Sunday Snippet: Guardian, and how I am the worst slash and gen fan ever

[xparrot]

The last few weeks have been very confusing for me writing-wise because somehow my brain decided to deal with all the stress and disruption of present times by making me write porn. Which is pretty normal stress-relief for a lot of people, but I...am just not into smut? For the longest time I've said I'm both the worse gen fan ever because I have so many ships; but also the worst slash fan because while I love romance, I always just skim the sticky bits.

I've been writing explicit stuff on occasion for years now -- I actually enjoy writing it more than reading it, have never figured that one out -- but this run I think is about the most I've ever written at once (...and I think it's pretty tame stuff really, but it feels like A Lot to me ^^;;;)

But I seem to be working it out of my system because last night I went back to an old and much-loved trope wheelhouse and wrote pure angst and ahh, it was very nice! Not sure yet what I'm going to do with this, if anything. But there was some talk on Twitter a bit ago about presumed dead and how there wasn't enough of it in Guardian fic, and this is a variation on one of the ideas that came up...

Zhao Yunlan locked the apartment door, and then stood before it--exhaling, his shoulders falling, his head canted down.

"Zhao Yunlan?" Shen Wei could not help but ask, even knowing too well that it would go unheard. He reached out, wishing he could only extend his hand from the wormhole to touch Zhao Yunlan's shoulder. To tug him to turn around, so Shen Wei might see his face now.

In a moment, Zhao Yunlan heaved another breath, and turned anyway to move further into the apartment. Shen Wei peered anxiously into his revealed face, but saw--nothing. No expression he could identify; no expression of feeling at all. Zhao Yunlan's sensitive, mobile lips were set together, not smiling, but not twisted with a scowl either. His brow was relaxed for all the slightly tense hunch to his shoulders. His eyes were...

His eyes were blank, vaguely unfocused, enough that Shen Wei feared he'd been hurt after all, in a way Shen Wei hadn't been able to discern before. Surely his team wouldn't have allowed him to go home alone if he were concussed, or some other injury.

Or else perhaps Zhao Yunlan had been concealing it from them. While he was not limping, his steps were dragging as he crossed the room. As if he were exhausted, though it was not so late. Maybe his stomach was troubling him? Though instead of going to his bed, or to the refrigerator for his medicine, he went to the table instead. Took one of the bottles there, then turned to the counter and started to reach for one of the glasses in the drying rack that Shen Wei had washed this morning, and had since been unable to put away.

Except Zhao Yunlan paused, his hand outstretched for the glass. Froze for a moment, not even breathing, and then let go the held breath in a short, harsh rasp, as he spun on his heel, turned away from the rack of clean dishware.

Comments

Re: writing sex and angst (and being a fannish romancer)

[xparrot]

Yuuuup -- everything you say here is pretty much exactly what OTP means to me, and it's how almost all my fic-fanning works. Which is not how it is for everyone, I know! And sometimes I think it would be really fun to be a multishipper and have more to read...but then, the feels my OTPs give me, I wouldn't want to give that up.

For me this is almost always true, unless something exceptionally weird is going on with the way I relate to that particular canon.

Yeah, I've had a few exceptions. The oddest was probably One Piece, in which I kind of OTP'd the whole crew. Which created this weird effect that I was sort of a multishipper, except I found I had trouble reading most ship-fic, because I was bothered by stories that implied any one pairing of chars had a closer relationship than those chars did with anyone else. Like a reverse OTP effect ^^;

For SPN, Dean is my favorite, but I do like him basically platonically married to Sam, and really like overall how they've developed. So while I actually like Cas as a char and like his friendship with both brothers, him being OTP with Dean, noooope cannot handle. Which did make being in SPN fandom a bit of a fraught experience ^^;

For me, it's clear these people need each other, and they will never be truly happy without each other, so it's incredibly sad and depressing to imagine them ending up with anyone else. Even when the author writes it as a completely happy pairing! 

Ahaha oh yeah... it's worse if they're happy, really; if they're in another relationship but it's lacking, that can be angstily satisfying. While as I can't even skim-read a happy shipfic that breaks up my OTP because I'll actually get depressed ^^; I basically care about my favorite relationships more than the people in them (in fiction! I always feel the need to emphasize this ^^;;;;;)

Could your porny ideas perhaps all be about addressing intimacy issues through sex / the physical? Whether it's h/c or comedy, I could see that as a possible common theme. (I love analyzing these things, but please do feel free to stop me! *g*)

No, please do, I love it too!
Intimacy is definitely a big part of it...really it's the theme of most of what I write. The comedy one I'm not sure on, though...I might have to write that one just so I can figure out what it is about!
I wonder if some of it is just that I've written a lot of Guardian fic at this point, so writing the sex is an angle on their intimacy I haven't done as much of -- more fertile ground for me? Hmm....

It'd definitely be more of a theme in one of my as-yet unwritten story ideas where they're just embarking on the relationship. Not a central theme, but more present, and so actually noticeable to people who are not me. :-)

Sign me up for wanting to read this one too, if/when it gets written! I haven't read much of obviously demi!Zhao Yunlan and am curious to see how it plays out (he's demi-romantic in my mind for sure, but in the drama it is true that there's not much evidence that he had any kind of interest in anyone, until Shen Wei...)