Getting lured back to Tumblr by all the Untamed content over there. Mostly going through the blogs of Jin Guangyao stans and reblogging everything - basically being irritating to two websites at once. But this time I'm going to post about it here, so I don't just end up fading out again.
The Untamed/MDZS fandom must be the largest I've ever been in, and that includes the Tolkien fandom, and it is absolutely bursting with really great fic. Quite a lot of which is even Jin Guangyao centric. Of course I've done my usual thing of gravitating to a widely controversial character rather than nestling happily in the main pairing, which cuts down my reading choices somewhat. But I don't think I could ever be content shipping a pairing for which the canon had already come through. What is left for the fan writer to fix in those cases? Much harder to give JGY a happy ending, especially if you also want everyone else (except Jin Guangshan, he can die) to live and be happy too. But that's what makes it fun.
I'm currently in the middle of podficcing Shiome's Last of our kind, for which I can just about manage to produce a chapter a week. There are 14 chapters and I've done 8. So that should be finished in February. After which, I'm in a quandary as to whether I podfic Derillarch's Peony to Lotus series, or whether I attempt to finish the story I started writing months and months ago.
(That's 'The Will of Heaven', in which JGY comes back to life the same way WWX did, and must attempt to become Lan Furen while fooling the rest of the cultivation world that he is someone else entirely, or else deal with the consequences.)
There is so much good fic out there that it doesn't seem like the fandom needs mine. But there are not very many JGY centric podfics, so I do almost feel like I can make a bigger difference by podficcing than by writing, atm.
The Untamed/MDZS fandom must be the largest I've ever been in, and that includes the Tolkien fandom, and it is absolutely bursting with really great fic. Quite a lot of which is even Jin Guangyao centric. Of course I've done my usual thing of gravitating to a widely controversial character rather than nestling happily in the main pairing, which cuts down my reading choices somewhat. But I don't think I could ever be content shipping a pairing for which the canon had already come through. What is left for the fan writer to fix in those cases? Much harder to give JGY a happy ending, especially if you also want everyone else (except Jin Guangshan, he can die) to live and be happy too. But that's what makes it fun.
I'm currently in the middle of podficcing Shiome's Last of our kind, for which I can just about manage to produce a chapter a week. There are 14 chapters and I've done 8. So that should be finished in February. After which, I'm in a quandary as to whether I podfic Derillarch's Peony to Lotus series, or whether I attempt to finish the story I started writing months and months ago.
(That's 'The Will of Heaven', in which JGY comes back to life the same way WWX did, and must attempt to become Lan Furen while fooling the rest of the cultivation world that he is someone else entirely, or else deal with the consequences.)
There is so much good fic out there that it doesn't seem like the fandom needs mine. But there are not very many JGY centric podfics, so I do almost feel like I can make a bigger difference by podficcing than by writing, atm.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-14 06:23 pm (UTC)From:There’s so much high quality fic in this fandom, it’s amazing! I’ve been in bigger fandoms (like, Sherlock…) but it’s still quite huge! Shiome’s fic is fantastic!
And even though there are many fics, there’s still always the need for more! I mean, how many “pining WangXian are getting together post-canon because of a case” fics are there? And I still eat that shit up! XD Never enough of a good thing! :D
no subject
Date: 2022-12-15 10:24 am (UTC)From:Shiome's fic *is* fantastic :) I have a whole list of bookmarked Xiyao fic that I could probably turn to to podfic next, but after your advice I might take another look at my own fic and see if I'm ready to carry on with it. I think I have been neglecting a lot of potential sources of drama that I could work into it :) Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2022-12-15 07:01 pm (UTC)From:Ahhh Jiang Cheng, my beloved! I was kind of floored when I found out that he’s got such vocal haters? And that they were so indignant that he didn’t stand by WWX? When it was obvious that he was in a very shitty situation politically and that he couldn’t? And he also didn’t have all the information because certain people didn’t want him to? And that he was so super evil and brutal towards WWX when I was like, “This is a rather common sibling dynamic?” XD Like, just, what?
