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WIP Titles Meme
Teyla introduced the meme and it sounds like fun, so here we are.
Meme:
"Here's a list of my WIPs (exact title of the documents, no fibbing) and you can ask about the ones you're curious about.
Pick any you're interested in, and I'll tell you about them and post a snippet!"
This proved a good excuse for me to realise just how many WIPs in various fandoms I've got lying around. Some of them I'm not very likely at all to ever finish/post, and my titling is all over the place, but if anyone wants any snippets anyway...
Roughly by order of how likely I am to finish:
Guardian
Learning Abilities fic
Weilan barrier fic
Shen Wei is always himself
Accidental Marriage AU
Lost Tomb Reboot
Wu Xie feels
Tolkien
Second Finrod fic
Meme:
"Here's a list of my WIPs (exact title of the documents, no fibbing) and you can ask about the ones you're curious about.
Pick any you're interested in, and I'll tell you about them and post a snippet!"
This proved a good excuse for me to realise just how many WIPs in various fandoms I've got lying around. Some of them I'm not very likely at all to ever finish/post, and my titling is all over the place, but if anyone wants any snippets anyway...
Roughly by order of how likely I am to finish:
Guardian
Learning Abilities fic
Weilan barrier fic
Shen Wei is always himself
Accidental Marriage AU
Lost Tomb Reboot
Wu Xie feels
Tolkien
Second Finrod fic
boromir AU
Tortall
rekindling sequel
Star Trek AOS
pike and mccoy
Star Wars
Tortall
rekindling sequel
Star Trek AOS
pike and mccoy
Star Wars
Cassian and Bail
sw au satellite temples
poe hates this ice planet
Stargate SG-1
SG-1 trees
Fantastic Beasts
sw au satellite temples
poe hates this ice planet
mortis au
OT3 fantasy AU
no sith au
most of the time being a force ghost is a major pain in the ass
BBC Musketeers
most of the time being a force ghost is a major pain in the ass
BBC Musketeers
musketeers alphabet
dragonshifter athos
Stargate SG-1
SG-1 trees
Fantastic Beasts
graves unicorn
selkie fic
NCIS
a week in touch
palmer and gibbs
florist AU
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I very much hope you'll finish the Wu Xie fic! <3
But I'll ask about the barrier fic for now. Sounds intriguing!
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The Wu Xie fic will definitely get finished (though this one probably won't be all that long) - actually I can get back to that now that I've got a working draft of the exchange fic...
Right, Weilan barrier fic. That's the one I was writing before I got distracted by the exes fic. I've got 1.7k of it already, so this one's got a good chance of getting finished, too. Here's the first bit of it, which doesn't quite get to the central conceit (Shen Wei is caught on one side of a barrier and is slowly depleting himself to stop it from causing harm, Zhao Yunlan is on the other) yet, but hey.
*
Shen Wei is in the middle of an explaining an example of mutation bias to one of his third year classes, when a change in the air around him hums through his bones. The sudden charged power in the air is almost enough to vibrate his teeth, the fine hairs on his arms standing up in protest.
The hand holding the chalk to the blackboard drops to his side. He’s distantly aware how strange he must appear to his students, speech arrested mid-sentence in a way entirely uncharacteristic of composed, self-assured Professor Shen, but the sense that something is wrong has sunk deep under his skin, prickling along nerves that have only just relaxed into this new era of peace.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he says, abrupt enough that even the student in the backrow who’d been dozing jerks upright, even though Shen Wei keeps his voice quiet and calm. Jia Jia is watching him with worried eyes from the corner with her laptop – while he would prefer to teach only with a blackboard and his voice, some of the computer models really are useful for visualisation purposes, and this way his graduate student can get a few more hours of paid work each week – more attuned to his tells than his less regular students.
Not alerting his students to any strangeness is already a lost cause, so Shen Wei steps over to the largest window to look out, ignoring their stares on his back. He’d half hoped he wouldn’t see anything, despite the wrongness in the air, but as soon as his gaze focuses the anomaly becomes clear – there’s some kind of veil shimmering in the air at the edge of campus, turning it bluer than it should be, interrupted by tiny flashes of light.
