothy L. Sayers, about her book Murder Must Advertise:

The new book is nearly done. I hate it because it isn't the one I wanted to write, but I had to shove it in because I couldn't get the technical dope on The Nine Tailors in time. Still, you never know what people will fancy, do you? It...deals with the dope-traffic, which is fashionable at the moment, but I don't feel that this part is very convincing, as I can't say "I know dope". Not one of my best efforts.

I mean. Wow. First of all, it is one of her best efforts--it's easily my favorite, even though yes, she's right, the dope-traffic stuff is the part I usually skip. The book is half pulp novel and half advertising agency comedy, and the latter half is pure gold. I could read a whole series set in the agency, with all its petty drama and delightful characters.

But second of all--she wrote this letter to her publisher. "Hi, here's my book, I hate it".

OH DLS, I lo-five you across time, because that feels very familiar, even if I'm just working on a long-ass fanfic. Once it's done I will get the urge to hurl it to a beta reader with some uncomplimentary words about it, as if that would entice anyone into reading, and seeing DLS do the same thing makes me feel better.

I was talking to sakana17 about some favorite tropes, like character X transforming into a monster and character Y immediately recognizing them anyway (sigh!) and she wrote me this delicious bonbon:

The Monster Who Came Back (3652 words) by sakana17
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Transformation, Fix-It of Sorts
Summary:

"Shen Wei?" Zhao Yunlan said as he looked into the large, troubled, teary eyes of the man he loved.

'I hurt him,' he thought. 'I was the one who broke his heart.' What could he say now?