I've finally gotten to the epistolary chapter of the Meng Yao in Lan story (currently guessing about 60K for this one), which is slower going because it's so many different pov/voices, but I just had to post a snippet from Wen Ning's:

Auntie Hong sends her greetings and specifically said to tell you that Jiang-zongzhu has a temper just like yours but is far more yielding, and so that should be a good match.

I'm just saying what she said, Jie.

He is the snarkiest little shit, in a very understated way. Unlike Nie Huaisang, who just lets the good times roll, at least when he's talking to Meng Yao. Letters that I'm pretty sure need to go in this chapter so far also include Jin Zixuan to Jiang Yanli, Wen Ning to Jiang Yanli (quite possibly about Jiang Cheng), Lan Xichen to Nie Mingjue, and quite possibly Wei Wuxian to Lan Wangji.

Ugh. Wow, this has been an exhausting week. For good reasons! I've lined up a better third party discussion tool vendor, finished the text version of our templates for different types of classes, and done six first-round interviews that yielded a solid 3 candidates for the second round. But holy wow am I exhausted.

And it's not just "let me sleep", you know. It's that my body is constantly on the edge of what some call panic strength and I like to call "oh fuck it's a bear" strength. (It's not that I'm panicking, usually. There's just a fucking bear that needs to be dealt with right fucking now, so all muscles and neurons put their backs into it.) So I'm trying to beat back that hyper-response and /also/ be an active and thoughtful listener during interviews.

This is definitely a day that calls for a French 75, possibly followed up by a Cosmopolitan once I'm no longer vibrating.

On the up-side, the alternate history of Meng Yao is going swimmingly. We're already at the end of Sunshot. Meng Yao and Wei Wuxian on the same side are really a little terrifying. I'm considering whether I can engineer a confrontation between Wen Qing and Jiang Cheng, in which she demonstrates live and in color what a good clan leader looks like and kicks Jiang Cheng down a slightly different path, himself.

So, I feel a bit like things have evened out for my job. I mean, we're still doing mad feats of instructional design and support, giving spring/summer instructors a handle on how to teach a fully online course, but we've got a system in place, at least. It isn't the deluge of "fix this immediate crisis". We even have some decent contingency brainstorming going on about Fall.

You may have noticed that every uni president out there is declaring "hope" that fall will be in-person or some kind of hybrid. If you think about class-change, when (in our case) 40K students hit the pavement in the same ten minutes, you will see the issues with hybrid. So, honestly? I'm going on the assumption that only hands-on courses (lab, studio, experiential course) will be on-campus, while the rest... well, the rest do /something/, which may involve reduced in-person meetings or weirdly extended hours to allow staggered passing time, or who the fuck knows.

(For my money, everyone who isn't hands-on will need to stay online. But I'll let the administrators brick-wall themselves to that conclusion in their own time.)

So work is going reasonably! I even made re-contact with the next vendor I was planning a pilot for!

The weather continues springlike, which means lovely, sunny days when it's way chillier than it looks, but all the trees and flowering trees are bursting into bud and bloom nevertheless. They're old hands at this. Half of my new plants have arrived, and are re-hydrating indoors.

And personal life is quite tolerable! Admittedly, I have reached the stage where my SCMs are so tight I get vertigo just lying flat on my back, but a memory from physical therapy solved that. With a towel rolled up under my neck, to support the arch, it's... not the most fun I've ever had, but I can do my 20 sit ups and 70 crunches and not fall over when I try to stand up again. I declare it a win.

(Which means my demi-pointe balance is back! Eee! My extension is still for shit, but I can damn well releve again!)

And then, of course, there's The Bunny. The Bunny that this video bunnied me with. The one about how Meng Yao showed just enough desire to stay that Lan Xichen actually offered to arrange it, which kicks the whole plot down the path shaped like "Meng Yao's entire moral compass is in reference to Lan Xichen" rather than "in reference to himself". The story has reached the point where the Wen sect is about to regret this fact very, very hard. Because adorable Mr "Senpai noticed me!" is about to become utterly feral Mr "You hurt my boyfriend, prepare to die", perfectly prepared to tear through the whole cultivation world like buzzsaw if that's what it takes, and without any restraint except, well, Lan Xichen.

Nie Mingjue thinks this is fucking hilarious, deep down. Both the Nie brothers totally ship it.

We're at about 20K words and still going.