Yes do that! Podfics are cool, too, but don’t hold back on your writing simply for the reason of, “But does fandom need this?” because fandom always does! XD
(BTW I just scrolled through my myriad of saved icons from the LJ days because I was looking for some specific ones - and it seems we must've crossed paths in PotC fandom? Because I've got some icons that you made/used? XD One was with Cutler Beckett about "still proudly supporting the wrong side". ;D so either this was you, or someone else had your name back then! XD)
no subject
Date: 2022-12-16 10:02 am (UTC)From:I also don't understand how there are people who call Jiang Cheng evil! Honestly! Everyone in the series has their own flaws, which is great - they're realistic characters and they sometimes do things which aren't the most helpful things in the circumstances. Wei Wuxian is primary among characters who do things that aren't particularly helpful, so if he's allowed to not-perfect and yet great, so should JC be.
JC may not have stood by WWX's side, but then WWX didn't stand by JC's side, and as first disciple to JC's clan leader it was really more WWX's job to support JC rather than the other way around.
As pointed out to me recenly, JC *didn't know* about the core transfer, and therefore didn't know that falling off a mountain would kill WWX. He was probably just trying to disable him. Although honestly I couldn't blame him for trying to kill WWX who was clearly a menace to society at that point.
(Even if we know that it wasn't WWX's fault and he was being backed into a corner where he couldn't do anything other than what he did. Being backed into a corner where you can't do anything other than what you did seems to be a theme of the story.)
It's funny how it always tends to be the fans of the heroes who are the most intolerant of absolutely everyone else, whereas villain fans tend to be able to sympathize with all the characters. Maybe because we're more used to having to understand when a character can't do anything else than make a bad decision. Or we're more accepting of the fact that being human means being massive fuckups in one way or another :)
LOL! Oh how cool! Yes, PotC fandom Galadhir is me. I wrote a lot of Norrington/Gillette fic back in the day, and then I ended up turning it into a novel with the names sanded off :) I still occasionally make icons, but not with the regularity that I did back then.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-16 04:40 pm (UTC)From:It feels like many people just forget that JC was missing a lot of very important information so to him it looked like WWX was totally abandoning him after Sunshot (drinking the days away instead of training the disciples etc.) even though WWX had made the promise of always being JC’s right-hand man. And it only gets worse from there, what with WWX suddenly standing up for the Wens and going against all the other sects. JC is still in such a bad political situation at that point that he couldn’t support WWX, not after he’d killed the Jin cultivators. (Also, I think some of those Western fans just... don't understand the world building? And that ancient fantasy China doesn't work like USA 2022?)
I tend to think that JC didn’t really want to kill WWX, but he was also so gone on grief and anger at that moment, that he kind of convinces himself that he must want to kill WWX because who wouldn’t, right? That’s at least how I always interpreted the moment of the sword missing, after all. IDK about falling off a cliff, because that seems to be a cdrama trope in itself and usually they don’t die. XD JC didn’t know about the core so perhaps he’d thought that WWX would be fine (if there wasn’t also lava at the ground, because a core likely wouldn’t help much then), but he also didn’t look very hard at any clues beforehand (which I don’t blame him for; boy had a whole lot to deal with himself).
I think that’s what I love so much about the story – everyone makes mistakes and has flaws, nothing is truly black and white, no-one is only good or only bad, though of course characters lean more or less heavily into a certain direction. But I love how may characters are parallels/foils for each other (WWX/JGY/XY for example) and how tweaking some events might lead to a different outcome.
I got the impression (though that might be wrong) that [Western] novel fans tend to hate on JC more as he comes across rather unsympathetic in the English TL and the narration at first happily tells us about how he was the one to kill his shidi and also enjoys torturing anyone who reminds him of WWX… Which, as we know that the narration is quite unreliable, should be side-eyed at least a bit. There also aren't any acting choices we can rely on that might soften the character. Whereas it seems that CQL fans tend to absolve WWX of any and all blame ever, when – even though CQL did tone down all that he did because censorship – that is just not true. *sigh*
Really, when one is also a fan of the villains, one tends to be far more open-minded about these things, that’s true!
I checked if I actually saved some of your fic, but alas no - we just silently crossed paths in the comms where I usually only lurked. XD The mean days of sporking comms, anyone? That was huge back then. Looking back, it really wasn't right to mock likely teenaged authors like that instead of just, uhhh moving on from the badfic. XD But those were the wild and crazy times of mass internet fandom I guess.
