elenothar | Entries tagged with guardian

I have once again failed to post at all regularly and am stuck with a long catch-up post - I blame getting infernally busy in late September, which has only just levelled off. I'll try to do a couple of year-end posts too, those are always fun.

TV and movies

I keep thinking I should write these down while I'm doing them so I don't have to wrack my brain every time I do this post, but alas...

As far as I can remember, the films I've watched were: Knives Out (New Year's Eve watch, very enjoyable and clever), Lost Tomb Reboot: Mystery of the Abyss aka the Heihua movie (the best kind of DMBJ nonsense, with two very convincing and delightful takes on Xiao Hua and Hei Xiazi imo), the annual Muppets Christmas Carol rewatch (always a delight), the annual Love Actually rewatch (it's a tradition, ok), and It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (not my favourite Muppet movie, lets just say)

On the TV front:

- very excitingly, I've finally watched the last 15 episode of The Rebel (I have feelings)
- Ultimate Note watch still ongoing; other things I'm watching with people include Who Rules the World (rewatch for me, still enjoyable), Love and Redemption (much whumpy goodness), and Fairyland Lovers (which I'm surprisingly enjoying quite a lot); I dropped Ancient Detective, partly because the time slot is a bit awkward and partly because the show just didn't grab me for reasons I haven't yet teased out; it feels quite low-stakes atm)
- on my own I watched S.C.I. Mystery (only several years late; it's a trashfire of a show, but sometimes a trasfhire is just what you need and the main pairing convinced me), attempted Love Between Fairy and Devil but got stuck somewhere around ep 6, and watched one ep of Are You Safe (may take that up again).

( Read more... )

Not much to report for this one - September is always busy, what with the start of the new academic year, and we also had guests for long stretches of time (by my standards), which ate up what little free time I had.

TV and movies

I watched Zhu Yilong's most recent movie Lighting up the Stars - not entirely my thing (mostly due to the type of characters involved), but the acting was good and so were the family feels, and I liked seeing the way Wuhan was portrayed.

Started a rewatch of Who Rules the World with folks on Discord, which remains fun and fairly undemanding. Other group watches still going on include Ultimate Note (not really capturing my attention, alas), The Rebel, Love and Redemption, very occasional Nirvana in Fire. I've given up on Romance of Tiger and Rose, which I know a lot of people like, but it's just too much secondhand embarrassment a la romantic comedy and the whole thing is a bit too, idk, stylised? for me.

I haven't been watching any fiction on my own because no time, and also I often find it hard to settle on something to watch when I'm not mid-series with something, so I just end up doing something else. Quite a bit of British comedy panel shows though...

( Read more... )

In my defense, things have very much been Happening over the summer, but I should also just stop pretending I'm ever going to post regularly on here *wince*

The good news is that I've moved successfully and survived my first brush with Covid successfully, for all its terrible timing. The bad news is that I'll be getting busy with work as of next week. Ah well.

Frankly, I think I've forgotten half the things I did in the last three months already, but giving it my best shot:

TV and movies

I watched Contact, the movie based on the Carl Sagan novel, for the first time. Nothing earth-shaking, but enjoyable enough.

On the TV show front, the watchalong finished The Long Night, which was amazing but also very depressing - I'm very glad I did it as a group watch, because I'm pretty sure I would've got stuck otherwise. The same group has now started Ancient Detective, which is good fun so far. The Tomb watchers group has moved on to Ultimate Note, which hasn't grabbed me thirteen episodes in, but we'll see how it goes.

I watched Heartstopper with

tinny (cute, but suffers from my lack of interest in teenage protagonists) after finishing Detective L (very pretty, let's not talk about the plot). We've now moved on to The Romance of Tiger and Rose (too early for an opinion).

(Finally) finished watching The Lost Tomb 2 with

eirenical (bit of a pacing slog in parts, but I got quite fond of this version of the Iron Triangle). We've moved on to Love and Redemption, which I expect will take a while.

On my own, I've pretty much continued the Yang Yang bender. I've watched most of The King's Avatar, which I didn't expect to get as invested in as I did (see under Books for more), and binged You are My Glory while I was sick (perfect show for that frame of mind; lots of fluff and pretty people and barely any tension). I also watched an utterly bizarre 30-minute mini series called I Am Your Bleating Phone. Am currently hemming and hawing over what to watch next, aka the usual.

The one bit of English media I've been consuming is the newest Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, which is very Star Trek: not very subtle about its messages but with some flashes of brilliance, fun worldbuilding, and characters I could get invested in.

( Books and Fandom under the cut )

I spent the first half of the month with a miserable cold after all the travelling, but things have been calming down since then, fortunately.

