#there's no xuyao update this week because I'm visiting my family but I hope you will accept this humble alternative

[thebansacredbanned]

ok so I have managed to lose the original fic ask game post that @wishthefish tagged me in a couple of weeks ago bUT I did save this screenshot so I will just randomly talk about these fics for a bit (I am always happy to talk about my fics for a bit, this is an open invitation) SO

I know I've been through the wars

This is part of the greater Xuyao (yes Wen Xu and Meng Yao, no I'm not sorry, they're immensely shippable if you're not a coward) 'choose your own adventure' verse where I basically lose my mind and create diverging timelines in almost all of which Meng Yao suffers terribly bc Meng Yao whump is weirdly easy to write

The cyoa thread for this is 'Wen Xu dies as in canon and Wen Chao decides he wants Meng Yao for himself' -> 'Wen Chao dies as in canon, WRH continues to let everyone else abuse MY' -> 'NMJ conceals the way MY has been treated so no one knows'

All the titles from the greater Xuyao cyao fic come from the The Amazing Devil song "Battle Cries", which I chose mostly because there was a cool lyric for the first fic back when it was supposed to be a one-shot, but also loads of the lyrics from the song work really well

I picked "I know I've been through the wars" for this chapter because unlike in the alternate branch of this fic where everyone finds out, only MY (and NMJ, to a certain extent) have any idea of what exactly MY has been through. Which is good because his trauma isn't being gossiped about! But is also Bad because people who him to be happy (people = LXC) keep accidentally making things worse :3

which then my few beloved commenters were like 'this is so evil!' and i was like 'it's not even that bad' and they were like 'YES it IS', but angst is my default at this point for some reason so I didn't notice oops

At the end MY runs away from the banquet to hide. There's currently one sequel branch for this (NMJ goes to find him and is actually helpful for once (this is largely NHS' fault)). I have some plans for another branch (LXC goes to find him and continues to try to help without knowing the problem) but the way my brain was taking it was almost Too Dark for me so I haven't written it (yet). I might. Or I might be nice to MY for once and have LXC go and actually find out the problem. But then I'd be being nice so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If it takes fighting a war for us to meet, it will have been worth it

This is. Nie Mingjue/Jin Zixun. I am sorry about this one

So when I wrote the first Xuyao installment I really wanted to write but my brain wasn't clicking so I put the sunshot generation into a random name picker, spun it a bunch of times, and decided Meng Yao and Wen Xu would be interesting (it was going to just be a creepy dark fic and then I wrote like three sentences and went oh. it's a love story. oops)

ANYWAY a few months later when I was bored I spun the wheel a bunch more times so now I have a Selection of rare pairs for whenever I feel like it

Mingxun was Not the one I was going to write first but here we are

Basically my initial thoughts were "jin zixun gets bullied into going to war by his cousin and then gets his gay awakening when he gets shouted at my nie mingjue" and yeah I guess that Happened

The title is a lyric from "Helpless" from Hamilton and was @nemainofthewater's fault/idea, which I thank her sincerely for because I hate titling things. I also think it's really funny

This was SUPPOSED to be a short crack one-shot but then wishthefish bullied/persuaded/encouraged to write more and it's annoyingly fun so now there are at least three chapters with the potential of more

Takes place within a mixture of show and book canons, whichever is funnier at any given moment

Really, if Jin Zixun is too busy being distracted by da-ge then no one is causing problems at the hunt and no one is getting murdered by out of control Wen Ning so like. This could very much solve all the problems