ehyde | Entries tagged with mo dao zu shi

Last Saturday, I finished up fics for two different exchanges that were due on the same day. This is big! For a long time I'd felt like trying to do any event with a deadline would be a lost cause. These both had low wordcount requirements, so it wasn't too much of a challenge, but the knowing that I can do it is a big win for me.

One of them is revealed already, so I can share it here: "out of the dark," a short Wen Ning/Nie Huaisang for the MDZS rarepairs exchange lightning round!

I also posted another fic this weekend, "Feathers, Drifting Down," part of my ongoing wingfic au. It is pure xiyao fluff...okay, with a little bit of angst mixed in, but listen. It's fluff.

And, that "knowing that I can do it?" I signed up for a minibang! The Solstice Bang, which is a MDZS minibang themed around mythical creatures...of course I can't say what I have planned but I can say that it's not the extensive mermaid au that I've been thinking about for well over a year now (that's more than I actually want to write for this...and actually possibly more suited to being an original work, now that I think about it). Aside from that, I'm also trying to finally finish up "Butterfly Effect," and yes, I realize I've been saying that for months now. It's going to happen.

I have a lot of personal life updates too, but I think I will save that for another post.

Current Mood: accomplished

I finished the hanahaki-as-torture fic I was writing. This was really out of my sandbox as a writer--darker than most of my fics, first time I wrote dubcon, also the first time I wrote a sex scene...I'm pleased with the result but I must immediately go write fluff now. But here it is!

Love in a Nightless Garden (9111 words) by EHyde
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Relationships: Wen RuoHan/Meng Yao
Characters: Meng Yao, Wēn Ruòhán
Additional Tags: Wen Qing (supporting role), original characters (supporting roles), Hanahaki Disease, Torture, Medical Procedures, Dubious Consent, Mind Control, weird flower sex, Canon Compliant
Summary:

To treat the flower-spitting sickness, there is a little-known third option. A skilled surgeon can carefully carve out the infection, transplant it to a new host, and—if it survives the process—not only the flowers, but all the love that bore them, will take root.

For Wen Ruohan, this is a form of torture. His enemies have died in agony, all the while desperately in love with him.

For Meng Yao, suspected of treason, it is his only chance to stay by Wen Ruohan's side.

It hasn't gotten nearly as many kudos as the rest of my fics, but I suppose that's expected with the combination of the warnings and the rarepair (which--I don't understand why WRH/JGY is a rarepair though, I really would have thought more people would be into that? But there are only 5 fics. WRH/JFM has 17. Oh well.)

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Remember how I said I was cosplaying Wen Qing? Well, I got distracted by writing the above fic and ran out of time for complicated applique, decided to cosplay Wen Ning instead, and immediately became 100% more motivated to finish. Turns out I wanted to cosplay Wen Ning all along and had just decided not to because of body image issues (can't bind flat while breastfeeding, etc).

Wen Ning and A-Yuan cosplay

You can't even really see the costume details in this pic but you CAN see my daughter as A-Yuan and that's what matters. My son was semi-cosplaying Baby Jin Ling (by which I mean--yellow onesie with a white flower on it) but he slept through most of the convention.

Current Mood: accomplished

I keep forgetting that this site exists, so here's a bit of an update of what's been going on the past month or so.

I posted the zombie!Jin Zixuan fic! I tagged it "not quite a fix-it" because it's not exactly a happy ending, but still, a few more people are alive than in canon (Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing, specifically). It's interesting what people latch onto, though--I gave Mo Xuanyu a very minor appearance in the coda, and he does not get a happier ending, and so many of the comments were people feeling sad for him, specifically.

And I told myself that after finishing that fic, it was time to set writing aside until my cosplay was finished, but it's hard to turn off one's writer-brain. Last year in akayona fandom, clockworkspider introduced me to the concept of Hanahaki disease with this Suwon&Hak fic. I didn't really get into the trope at the time because while I find the aesthetics and body horror aspect super appealing, the sort of angsty romance that it usually inspires is less my thing. However, it was brought to the forefront of my imagination again, and I played around with it a bit with some mdzs ideas (I altered the rules a bit, but it's not like it's a real illness, after all).

Supposing that a) falling out of love does not cure the disease and b) the surgery to remove the flowers takes away not only your memories of the person, but also your ability to feel any strong emotions toward them -- Nie Huaisang fell for Jin Guangyao before Nie Mingjue died, and is left coughing flowers for him even after learning that Jin Guangyao murdered his brother. He dare not have them removed before his revenge is complete, but cutting them out after it's over will mean that everthing that gave his life meaning for the last ten years is gone.
Besides hope the other person loves you back and cutting the flowers out, there's a third option--cut them out without killing them and transplant them to a new host. As long as the plant doesn't die, your feelings won't either--and they'll be duplicated in the new host. Wen Ruohan uses this as a form of torture--enemies have died in agony all the while desperately in love with him. He also, as in the case of Meng Yao, has been known to use it as a test of loyalty.

In the midst of these somewhat darker ideas the only thing I was able to actually write was fluff, so here's a little short of toddler A-Yuan playing with a funny paper doll he found (aka WWX testing out the paperman spell).

As far as cosplay goes, it's progressing slowly. I'm making Wen Qing's outfit in a slightly-more-historically-accurate design simply because that means more straight seams, but baby has been waking up a lot at night and I'm lucky to be able to sew more than one or two seams a day. Still, I'm not giving up on it yet!

Current Mood: busy

One of my friends created a lovely wingfic au for MDZS, winged humans living in the modern era, that sort of deal, and it was excellent, but I kept thinking about moving it to the canon setting. And a couple more ideas wouldn't leave me alone, either--the image of Wen Ruohan as a tyrannical angel, and the idea of Lan Sizhui having some feature that would openly reveal his Wen heritage. So here's a canon-setting wingfic au where it's mostly the Wens who are winged, crossposted from my tumblr/twitter.