This, Shen Wei reflects with some tiredness, has the potential to be very troubling indeed.
He turns back to his class. Every pair of eyes is rivetted on him. He smiles blandly and says, “A situation seems to be developing. Class is adjourned for today, but I suggest you stay put until the issue is resolved.”
Shen Wei doesn’t wait for the inevitable questions, which he would currently be unable to answer, and protests, which he doesn’t have time to answer, and makes his way out of the lecture room with swift strides. He leaves his bag – there’s nothing in there that would be likely to help him.
As soon as he steps out of the biology faculty building, any hope that this is going be a small matter to resolve fades into a probability so small it’s not even worth considering. Charged air tickles over his skin, ruffling his hair as he stares at the shimmering blue dome that encases the entire campus, cutting it off from the outside world.
That would be alarming enough, but he’s almost certain that the wall of energy is moving. Shrinking, in fact.
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What's the accidental marriage Guardian AU?
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That said the accidental marriage Guardian AU is what will one day be the long fix-it everyone seems to end up writing for this fandom at some point. I've only got a couple hundred words written for it, but I've done a lot of outlining, thus discovering that this, uh, won't be short. The premise is that Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan get accidentally married while together in Dixing for the first time (ep 16 ish). Also featuring lots and lots of Dixing worldbuilding.
This is the only bit that's written, as of yet:
Whatever Zhao Yunlan had expected from mythical Dixing, it hadn’t been grey dimness, empty streets, dust and dirt and a watchful silence that sends prickling warning shivers down his back. With a lot of squinting one could imagine splendour of ages past behind the peeling paints and ragged edges, the remnants of once proud architecture imaginable in the stonework and high arches.
If only there were light.
Zhao Yunlan’s eyes flicker to Shen Wei, striding next to him in his Hei Pao Shi outfit, bearing even stiffer than usual as he listens to the Regent prattling on. The few times Shen Wei has let himself be coaxed into talking about Dixing, there’d been something desperately bleak curling around the edges of his expression and Zhao Yunlan is starting to understand why.
Earlier grandstanding aside – which had only been aimed at getting to come along anyway – the creeping sense that he’s really out of his depth is starting to unsettle him. He’s beginning to understand just how little he knows about Dixing; how little any Haixingren knows about Dixing. Not that that would have stopped him from inveigling himself onto this trip to find the missing Dijun Booklet. Zhao Yunlan has never been in the habit of denying his own curiosity.
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I'm very curious about this one! :D
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Here's a snippet from a NOW section:
At the end of a long, exhausting day spent mediating an argument over lecture hall allocations between two colleagues, talking a student through an exam-related nervous breakdown and being accosted by the Chancellor’s wife with a whole host of curious but nonetheless invasive questions about “his heritage”, Shen Wei lets himself into their shared flat, hoping for a little peace and quiet and maybe some gentle snuggling.
What he gets instead is this:
“Shen Wei, are you glowing?”
Shen Wei resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps you’re hallucinating,” he suggests mildly, ignoring the way the small aura of light hovering over his skin pulses in annoyance.
Zhao Yunlan squints at him for a moment, then wags a finger in Shen Wei’s direction. “I know I’m always the first to say that you’re a radiant beauty, Xiao Wei, but usually I mean that a little less literally.”
Tucking his dress shoes into their place by the door, Shen Wei bites back several unkind responses that want to slip from his tongue – it’s not Zhao Yunlan’s fault that he’s had a terrible day.
“Learning isn’t always without its challenges,” he finally says, a little stiffly. It’s not something he’s ever admitted to anyone else, not in either century of his conscious existence, but he’s tired of keeping secrets from Zhao Yunlan. And this is a secret that would benefit no one and nothing aside from Shen Wei’s dignity.
Zhao Yunlan blinks at him a couple of times, before his expression brightens. “You met a Dixingren with a new power?”
“I did,” Shen Wei agrees as he hangs his suit jacket on the designated hanger. Despite his mood, his lips curve fondly at the memory. It’s still a wonder to him, to have Dixingren students at the university without fear of detection or reprisal. Some even have the courage to seek him out, now that Hei Pao Shi’s duties no longer mandate him to return anyone to Dixing who hasn’t made serious trouble in Haixing.
Unfortunately, the meeting had been cut short by the Chancellor, and Shen Wei hadn’t had enough time to properly study how she controlled her light power. He’d had to maintain an illusion over himself for the rest of the day to avoid question about why Professor Shen was literally glowing.
In all honesty, he hadn’t actually intended to learn Lin Xia’s power. He already has several light powers at his disposal and these days he tries to be selective about which further powers he adds to his arsenal. Unfortunately, his learning power isn’t always… ruly. His unconscious mind soaks up everything around him like a particularly determined sponge and always has – learning is faster when he does it consciously, studying how someone else’s power moves through them, shapes in the air, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen accidentally when he’s in proximity to a new power.
Zhao Yunlan’s gaze is heavy on him when Shen Wei turns around, fixed on the play of light over Shen Wei’s skin.
“It’s not dangerous,” Shen Wei assures him. The last thing he wants to do is worry Zhao Yunlan. “And I should have it under control by tomorrow.”
The look Zhao Yunlan levels at him in response is so softly exasperated that Shen Wei feels a flush crawl up his neck. Not worried then.
“May I?” Zhao Yunlan asks quietly, gesturing with a hand.
Shen Wei isn’t generally in the habit of denying Zhao Yunlan’s touch when at home, even when he’s feeling a little off-kilter, so he nods. He doesn’t expect to feel anything when Zhao Yunlan moves his fingers into the halo of light, hovering just above Shen Wei’s skin and gasps quietly at the tingle that spreads outwards from Zhao Yunlan’s fingertip. The light billows and contracts, sending eddies of sensation along Shen Wei’s skin.
He blinks down at his arm. Clearly his understanding of this power had been… incomplete. How does light tangibly react to touch?
Zhao Yunlan, meanwhile, looks absolutely fascinated, the reflected glow making his eyes luminous as he continues doing things to Shen Wei’s arm that in another context would start a cascade of events that tend to lead straight to the bedroom.
“Can you feel this?” Zhao Yunlan asks, spanning his fingers as if to take Shen Wei’s wrist in a loose grip.
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Seriously, I adore all of it. Though possibly this is my favourite bit:
“Perhaps you’re hallucinating,” he suggests mildly, ignoring the way the small aura of light hovering over his skin pulses in annoyance.
SHEN WEI. ♥
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Thank you so much! Enthusiasm like this really motivates the writing. The good news is there's already 4k of this, the bad news is that it keeps growing so who knows how long it'll end up being. I've given up on predicting how many more feelings Shen Wei can cram into every scene...
Also, that icon is delightful. I adore the bears scene!
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prickling along nerves that have only just relaxed into this new era of peace.
Ooof! <3<3<3
I also love the small details about his lecture, about his grad students, and Jiajia in particular.
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*nods*
And I haven't seen one with a serious accidental marriage premise before, either, so you're off to a great start there! \o/
the creeping sense that he’s really out of his depth is starting to unsettle him. [...] Not that that would have stopped him
Muahahah! :D Yup! Sounds like him.
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And I am fascinated by all the background musings about his ability. This one in particular:
He already has several light powers at his disposal and these days he tries to be selective about which further powers he adds to his arsenal.
-
The light billows and contracts, sending eddies of sensation along Shen Wei’s skin.
<3. (Sexy.)
that in another context would start a cascade of events that tend to lead straight to the bedroom.
Heeee, yes, they would. :D
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(I love the bear scene. Troll!Shen Wei is one of my favourite versions of Shen Wei. :D)
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I'm going to manage to shoehorn Shen Wei's named students into every single thing I write, so help me :P
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Hah! I'm always amused when I accidentally write things that can be interpreted as sexy :P
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(If you ever want a sounding board for ideas, second set of eyes for a beta, or cheerleading for writing mojo, feel free to hit me up. Happy to help with fic!)
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Helping to provide motivation for awesome fic-writing and getting to engage in fascinating world-building conversations sounds like, as all the cool kids like to say, a 'win-win' to me. :)