TV and movies

One consequence of being mostly stuck at home for two weeks, was that I got hooked on a drama for the first time in a while. I watched all of Who Rules the World (且试天下) in May, which for me is pretty fast. It was easy, pretty fare and I quite enjoyed it (I will also admit that Yang Yang is something of a draw...).

I also started watching The Long Night with folks on Discord, which so far is very tense and quite dark but also very well done.

I didn't watch any movies I can recall right now. 40 eps of a drama are more than enough watching for me in a month!
( Books and Fandom under the cut )

Still a busy month, work and life-wise, so most of the sections will be pretty bare.

TV and movies

Unusually many things to say here, since I did two long-haul flights and watched 4.5 movies during those.

The flight out was an overnight one (ish), so I was tired and just wanted easy fare, which resulted in Encanto (enjoyable) and The Etenerals (typical Marvel fantasy nonsense - I wouldn't say it was a good film, per say, but it was pretty diverting).

I had some more braincells to spare on the flight back, so I watched The Wandering Earth, which is a Chinese scifi film based on a Liu Cixin novel that surprised me with actual budget and a lot of interesting language use, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which now has the honour of being the Taika Waititi film I've enjoyed the most - it was both serious and funny, and not so much of the parody/over the top humour that usually doesn't gel for me in his stuff. The .5 movie was a Donnie Yen one called Iceman: The Time Traveller - the bit I saw was entertaining enough (and I am always a sucker for time travel stories), but I was starting to feel and the Cantonese was doing my head in, so I didn't watch the entire thing.

I barely watched any TV, just continued the watchalongs I'm already doing (Nirvana in Fire, Detective L, Guardian, Lost Tomb Reboot, most only sporadically) and bounced off my attempt to join the Joy of Life watchalong, though that was partly due to the timing on Sunday evenings.

( Books etc under the cut )

Says a lot that I managed to do one monthly review post at an appropriate time before crashing and burning. Figured it'd make more sense to just shove the two months together, particularly since March was... not a great month (read: busy at work, health issues, and a death in the family), so I didn't do a lot.

First off, thanks to the kind soul who paid for an account upgrade! <3 I'm having a lot of fun with the increased icon count and am eyeing that Guardian mood theme...

TV and movies

Three movies this time (I think? The problem with doing these review posts too late is that my memory is already going again): the new Dune film (pretty and some good acting from mostly side-characters, but otherwise un-engaging), Embrace Again (surprisingly good, and to no one's surprise I liked Zhu Yilong in it), and Drum Youth, which is Zhu Yilong's first movie (? possibly? He's very baby-faced anyway) and pretty decent, though I don't much care for high school settings.

On the TV front, I'm still bouncing off of things, but I did watch Wheel of Time, which was largely enjoyable, kept up with all my watchalongs and re-watched Our Song, the Chinese music competition show of Qingshenshen fame (a comfort watch, basically).

Books

Most of Seven Years in Tibet until I got distracted, a good chunk of the Chinese classic Journey to the West (translated by Anthony C. Yu, the unabridged version), Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, which was a very interesting read, and Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, which was very vivid and well-written, but generally reminded me of why I don't often read 'literary' novels, i.e. why do they always have to be so grim. I also re-read one of my favourites, Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters

Fandom activities

I signed up for the Guardian 520 exchange, which I'm very excited for. Assignments will go out next week, so hopefully I'll jive with mine and get writing on that. Guardian Bingo is proceeding apace - I have strong doubts I'll be able to fill all the squares, even in a year, but I'm giving it a good go.

I posted four fics in February and March, two in each month (which seems a fairly standard rate for me these days - Guardian continues to be very good to my writing muse).

Variable (Guardian, 7.5k, my take on tiny dragon Shen Wei)

Gilded (Lost Tomb Reboot, 5.5k, part of a series of us stabbing poor Wu Xie)

Delusions of Universality (Guardian, 1.5k, Dixingren & gender & Shen Wei)

what the weave tells you (Guardian, 4k, intimate Weilan featuring non-sexual dark energy bondage (no, I don't know what I was doing there either...))

Here's to hoping April is a better month overall. Hope everyone is keeping well!

As part of my attempt to post a little more on here, I've decided I'm going to keep track of my media consumption and fandom activitied in monthly posts. If it's just once a month, maybe I'll a) have things to say and b) not procrastinate too much...

TV & Movies

I watched Blade Runner and Gattaca for teaching reasons - both films were quite well done, but I have zero intention to rewatch either, nor did I much enjoy watching them. Dystopias aren't my thing, and Blade Runner was quite gory (by my whimpy standards) on top of that.

TV-wise, I'm watching two Lost Tomb shows in watchalongs: Lost Tomb Reboot as a rewatch and Lost Tomb 2 for the first time with

eirenical. Also the occasional episode of Nirvana in Fire with

trickytricky (also a rewatch).

On my own, I spent most of the month bouncing off of various cdramas - I got about four eps into Luoyang before giving up and watched one ep of Rainless Love in a Godless Land. Both good shows, by several people's accounts, but neither gripped me enough to keep watching.

Books

I'm reading much fewer published books than I used to these days, courtesy of fanfic, but I did finish a couple in January. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr (also for teaching), Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (very good - might do a rec post for it separately), and I'm most of the way through Nghi Vo's novella Empress of Salt and Fortune, which I'm also enjoying so far.

Fandom activities

I signed up for this year's Guardian Bingo, which netted me a fun card full of prompts that I may or may not ever get to.

I only posted one fic in January:

Intelligible (Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, 11k)

Tags: Character Study, Languages and Linguistics, trying to make sense of 10k years of language development, Friendship, Worldbuilding, an important tree, language teaching, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon

Summary: Shen Wei's relationship to language has always been complicated, and grows all the more so ten thousand years in the future.

...Basically, it continues my unofficial 'love letters to Shen Wei' series with added 'love letter to linguistics'. Topics quite dear to my heart, what can I say.

I'm being pretty bad at posting on DW, what with life doing its thing and also my inability to talk about myself on the internet outside of a fandom context, but I did want to do a fanfic year in review post because it's been a prolific twelve months for me (despite all expectations) and everyone loves some soft data, right?

( Read more... )

I fell off the posting on Dreamwidth waggon (in my defense, I've been busy moving to a different continent and trying to get used to All Of The New Things All At Once), but I thought I'd make an attempt at a 'this is what I've been doing fannishly in the last few months' post.

Since my last fic update post, I've posted eight fics to AO3 - mostly Guardian or Lost Tomb Reboot - though that number is partly so high because of the Guardian Wishlist Event. From newest to oldest:

After the Rains (5k, Cloudy Mountain)

Coda for the film because some characters desperately needed a hug.

Unbearable (1k, Guardian)

A sequel to the previous mildly cracky bear fic, in which Shen Wei can talk to bears (but no other animals). I'm pretty sure bear fic is just my Guardian aesthetic now.

Down is Easy (21k, Lost Tomb Reboot)

An unusual one for me, as it deals with rape recovery (though it's a rather softer fic than that makes it sound). Very much not everyone's cup of tea, but it wanted to be written and ended up somewhat cathartic so I screwed up my courage and posted it.

Is or Isn't (1.5k, Guardian)

Mostly light-hearted identity shenanigans that grew some Shen Wei feelings because of course they did.

One for the conspiracy theorists (5k, Guardian)

Guardian Wishlist fill for

marycrawford, for the prompt 'Shen Wei's students find out'

Flowers Blooming in the Night (2.5k, Guardian)

Guardian Wishlist fill for

yaaurens, for the prompt 'Shen Wei and Ying Chun friendship'

The Perils of Accounting (1k, Lost Tomb Reboot)

Guardian Wishlist fill for

achray, for the prompt 'anything Xiao Bai'

Settled (2k, Lost Tomb Reboot)

Pingxie Exchange fill, for daydreamorama, who wanted asexual Pingxie (right up my street)

... In conclusion, I'm still very much in the Z1L fandom space XD

The list of WIPs I'm working on at the moment is stupidly long, but the ones that are closer to completion than some of the others include a Yuletide Lost Tomb Reboot treat, a Guardian early canon divergence AU in which HPS and ZYL end up kidnapped together and bonding ensues, my entry for the Hallows Zine, and a sprawling canon AU featuring Shen Wei pursuing musical interests in a Haixing much more peacefully integrated with Dixing.

One of these days I'll have something to post that's not another fic update, but apparently it's not this day. Blame Guardian for getting so many words out of me (I do).

Brought to you by me having too many thoughts and feelings about Shen Wei's wardrobe.

Sartorial Splendour, 7k

Betad by the ever lovely

fangirlishness

Summary:

Five times Zhao Yunlan was surprised by Shen Wei's clothing choices and one time he had a hand in them.

Featuring: regular Zhao Yunlan meltdowns due to lethal levels of thirst and Shen Wei living his best life.

Tags:

Clothing, Fluff, Slice of Life, Shen Wei's sartorial choices, Thirsty Zhao Yunlan, brief appearances of the rest of the SID, Mostly Post-Canon (the handwavey fix-it version), 5+1 Things

Very Important image reference:

A palate cleanser while I'm working on longer fic, which for once I did manage to keep pretty short, despite my many feelings about Shen Wei's backstory. Soft HC ahoy!

Unburied (2.7k)

Beta and prompt by

fangirlishness

Summary:

The newly-instituted monthly Dixing Studies show-and-tell seminar is a great opportunity to safely showcase Dixing powers and artifacts to Haixingren and bring the two cultures, still so suspicious of each other on the heels of an almost-war, closer together.

Except when a strange artifact turns out to be somewhat less innocuous than Shen Wei had hoped.

Tags:

Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon (the handwavey fix-it version), dixing artifacts do what i want them to do, Flashbacks, that time Shen Wei was buried alive for ten thousand years, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD

Finally posted my fic about Shen Wei's learning powers, which more or less turned into a love letter of Shen Wei in general halfway through.

The Spring of Experience (11k)

Betad by the ever helpful

fangirlishness and

trickytricky

Summary:

A look at Shen Wei's learning powers, alternating scenes from the past and present.

*

“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.”

I have yet to figure out how to use Dreamwidth for anything non-writing-related, apparently, but we'll get there...

Fandom

I just posted my first solo Lost Tomb fic, so I'm doing the writer equivalent of tap dancing on hot coals because new fandom jitters.

A Distracting Effort

Length: 4k

Pairing: Wang Pangzi & Wu Xie & Zhang Qiling or Wang Pangzi/Wu Xie/Zhang Qiling

Tags: asexual Wu Xie, Iron Triangle feels, post Lost Tomb Reboot, choose your own platonic or romantic reading, honeypot: Wu Xie style (except not really), Shenanigans, Humor, Cuddling

Summary: “Teensy tiny favour,” Hei Xiazi starts, with the kind of grin that says he knows he’s about to stir some shit and is looking forward to it. “I need someone to distract Zhao Ji and you” – he points at Wu Xie – “happen to be exactly his type.”

Wu Xie blinks. That’s… not what he’d been expecting.

Next to him Pangzi looks like he’s readying himself to bristle in protective outrage at any moment now and across the room Xiaoge’s relaxed sprawl has turned into something rather more threatening.

or

Hei Xiazi has opinions on Wu Xie's wardrobe, Wu Xie has opinions on interior decorating, Pangzi has opinions on Wu Xie's flirting and Xiaoge lurks protectively (and pointedly).

I've also got another Guardian fic that just needs a final edit - the Shen Wei learning abilities fic, which derailed into a full-on character exploration because of course it did - and have finally started writing the multi-chapter accidental marriage weilan fix it AU that I've been thinking about since I watched the show in March.

Original Writing

I just received my free author's copy of the anthology that my first published short story appears in, which was very exciting. There's something really quite satisfying about seeing your name and work printed in a book you might find in your local bookstore (you won't, because this is a fairly small press, but still).

book cover

I'll probably aim to write a couple more short stories this summer and look to get them published too before returning to my efforts to get representation for my novel. Will probably end up doing another editing pass on that too, though at this stage that's at least in part just procrastinating from writing query letters because they're The Worst.

This was another one of those spontaneous plot bunnies (which this fandom seems to engender in droves) that fell fully formed into my head and wouldn't leave until I'd written it out. Much more angsty than my previously fluffy Weilan fare, but with a happy ending because that's how I roll.

Remnant (6.6k)

Tags: Angst, Happy Ending, Shen Wei's abandonment issues, Established Relationship, relationships are hard, especially when you both nearly died a few months ago, Dealing With Trauma, Post-Canon, (the handwavey fix it version), Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Summary: “Don’t,” Zhao Yunlan repeats, but this time he just sounds some unholy combination of tired and angry. “I need some space.”

Unable to look away for all his ire, Zhao Yunlan watches hurt bloom in Shen Wei’s dark eyes, but there’s something else there that cuts even deeper. He looks resigned, as if this is exactly what he’d expected to happen one day.

fangirlishness did a fantastic beta on it.

Somewhat late because I've been quite busy these last couple of days, but very excitingly the

sid_guardian 520 exchange went life on Thursday.

I received a wonderful gift from

trickytricky

Good Things

Length: 3k

Summary: Zhao Yunlan is beginning to figure this relationship thing out.

Hand-wavey future fix-it(ish) setting involving cuddling, heavy but hopeful conversation, and some glimmers of a brighter future past the darkness.

I urge everyone to go read it because it's lovely!

My own offering, which ended up rather longer than intended:

Above as Below

Length: 11k

Summary: Pursuing a suspect on the university campus, Zhao Yunlan runs into a certain professor - literally. While Shen Wei struggles with a Kunlun who doesn't remember him, Zhao Yunlan struggles with reorienting his views on Dixingren. Da Qing just wants his human to stop being an idiot.

*

In Shen Wei’s defence he hadn’t meant to establish himself as the contact point for young Dixingren finding their way to Haixing.

Instead of finishing any of my WIPs, I wrote a 1k cracky oneshot about Shen Wei and bears, because that scene makes me laugh every time I watch it/someone so much as mentions bears in a Guardian-related context.

Read the fic on AO3, here: Bear With Me

fangirlishness; instigated the entire thing by sending me this pic of Zhu Yilong, which got me thinking about Shen Wei being able to talk to animals...