After a magical adventure that’s lost to history, both Wen Mao and Baoshan Sanren grew wings (the official Wen account says he was blessed by a god, but that version doesn’t mention BSSR, so take it with a grain of salt). Since then, all of Wen Mao’s descendants have grown wings shortly after developing their golden core. It was assumed to be genetic, until BSSR’s disciples who descended the mountain had wings, too. Wei Wuxian inherited wings from his mother. ( (the rest under here) )

After I posted this, clockworkspider suggested the image of Jin Guangyao slowly unfurling his wings while playing guqin for Nie Mingjue, and it seems that wings are what it takes to get me to take up drawing again, so I drew this. I'm out of practice.

( picture )
I'm also finally getting started with my cosplay! I keep hearing about all these supposed "rules" for MDZS cosplay, but I'm ignoring them. It seems that the point of the rules is to get people to buy the official costumes, but for me, making a costume is the entire point of cosplay, so I was never a potential customer in the first place. Plus, the only Wen Qing costume I've seen for sale isn't even screen-accurate.

I'll be basing my costume on the donghua designs, except I hate using flat solid colors in cosplay (for me the goal is NOT to look like I stepped out of a cartoon) so I'm using some textured fabric. For about six years I've held onto a piece of red silky fabric with an abstract flame-like pattern woven into it, saving it for the "perfect" project. A year ago I decided that was an unhealthy attitude to take towards craft supplies and used it to line a pen case. But, it turns out I still have enough left for the flame motifs on Wen Qing's dress. I didn't have enough left of the darker shade of red that I wanted to use for the skirt, and found myself disappointed by the red fabric offerings at two different fabric stores. Everything was either too bright or too berry (result: for the skirt I'll be layering bright red chiffon over berry red chiffon).

Have not yet decided how to do the edging on the flame patterns. Machine-stitched applique edging is the easiest buuut it's REALLY not the right look. Thinking about how nice it would look beaded but I probably don't have the time. Maybe couched satin cord?

Current Mood: productive

(Last week I posted a new chapter of Butterfly Effect)

I'm about halfway through the next chapter, but I'm already thinking about different fic ideas (this is what happens when I have a lot more time to think than to actually write). Some of the ones that have been the most present in my mind include

a canon-divergent au in which Wei Wuxian brings Jin Zixuan back as a fierce corpse
a space fantasy au (where cultivation in space is a thing, in fact the only thing that allows FTL travel, until Wei Wuxian invents a technological method and throws the galaxy into disarray), probably very self-indulgent and tropey and full of stuff like, being cryogenically frozen for 13 years, and minds being uploaded into spaceships, also the Nies have mechas
canon divergent au where Nie Mingjue loses his core before the sunshot campaign and Nie Huaisang begins acting as sect leader while his brother is still alive
coffin juice au (I call it that because it began life as this (spoilery) shitpost, but then (with input from clockworkspider) it's transformed into a semi-modern archaeologist au with reincarnated Nie Huaisang having confusing dreams about his past life that start taking over his life when an old temple is excavated.

And then yesterday I began writing something that was none of these.

( semi-fic, semi-outline under the cut )

(Coming recently from tumblr, I find myself wishing it was easier to post from my phone. Dreamwidth can handle a lot more formatting options than tumblr, which is good, but hard to navigate on a small screen. Still learning my way around, I guess.)

Current Mood: anxious

Finally all three have been cleared to share publicly, so here they are!

Inquiry, Reprise - giftee asked for WangXian fluff. I decided to work an image I had - of the couple conversing via guqin - into an actual story, in which Wei Ying tries to give Lan Zhan what he couldn't before - an answer to his Inquiry. I like the idea of communicating with music, and MXTX was vague enough on the fantasy worldbuilding elements that there's room for a lot of handwaving and headcanoning, and I think I'm going to do something else with Inquiry in the future, too. Fun things - this fic has the honor of being my most-kudosed-in-its-first-day fic, at just over 150. Not sure it deserves the honor, but I'll take it.

Warmth - giftee asked for Jiang Yanli/Wen Qing. I've seen this ship discussed before, but it seems I'm the first to write it, on ao3 at any rate. The characters never met in canon, so it's understandable (although I've seen couples that make far less sense to me get more attention). I wrote a slight divergence from canon, in which the Wen siblings were discovered helping Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng and had to flee their sect; this was what brought Wen Qing and Jiang Yanli together. I'll admit I was a little disappointed by Jiang Yanli's role in canon (weak, motherly, sacrificial), but I've seen some fics attempting to "fix" her by, basically, handing her a sword and it's all good. I didn't delve too deep into that here but I tried to find a place in the middle for her. I hope I'll see other people writing JYL/WQ in the future too!

I Really Don't Know - giftee asked for Nie Huaisang/Jiang Cheng, which I didn't particularly ship beforehand but had nothing really against, either. Then I thought, fake dating, and thus, this. It's short and I tried to be funny, but I'm not sure if it worked. It felt OOC to me when I was done, but judging by the response, some people liked it at least. At least one person has asked for a continuation, but at this point, I don't have any plans for one. Oh - you might think the title is because of Nie Huaisang's role in the story; in fact, it's really just that I couldn't think of a title, and realized I could get away with it.

Now that these are done, I'm getting back to Butterfly Effect - I keep getting distracted from the main point of the story by plotting out every which way the alternate timeline has gone, specifically where it involves Jin Guangyao. Oops. Relatives are visiting, which has meant a little more free time away from kids, but not really any more writing time.