Sparrington was how I got into slash and I also enjoyed the Gilette/Groves fics that popped up after a while. XD Didn't really get into Norrington/Gillette, though that tended to come up in those fics as well. :D
then I ended up turning it into a novel with the names sanded off
👀
no subject
Date: 2022-12-16 05:39 pm (UTC)From:So probably from JC's pov, he's saving the world. He's had to force himself to pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi where he no longer sees his brother because he believes everything he used to love has been destroyed by the resentful cultivation. He's choosing duty over love, and one of the ways he's managing to cope with that is by telling himself that he hates the thing that WWX has become, and he hates the cultivation method that did that to him.
He is a bit of a brat, at times! But I think it's really obvious that he cares deeply under that. And it's probably easier for me to see that because I found WWX incredibly irritating in the beginning when he was pulling LWJ's pigtails, (I've heard that most people find it charming), so I was fully on board the "I can see why JC is so exasperated all the time" train.
Heh, yes, sporking. I used to lurk on those comms as well and quietly take note of what I shouldn't do, or at least what I would have to do really really well if I wanted to get away with it. I did once deliberately write a "Modern girl goes to Rivendell" fic just because someone said it could not possibly ever be done well. But of course I didn't post the link to it on the comm!
Negotiations was my first POTC fic, which was Sparrington, but then I got really into the Age of Sail in general and drifted off to focus on the Navy boys on their own.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-20 05:30 pm (UTC)From:That WWX would’ve kept out of everyone’s business and lived his life in the Burial Mounds, had lived his life in the BM for at least a year without doing anything, didn’t count and also wasn’t logical for them – he was using evil methods and had that super powerful tool, of course he’d want to overthrow the sect leaders at some point! *sigh*
And it seemed like JC held back for a very long time from actively going against WWX – until JYL’s death. And well, WWX was totally gone then anyway. But I’m sure it was a huge conflict for him and I don’t understand how people can misread all of this so much…
I read a funny meta on tumblr recently, about all of them meeting at Jinlintai for the conference and JC suddenly being confronted with WWX in his mask right there out in the open without his knowledge, and how he playacts through this really well! Like, he tends to be very emotional and this could’ve caused him to break down (it possibly would have in the past), but he acts so well here, which is what they all have to depend on! JC throwing a fit while the Twin Jades and WWX try to investigate a murder would’ve been very unhelpful. XD
I find WWX irritating at times, too. XD And I always wondered how people were like, “What an awful sibling relationship, JC obviously hates WWX with how he acts, always sniping at him!” and to me that was just… a typical sibling relationship. XD Like, I’ve got a friend who acted very similarly with her brother when they were younger, always throwing sarcastic comments at each other or playfully hitting each other or tumbling around on the lawn. They were very close in age and both quite confident characters that loved to do outdoor stuff. So I never questioned that dynamic but it seems people find it… weird? Even violent?
Ahahaha I looked at that title and was like, “Hmmm sounds familiar…” but it didn’t fit your username. Started to read the beginning and was like, “I know that fic!” XD Just under your ff.net name back then, I’ve got that one downloaded from waaaayyy back when. XD
no subject
Date: 2022-12-22 09:18 am (UTC)From:It's pretty clear that by the time JYL dies and WWX finds himself killing all those cultivators that he has become fairly unhinged by grief and resentful cultivation. But it's also clear by the time JC kills WWX that he has also become fairly unhinged by the death of his sister, mother, father, people etc and the fear and responsibility of having to be the one who is responsible for making all this better.
Even if you don't agree with his choices, I really don't see how you can disagree that he was doing his best! Sometimes when people have been traumatised for a long time, their best isn't very good, but who can blame them for that?
I don't know a lot about sibling relationships in general (my sisters were both over 18 years older than me and had left home by the time I came along, so they always felt more like aunts,) but it's pretty clear that both WWX and JYL understand that this is just the way JC expresses his love. Later on, Jin Ling seems to understand that "I'll break your legs" means this too. I had kind of assumed it was a cultural thing, but I am also happy to believe it's just a family dynamic that I'm not used to.
*G* FF.net was the first fan site I ever joined, and I hadn't got used to the idea that you could just make up a name for yourself, so that one I joined with my irl name. And then I wised up later and got several pseuds :)
no subject
Date: 2022-12-15 03:48 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-12-15 05:14 pm (UTC)From: