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Saw a couple of people doing this and it looked fun, so I'm gonna give it a try too: Rules: list the first lines of your last 10 published stories. See if there are any patterns yourself, or have other people say what they notice.

One of these fics was actually originally uploaded to my Tumblr in 2017 but not to AO3 until November 2018 because I forgot but everything else is from the past 12 months so apparently I've written fics in 3 different fandoms in the span of a year, which is a lot for me.

( Cut for space )
So, patterns. Well, 4 of these are dialogue. 3 of them set the scene, and the rest are either the beginning or the middle of a scene. I do tend to like to drop readers right into where the action is happening and then fill in the surrounding details as I go, so that's not surprising. Almost all of them have the name of one of the main protagonist in it, and most of them are the pov character (but not all).

Similar to

tinny I find it easier to come up with a first line than a last line. I don't remember if I ever go back and edit the first lines and I think I probably don't. Or at least, not significantly. Because the first line sets the mood for how I'm writing the rest of the fic and usually by the time I go to do edits, that line serves as such a foundation for the story that the rest would fall apart without it.

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I just found a pretty handy list of Chinese honorifics on Wikipedia. It includes honorifics used to refer to royalty, academics, family members, etc in 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person. Probably more helpful for writing stuff that's set in ancient China when everyone was using humble 3rd person language to refer to everyone including themselves.

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references: china

Knockin' on Hell's Door (4502 words) by anecdotalist
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest, 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán
Characters: Shěn Wēi, Zhào Yúnlán, Zhào Yúnlán's Mother
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), novelverse, suggestion of cannibalism
Summary:

When the depths of the underworld are more welcoming than the land of the living, you know you have a problem. Zhao Yunlan isn’t sure why the Ghost King keeps letting him wander in, but he’s not complaining.

I'm having so much fun writing this that I couldn't wait to post it so here's the first part. It can stand on its own, but I do have some of the next part written so fingers crossed that it won't take me forever to update it.

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Thanks to a couple of writing sprints, I've made some progress on the alien invasion fic! \o/ Unfortunately, I'm now actually stuck plot-wise so I'm going to have to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B before I can do more.

I tried writing smut for my wuxia fic and ended up writing 150 words of sap, lol.

Anyway, here's a snippet from the Hades and Persephone fic:

( Read more... )

I also started another fic, which brings me up to 4 active WIPs. That's not too bad, right??? Anyway, have a snippet of this one too:

( Read more... )

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FYI, art claims are open for wipbigbang! There are a ton of stories up for grab, for a ton of different fandoms (including Guardian). So if you like to art and you're interested in participating, check it out here.

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challenge: wipbigbang

I don't know if anyone else is having a hard time with pulling up relationship and character tags when posting to AO3 for Guardian because of all the tonal marks but I am. So I copied and pasted the more common name tags into a google doc so that I could copy and paste from there into AO3. I'll list them here too in case anyone else wants to use them. (I'm happy to add others if people want; these are just the ones I saw most often.)

Relationships:

Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán
Chŭ Shùzhī/Guō Chángchéng

Characters:

Shěn Wēi
Zhào Yúnlán
Dà Qìng
Chŭ Shùzhī
Zhù Hóng
Lín Jìng
Wāng Zhēng
Sāng Zàn
Guō Chángchéng
Yè Zūn
Zhāng Shí
Zhào Xīncí

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fandom: guardian

Writing the 520 fic made me remember how much I like writing short(ish), less plot-driven pieces so of course, as soon as I finished it, I started a new ficlet. :P This is based on the Hades/Persephone prompt left by

bonibaru on the plot bunny farm, but with a twist. It's a novelverse AU, but with a younger ZYL (at the beginning at least); it's pretty barebones right now, but here's a snippet:

“You.” It comes out in a hiss, with a bit of a whistling behind it. The king stops. Opens and closes his mouth again.

Zhao Yunlan can’t tell if he’s searching for words or searching for sounds. He realizes that he hasn’t actually heard anyone speaking since he entered the underworld. Do they not talk around here?

“You…” the king starts again, louder. His voice sounds rough, like there’s broken glass rubbing against each other in his throat. “Shouldn’t. Be. Here.”

Zhao Yunlan has a complicated combination of reactions in which he winces in sympathetic pain for the king who sounds like he’s got the worst sore throat in the history of mankind and grimaces automatically at that hated word. He decides to refrain from commenting on the king’s voice because that’s rude and that glaive next to him looks mighty sharp. “Ah, ‘shouldn’t,’” he says instead, unable to keep the sharp bitterness from his tone. “My father’s favorite word, along with ‘can’t’ and ‘why won’t you.’”

The king just tilts his head a smidge and stares at him. Zhao Yunlan wonders if maybe he also hasn’t moved in a very long time.

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Sometimes I think about posting more often but I don't, in all honesty, have much to say, lol. I've been rewatching Guardian with a couple of folks (we're going slowly this time around); thinking about picking up vidding again so I can make a Ye Zun vid, a sappy Weilan vid, and an angsty Weilan vid (yes, I've thought enough about this that I already have some concrete ideas; the problem is that my vidding software is on my old laptop and I think I have to uninstall it from there before I can install it on my new one); and watching BTS performances (I also indulged myself yesterday and bought a physical copy of their album, the concept photos are so soft).

Anyway, writing updates!

520 exchange: Went live on Monday! I got the most amazing gift from

kitshunette - Wherever the tide takes me. It's artwork + plot for a Pacific Rim AU which I adore (I look for those in pretty much every fandom I'm in). Please check it out if you haven't already.

My own offering was: Human Courtship Rituals, As Witnessed By A Member of the One and Only Cat Tribe for Blue. As you can guess, it's a fic about Weilan from Da Qing's pov. I had so much fun writing this fic.

....I feel terrible about this but I am very very behind on reading the 520 fics. I don't know if this happens to anyone else but my reading in a fandom tends to drop significantly when I start writing in it. I think it has to do with having trouble pulling myself out of my own headcanons and stories enough to immerse myself in someone else's? It's harder with long fics than short ones which sucks because I generally love long fics.

wipbigbang: I submitted my snippets yesterday for the art claims so *fingers crossed* that my fic will get picked up by an artist. The fic itself is coming along slowly. But it's looking like it's gonna be over 20k words when it's done.

Alien invasion fic: Still stalled. I actually know what's supposed to happen next, I just keep putting off writing it.

Other fics: I have an idea for a Weilan fic inspired by BY and ZYL's new shows, though I haven't watched any of them so it's really just the premise of the new shows and not the shows themselves. I started writing a Hades/Persephone fic based on

bonibaru's prompt at the bunny farm. I had the urge to write a really angsty canon tie-in fic earlier today but that passed.

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I actually was going to skip this week because mostly what I did was fiddle with my 520 fic. But I did write a bit for my wuxia WIP so here's a snippet:

Then he lies down with his chest against the thin padding of the blankets and his face turned towards Shen Wei, brows arched expectantly. Shen Wei swallows and gingerly climbs up onto the bed, kneeling with one leg on either side of Zhao Yunlan’s clothed thighs. He stares down at the broad expanse of skin below him, taking in the few old battle scars that mar the smoothness.

What am I doing here? he asks himself, not for the first time.

Zhao Yunlan shifts a little, restless, and Shen Wei shakes his head. He gets his thoughts in order and forces himself to look at the situation clinically, and remember the lessons he had been taught about the human body and how to manipulate the muscles to ease aches and relieve tension. The prince has a need that he’s asking Shen Wei to fulfill tonight instead of the imperial physician, so Shen Wei should do his best to fulfill it properly.

He carefully sets the bowl of oil down and dips his fingers into it.

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520 Reverse Exchange: I'm done with the fic! And it's been posted! I managed to keep it relatively short - it's just a little over 3k words. Hopefully my recipient is happy with it. *crossed fingers*

wipbigbang: I had a minor freakout about this last week, because I thought the deadline was much sooner than it actually is (in July, phew!) but it's all good now. I've finally outlined my wuxia fic so I have an idea of what I actually have to write and how things get from point A to point B which is nice. There's just so. much. more. to. write.

current wordcount: 11,325 (that's inaccurate, though, because it's including the summary and my outline notes)

future fix-it/alien invasion fic: This one stalled a bit while I wrote my 520 fic and then had my freakout over the wipbigbang but hopefully I'll be able to get back to working on it now.

current wordcount: 15,605 (this is all fic)

I have managed (barely) to refrain from starting any more fics, but thanks to a plot bunny left by

bonibaru I now have an idea for a novelverse Weilan fic loosely based on Hades and Persephone.... *facepalm*

( Anyway, have a snippet from my wuxia fic! )

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I realized that I completely missed posting a snippet last Sunday, oops. I went to see Endgame last weekend and I needed a lot of time to process it (and then read fic about it). I wasn't even been able to concentrate on Guardian stuff until Friday, tbh. And since then, I've been working on my fic for the 520 Exchange which I can't share in case my recipient is someone who's subscribed to this journal. So instead, here's a way-more-than-six-lines snippet from my future fix-it (to make up for last week =P).

“Come on, didi,” the boy in black murmurs encouragingly. “We’re almost to the village. They’ll be able to help us there.”

“I don’t—” the boy in white breaks off in a hacking cough “—I don’t think I can, gege—”

“Yes, yes you can. We’ll do it together, okay? Just like we’ve done everything else.”

The other boy shakes his head but seems to decide that it’s a waste of energy to keep arguing. The two of them stumble along slowly. Zhao Yunlan is starting to get a sense of who he’s watching and he can’t help feeling fascinated at seeing his Shen Wei younger than he’s ever seen him.

The two arrive at a village just as the sun is starting to set, and they’re greeted by a woman who’s taking down laundry from a line in her yard. She gives an alarmed shout when the boy in white collapses to the ground, pulling the other boy down with him.

“Get the healer!” she tells one of the other villagers who had come running at the noise. He runs off while she hurries over to kneel by the two boys.

“Didi! Didi!” Shen Wei is crying out. There’s a look of such terror on his face that Zhao Yunlan can feel his own heart squeezing in sympathetic fear, though he knows that Shen Wei’s brother must have lived through this.

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phyrry found this amazing freely available resource about Chinese history, if anyone's writing fics set in historical China or is looking for inspiration for Dixing and Haixing worldbuilding.

It's a series of seven books by Joseph Needham called Science and Civilisation in China and they're available to read either online or on downloadable epubs. I haven't been able to find parts of Volume 5 and all of Volume 6 but the rest are here:

Volume	Topic + Link
1	Introduction to Chinese topography, the pre-imperial phase and the empire
2	History of scientific thought
3	Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth
4	Civil engineering and nautics Mechanical engineering
5	Paper and printing Spagyrical discovery and magisteries of gold and immortality Military technology, missiles, and sieges Gunpowder Textile Ceramics
6	Biology, food science, and medicine
7	Language and logic

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references: china

A general update on this fic: I've reached the point where the action happens (i.e., when the alien invasion starts)! Huzzah! \o/

Current word count: 12,552 (it feels like it should be much higher but alas, me thinking about this fic a lot doesn't equal actual words written, lol)

Today's snippet is from an earlier scene, because I can't help going back and editing stuff I've already written. >.<

A statue of him. Holding the Guardian Lamp—the actual, real Guardian Lamp—over his head with an outstretched arm. His other hand is tucked into a pocket of his pants. He’s grinning widely and there’s a lollipop sticking out of his mouth.

“Oh no,” he breathes out, aghast. He covers his face with his hands. Dear ancestors.

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Today's the first check-in for the wipbigbang (which I only coincidentally stumbled upon because I apparently never subscribed to the journal, haha, oops) so I thought I'd also give an update for my fic. I'm using the concubine Shen Wei fic for this bigbang, which I've been calling my Scarlet Pimpernel fic because it was initially inspired by this plot bunny. However, I finally looked up the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel and realized that that name doesn't quite fit this fic. So....I think I might start calling this my wuxia fic? Because wuxia films are what I've ended up basing a lot of this on.

Word count at the start: 4,480
Current word count: 8,100 (a little less, actually, because some of those are section titles)

So, good news: I've already met the word count requirement for the fest!

Bad news: There's still so much more to write. :cries:

Worse news: I'M STUCK ON THE SEX SCENE. WHY IS SMUT SO HARD TO WRITE???

( Spoilery snippet of what I've written this week )

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I want to post some of the juicier snippets from my WIPs but I also don't want to spoil too much so this is getting much harder to do, lol.

(The summary for this fic is here, if you're interested.)

This version of Shen Wei works with a new aeronautical division of the bureau as a pilot. She flies simulated space crafts and engineers make adjustments to calculations and designs based on her feedback. One day, two highly placed officials—going by their suits and the wide berth that everyone gives them—are watching her simulated flight from an observation platform. “Minister, are you sure we should keep pursuing this? You remember Ma Gui’s warning about space?”

“I very much do remember the warning that he had left for us. But it has been over ten thousand years. Things surely have changed since then.”

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There's not much that I miss about Tumblr, but one of those few things is the ability to just 'like' a post and move on. Because sometimes you just don't have anything you want to add to it or say about it or it's too personal to reblog but you just want to let the OP know that you saw their post and liked it or are supportive of them.

AO3 has the same function for fics, where you can just leave a 'kudos' and you don't have to comment to let the author know you liked their fic.

But there's no way (that I've seen) to do that on DW. So I'm gonna set up my own system here: if you like one of my posts or just want to let me know that you saw it, but you don't have anything in particular you want to say about it, you can just leave a comment with a <3 or !!! or some emoji or reaction gif or whatever. I will still be thrilled and love it (and probably respond with an emoji of my own).

(As a writer, I LOVE getting comments because I love seeing what parts of my fics people like and it helps me to know if my characterizations work. But as a reader, I know that sometimes you just don't have it in you to write anything. And that's okay! I just want to make it clear that I am totally okay if you want to just do a drive-by comment on any of my posts here.)

(I will admit that this partly came about because sometimes I read others' Sunday Six snippets and I like them but don't have anything in particular to say about them so I end up...not saying anything at all because I just think to myself 'I'll come back to this later when I've thought of something' and then I never do. So, sorry to all the writers whose Sunday Six snippets I read and liked and never commented on.)

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my stuff: blog admin

So I signed up for the 520 Reverse Exchange on

sid_guardian and then thanks to

asya_ana I just signed up for the

wipbigbang ....here's hoping I'll actually be able to finish both of these. How did I go from no fests at all to joining two in the span of a couple of days? /o\

(But well, I was already committed to finishing my two WIPs! This just means that definitely one of them will be done and posted by July (and with art, too!). The other one I'm hoping will be done before then.)

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I realized I haven't posted a snippet from this one for awhile, so here's a bit from the less-angsty fic.

Shen Wei takes a seat on a bench in one corner of the room. There’s no telling when the Crown Prince will come by, so he uses the time to focus on his breathing and steady his nerves. This is a little different than his usual missions but it’s well within his abilities to complete. Certainly he’s a better candidate for this than his brother, whose flair for the dramatic would get him into trouble from the outset. His insistence that everyone, including his own twin brother, call him only by his self-proclaimed title of Ye Zun for the duration of the war is evidence enough of that.

Some time later, a gentle knock against wood brings him out of his reverie. He can see three shadows through the screens on the doors to the guest pavilion that they’re waiting in. One of those is one of the Empress’ ladies, who announces softly, “Empress Shen, the Crown Prince Zhao Yunlan is here.”

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Since I'm posting snippets of these on Sundays, I figured I'd go ahead and put up my working summaries for them. They're both still untitled because I have a really hard time with titles and usually leave those for the end.

Future fix-it fic: After the defeat of Ye Zun, Shen Wei enters the cycle of reincarnation while Zhao Yunlan remains anchored to the Guardian Lamp as its eternally burning wick. Peace reigns as he watches over all of Haixing for hundreds of years. But that peace is shattered one day by the arrival of spaceships carrying the descendants of the ancestors of the Dixingren and Yashou who had settled on Haixing thousands of years ago. These descendants aren’t looking to settle on the planet now, though; they’re here to conquer it.

Concubine!Shen Wei fic: Dixing is one of the last States standing against Emperor Zhao Xinci’s attempt to conquer and unite all the lands. The Crown Prince, Zhao Yunlan, has been fighting at the front lines of the war against Dixing for years when his mother gifts him with a concubine. Shen Wei is beautiful and magnetic and Zhao Yunlan falls in love with him instantly. But Shen Wei isn’t just a concubine; he’s a Dixing operative who’s being embedded in Zhao Yunlan’s household to gather intel and potentially assassinate the prince. He doesn't expect to fall in love with the prince.

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I did a thing! It's a prompt fill for

teaotter 's prompt: Zhao Yunlan convinces Shen Wei to dance with him. Night club? Ballroom? Yashou country dances with flower crowns? As long as they're dancing, I'll love it!

truths told by starlight (2305 words) by anecdotalist
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán
Additional Tags: Fluff, War Era, Ten Thousand Years Ago, Spoilers through the end of the series
Summary: The allied forces celebrate a victory with a bonfire and music. Shen Wei and Kunlun are in their own little world.

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"I'm a leaf on the wind...

...watch how I soar." - Wash, Serenity

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First Lines Meme

Chinese honorifics reference

New fic! Weilan, novelverse, Hades and Persephone AU

Sunday Six and quick writing updates!

boost: art claims for wipbigbang

Quick AO3 tagging reference

Sunday Six

Some general updates

Sunday Six, barely

Sunday Six and general writing updates

Sunday Six - future fix-it

Free writing resource

Sunday Six - future fix-it

wipbigbang update

Sunday Six - future fix-it snippet

A note on commenting

Fests

Sunday Six - a snippet from the concubine!Shen Wei fic

Fic summaries of my Guardian wips

New Guardian fic: truths told by starlight

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March 2020

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