#also i just finished my first draft of [REDACTED] everyone cheer i was not allowed out of the house until it was done and i have a meeting

[loverofallthingssmart]

i want more characters who scream at people when they get mad. where’s the representation for people with pisspoor handles on their temper.

#enough nonchalance and snarky one liners i LOOOVE them but i need to feel better abt my emotional self #i understand the ‘scared of yelling bc they grew up w yelling’ but can i get a #‘yells back when someone yells bc that’s all u did when u grew up w yelling’ ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️ #i cannot control my temper i WISH i could keep my head down but sadly i cannot and it had gotten me in LOADS of trouble !!!!!!!! #i ALSO cannot control my mouth as well which adds to the fire #it’s why i love bitch characters YES be mean don’t control ur mouth get angry i love u!!!!!!!!!! #also i just finished my first draft of [REDACTED] everyone cheer i was not allowed out of the house until it was done and i have a meeting #today so AKBSHSJDNEJ that tactic got the job done! #inspired by this one scene of louis litt bc my father got a law degree and loves law shows and that means me and my brother r watching suits

[fincalinde]

weakness 3, 4, 11

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

I'm too lazy to pick out only one sentence, so have a short paragraph I like:

Jin Guangyao's mother had told him once, the only time he asked, how she managed to keep going. She had touched his face and kissed his brow and her eyes had been distant as the heavens as she gave him the answer: I pretend to myself that I am not my body. With practice, I believe it.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

For a single sentence I'm fond of this little knife:

"And you have the house ready and waiting," says Jin Guangyao, then raises a hand to his mouth in horrified dismay.

If I'm allowed a bit more... I was quite pleased with how I managed to convey LXC's stance at the end when he's explaining to JGY why he's continuing to support and trust him:

"Not because it does not matter to me whether you are right or wrong, but because I believe you are right. If I believed otherwise I hope I would have found the strength to do what was necessary. I think I would."

... mostly because it not only encapsulates LXC's position, but also alludes to canon. I specifically had him word it as 'if I believed otherwise' not 'if it were otherwise' as a nod to the fact that it is actually not otherwise in canon*—LXC simply believes it is otherwise in canon due to getting incomplete information from Wangxian, which casts everything in its worst possible light prior to JGY's explanations and puts him in a frame of mind where he's vulnerable to being tricked by NHS.

* Yes yes, the method of murder for JGS, I know. It was certainly gratuitous and JGY knows it's the only thing he cannot justify, hence why he wants to explain it last. For me it's like... look, man, they're fictional, everyone seems really het up about these women used to kill JGS** in a way I don't really see applied to the 'worst' (I am also not mad keen on ranking) acts committed by other characters. While it does get mentioned, I don't really see 'well WWX is good/not evil except that one unforgivable thing he did to Wen Chao's mistress!' cropping up in any and all meta about him. I also don't see handwringing over the children of the Tingshan He, for example. So my eyebrow goes up that these women always get an asterisk when JGY is being defended. Call me when every defence of WWX includes an asterisk about Wang Lingjiao, cheers.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

m8 i'm just relieved it's over.

Really though, I wanted to write a fix in which JGY gets what he wants in a realistic manner: in short, I wanted JGY to win. It was @fairylantern who suggested the divergence point to me and I immediately got a very clear vision of how that single change could set off the type of cascade I wanted. While I originally thought it could be done as a shorter piece in a style that was more of an overview, on starting to write it I realised my error and did a full outline. And then even during the writing of the draft, every scene kept on being longer than I expected in order to hit all my bullet points. There was a lot of anguished wailing at this stage.

Anyway, I always write to an outline, beginning to end, and while a couple of subplots did end up changing during the writing of the first draft, it wasn't anything crucial. The editing process was really about refining what I'd produced to align with my copious and occasionally incoherent notes. I took ages to edit because [redacted irl situation] and not because it needed a lot of work done. But regardless of the fact that it was situational and not a problem with the draft, it was a fight and a half to get it to a point where the later chapters were in a good enough state to post.

I certainly don't think it's a flawless work and there are things I would fix up now if I could, but as a thesis on Xiyao I stand by it. So yeah, I like that feeling of by and large having achieved what I wanted to achieve. I do have those two oneshots I need to finish, and then I will close the door on that AU feeling positive overall about the experience.

#ask #xiyao-feels