Fic - MTPL (and A Favour)
It’s the usual context post for my latest FX/JL fic (as well as the little fengqing ficlet I uploaded after)
Money, Patience, Time…
Where did this fic come from
As usual with my TGCF fics, I played myself. I thought no one would fill my rare kink prompt so I started writing my own take on it, and then someone posted a lovely fill but by that point I was very invested in my own one.
This is also my most spite motivated fic to date, lol, lmao. As a FengQing shipper I’m so filled with resentment against the FengQing fans who are constantly minimising and mischaracterising Feng Xin’s past relationship with Jian Lan. How can you even claim to be a Feng Xin fan if you throw away such a big part of his backstory????? (insert another few paragraphs of ranting about attitudes to romantic relationships etc) I wanted to do the opposite of that and explore why their relationship might have been positive and meaningful.
Aside which is only related in an abstract way: My biggest pet peeve is that I haven’t seen a single fic which acknowledges the fact that when Jian Lan broke up with(?) Feng Xin, she made him believe that it was because she had been bought by another man who would marry her (presumably as a concubine) and provide for her. In his head she got a happy ending. Every fic is like, “ooh, she told him to go away, she was so mean…” Please consult Book 5 Chapter 75 of the Seven Seas translation. (Featuring their reunion, and also Xie Lian’s iconic “50 reasons Mu Qing sucks” speech, Xie Lian saying Hua Cheng is as cute as his own son, Jian Lan attempting to kill Qi Rong with a boulder…)
It ended up being way more about Jian Lan than Feng Xin, because imo you kind of need to give a minor character the spotlight when you pair them with a major one. One thing from canon is that even after 800 years, she’s still a sex worker. I don’t believe it’s the only way she could get enough money to survive (especially since I want to believe that Hua Cheng’s Ghost City is somewhat utopian). And she’s even running around flashing Xie Lian and saying that she’ll pay him to have sex with her, which obviously is just meant to be funny but too late, it’s part of her characterisation now as well! And it’s interesting.
what was it like writing
In my head a hypothetical reader may complain about Chekhov’s Gun with Jian Lan’s debt to Peng Li at the start of the fic. But no, I think that one is fine. I am here to complain about Chekhov’s Phallic Object. THE VASE! I worked so hard to subtly describe it as small with a flared base! I made Jian Lan take it with her when she moved rooms! That thing was meant to go up Feng Xin’s ass!!! Unfortunately for pacing reasons I decided the end should be fade to black, so we’ll never know if it did.
It was very fun to link together the things we know about Jian Lan and re-frame them with her as the protagonist. It reminded me of doing my Susato centric fancomic back in the day. It’s funny because Susato is such a major character by comparison, but that’s Ace Attorney female characters for you.
Apart from that I think you can tell I was writing in extremely new territory. A lot of things that I had never even read about before, let alone written. For two characters with really bold personalities, it’s a kind of mild fic. At least I got them to shout at each other a little bit. (I was rereading that argument and thought “man this is more explicit than porn… mmm argument porn” and I think that says a lot about me and about why fengqing is my otp)
Still, it’s the fic I have been proudest of all year. This should teach me a lesson that writing with literally any kind of sincere starting point (even if it’s just “this kink sounds like a good fit…") is better than writing because I thought of a funny mental image or phrase or something.
What about A Favour
I wrote this one 100% because of a funny mental image (dies) I had a thought that the Nan Feng disguise might be physically flawed (the same way as weak ghosts' disguises are meant to be in canon) as well as having a stupid name and that it would be funny to for Fu Yao to give him a tropey makeover scene. Obviously it evolved from that. Eventually I thought ‘the less words this could be conveyed in, the better’ and I was procrastinating on a train so I thought why not do a poem version of it. It helped that one of my favourite TGCF fics is a poem about Ming Yi.
As for the writing experience… It was only meant to be drawerfic at the start… I hadn’t written any poetry since they made us do it in primary school, but had just read about 20 Carol Ann Duffy poems in a row (The World’s Wife is basically an anthology of fan poetry anyway) and was happy to regurgitate something in a similar style. Does that mean it’s also Carol Ann Duffy fanfiction? Anyway, the really intensely fun part was editing, especially because the poem had such few words that I could remember them all and do a lot of the experimenting in my head.
If only I could write more poetry it would be so fun!! But I didn’t even write this one on purpose so I don’t know what would compel me to do more in the future.