Rana bunnied me for Lan library porn, so that is a thing that's happening. I will only observe that LWJ appears to have spent at least some of those sixteen years contemplating everything he'd /like/ to have done, and it is possible he now has a bucket list.

In this weekend's "I am mistress of my environment" exercises, I vacuumed, dyed my hair, and made my personal take on jambalaya. This involves two things: one, use whatever is on hand (spicy sausage, shrimp, 'mexican' canned tomatoes,) and two, make the rice separately. Otherwise, when frozen and re-heated, the rice starts to dissolve, and that's not a texture I like. So! Sausage was cooked, shrimp was cooked, peppers and celery and onion and tomato were cooked, and then spanish rice was made and packaged up separately. It came out /excellently/. Well done, self, for already having creole seasoning made up and in your spice rack.

I may need to make ham salad later this week, to use the rest of the celery.

Good things today: did /not/ have a morning management meeting, did /not/ have any New And Exciting announcements from the College, only yelled at my screen "Shut. Up. [Redacted]!" once, got some writing done.

And yes, yes that really was LWJ reinventing tantric sex because WWX asked for some attention. I thought it was maybe going to be more subtle than that, but it was really not. LWJ just doesn't have any middle gears at all, when it comes to WWX, does he? Like... he pulled them all out and then booted them off the back of the mountain sixteen years ago.

Now I think I may need to decide how the conversation with Lan Qiren goes, when LWJ installs WWX in his rooms for good. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of Very Calm And Level staring from LWJ while LQR kind of froths at the mouth for a while. Suspect there will be hurtful remarks from LQR. That may be the point at which WWX weighs in with comments about his mother's excellent taste, because I suspect he's a little emotionally raw right now.

I'm just trying to write some decent porn here, and Wei Wuxian is apparently /also/ a genius at getting in his own way.

It's funny, you know, he doesn't have trust issues /until/ you get right up close, but when you do the issues turn into positive volumes. It's a damn good thing Lan Wangji did spend sixteen years getting his emotional ducks in a row, is all I can say.

Though, actually, one of the interesting things I'm running into with their internal voices is that Wei Wuxian seems to think of himself as Wei Wuxian, but Lan Wangji thinks of himself as Lan Zhan. And I'm not sure but what LWJ may have formed that habit around the fact that WWX always calls him Lan Zhan.

They're so adorable, and /so/ messed up.

You know some fic writers have deep, dark, secret fic-kinks that are worth the name. Kinky sex, say, or even just sex period if you want to be nice and old fashioned about it.

Me? Apparently mine is writing club-fic.

*despairing*

But I mean! Is the mental image not just perfect, when you think about a dance floor worth of (relatively) innocent club-goers scattering out of Shen Wei's path because he's stalking toward Zhao Yunlan?

Okay, writing chores are done! Credits are entered into the archive database, cover art for the ebook is finished and uploaded, and art credits likewise entered. I may /actually/ be on the last story of the damn arc, making a total of *pauses to count* twenty-three stories-or-chapters. If I stick to MWF posting, that'll take... another six weeks to finish posting.

...yeah. Your brain on Guardian, ladies and gentlemen. Any questions?

At least this means I can actually start reading other people's fic, though!

(crosspost)

Aha! Yes, there can be no question about it, the Qing installment of "Shen Wei's Angst Through Every Historical Era" absolutely must feature Shen enormous-troll Wei as a literary critic of the Kaozheng school. Even better, this paves the way perfectly for him to get into the sciences next.

I am having so much fun writing the canon-fusion backstory, I cannot even tell you.

Also, in today's words, Shen Wei has zero patience with being ignored in favor of paperwork and Yunlan discovers he maybe has a bit of an exhibitionist streak (who knew?).

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?

I like this one, too. Let's see, now.

I'm very driven by "do I need the thing that would fit in this space?". If canon already managed to put something there, more often than not I don't write for that canon. Unless, you know, the thing there is so egregiously wrong that it's actually worse than an empty space. That's when space + spite come together in a perfect storm of "the hell you say", and the next thing you know it's anywhere from 60 to 150K words later.

But mostly, I just really, deeply, vitally need the thing that would fit in this space, and the space is often relational. Maybe canon dangles absolutely dynamite chemistry in front of us, but never has realization. Maybe canon actually has significant realization, but I wanted sexytimes too, and also now the characters are stranded in different universes and I can't be having with that. Maybe it's just one perfect moment that canon neglected to actually show us. Those are the things that get me writing.

And, as every fanwriter knows, if you want something done right, you usually gotta do it yourself.