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trickytricky) wrote2021-04-29 04:01 pm
WIP Meme
- Post a list of your WIPs (exact title of your document, no fibbing); people can ask about the ones they're curious about!
Guardian
- ZYL & BCE in early captivity
- YOHE Era 3- Fic_BCE attends Team Building
- Masquerade!
- Ambassador-Clerk ID Porn
- YOHE mpreg
- Guardian - HPS_as_exiled_vigilante_AU
- Guardian fic - SW meets ZYL as HPS
Star Wars
- Carbon
- Marooned 3 – A Fine and Private Place
- Sweet Dreams Ch2
- Nest 3
I only started actually writing full fic/posting it fairly recently in Star Wars fandom, so just that and Guardian is what you’ll see here... Though I’ve been drafting fannish stories in my head for decades. ^_^ Writing has been slow (or non-existent) recently, so not a lot of recent updates on fic activity on my AO3, but I do hope I can get back into the groove with it one of these days. Full disclosure, I have no earthly idea whether any of these will ever actually be finished and see the light of day! A few have fairly big chunks of text written, some just a sentence or two of an idea, most are mainly comprised of long, detailed outlines with a more detailed, vivid concept sprinkled in here and there.
The titles listed below are for the stories that had clicked solidly enough in my brain to actually get their own doc created… in addition to asking for more info on any one of these, if you were interested in hearing about any of the totally undeveloped Guardian-related fic ideas/concepts I jotted down to possibly explore one of these days, you could give me a random number from 1-29… that’s how many ‘Fic Idea’ bullets I have listed out in my main ‘Guardian’ notes Document!
So, if any of these catch your eye, pick away! I’ll post a snippet, if I have one, and I always love to talk a bit about ideas and hear other peoples' takes on them.
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And for a random number ... 13?
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Ah, the 'Guardian fic - SW meets ZYL as HPS' is one where I haven't really written any of the narrative out yet, just ideas and outlines, but I think it could be really cute!
The starting concept is one I've seen once or twice in other fic... basically, an alternate first meeting for Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan where instead of spotting ZYL initially in modern times by looking up at the window while in his Professor Shen-mode, the first time Shen Wei sees Zhao Yunlan after the 10,000 years of waiting is a tiny bit earlier in the timeline, but while he's in his Black Cloaked Envoy role, instead. I haven't worked out the details, but somehow events transpire shortly before the Li Qian-Sundial case, where the Black-Cloaked Envoy shows up in the nick of time to restrain a Dixingren criminal with dangerous abilities that Zhao Yunlan/the SID couldn't quite get under control, saving a bunch of bystanders from injury. So, the whole three-years-of-being-SID-Chief-without-being-greeted-by-the-Black-Cloaked-Envoy streak is broken just a little earlier. Said Envoy is *incredibly* shocked once he actually gets a look at the SID Chief’s face and realizes who he must be.
Shen Wei is pretty good at self-restraint and all that jazz, but I'm expecting a full-on freeze-frame moment of utter shock in that moment, same level of shooken-ness that we saw him cope with when looking up at the window...which *then*, ZYL didn’t see because he had ducked out of sight to try to hide, but *now*, him and the SID members present all get to witness it in glorious technicolor detail. Some of the finer details of his expression are concealed by the hood/mask combo, but there’s definitely a visible speechlessness, mouth-parted-in-shock, wide-eyes-rapid-blinking reaction that has everyone present going ??? about. Chu Shuzhi in particular is utterly flabbergasted when the endlessly confident and composed Black Cloaked Envoy full on stutters a couple of incoherent syllables before drawing himself up and trying to scrape the remnants of his scattered brain back together… at that point Shen Wei is just trying to make it out of the encounter with some of his dignity intact. He’s tempted to just flee through a portal to give himself a chance to get his wits together, but, also, Kunlun is here!!!, he finally found him again, how could he possibly leave???
The Envoy coordinates more closely with the SID after that on a few cases… nominally because now that they’ve been introduced, he’s found that ZYL is more welcoming/reasonable than the previous SID leadership who came before, and he welcomes the chance at more fruitful cooperation, but really because, KUNLUN!!! He takes Zhou Yunlan up on offers of tea and sits down with him to talk and is generally having a decently nice time of things basking in the fact the love of his life exists again… he’s a little despondent right at the beginning about how relatively distant/cold Zhao Yunlan is with him, but that’s fine...they’ve got time to get to know one another, and Zhao Yunlan actually responds more and more warmly with every effort the Envoy makes to reach out and every friendly overture he makes to bring their acquaintanceship closer seems welcomed.
Not too long after this, the Sundial case comes up and ZYL briefly spots Shen Wei in professor!mode outside the window like before. But, this time Shen Wei isn’t taken by surprise when he sees him, and decides he needs to make himself scarce right away… there’s too high a chance that clever, observant ZYL will put the pieces together if he gets a close enough look at Professor Shen’s features/mannerisms after all the exposure he’s had to him as the Envoy now, and he really wants to keep his university life as entirely unconnected with his work as the Envoy as possible...it's far safer for the students he's in charge of that way. A fun, slow-build, cat-and-mouse chase around the campus and faculty dorms ensues where ZYL tries to track down the elusive professor he only got a glimpse of from the window near their crime scene, and who he somehow keeps narrowly missing, no matter how close he comes to cornering in person… the best he manages for a good long while is catching him voice-only on his office landline on several occasions. He’s not *too* concerned about it though, because the Envoy is working the Sundial case with him, and has provided high-confidence assurances that the Dixingren murderer they're looking for isn’t any of the university’s faculty...chasing down Pretty!Mysterious!Elusive!Professor is really more of a hobby to pass the time at this point. He only got the most fleeting glimpse of that professor from the window before he ducked away, but for some reason even that short an exposure has him more intrigued than he can logically explain. But, also, *how* and *why* has this professor managed to avoid being cornered in person so deftly all this time? No such thing as this many coincidences and all that, plus his voice over the phone is just… really compelling.
This story has no particular overarching plot, and I have no idea how it actually ends… but that concept/beginning grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go! XD
Random fic idea #13 is:
Short PWP-lite canon-divergent: 6-8ish years before their canon meeting, ZYL is out at a bar drinking and doing his social networking thing, and sees a slightly-younger Shen Wei out with a group of other college students… Shen Wei immediately stands out to ZYL as an outlier, doesn’t fit in with the crowd (is hanging out with his bottled water, politely watching coats and bags while the other students he’s socializing with drink and take turns dancing/singing karaoke/whatever, seems warm and welcome in the group but holds himself a bit stiffly, a bit apart at the same time...). Shen Wei spots him staring and recognizes him, of course, can’t keep his eyes off him in return… which ZYL takes as flirting/interest… so he propositions him. Shen Wei can’t quite help himself from agreeing to take him up on it (even with the pieces falling into place in the back of his mind like pins in a cipher lock, about timelines and all the implications confirmed by Kunlun being younger than when they first met, by him not remembering/recognizing Shen Wei...yet), but in the end decides ZYL is a bit too drunk to actually fully follow-through on what he's offering. Shen Wei gets him back to his apartment (with as much handsy dirty talk from the highly intoxicated college-aged ZYL as he is being allowed to get away with... which Shen Wei *really* isn't shutting down, but *is* derailing and preventing from progressing into anything serious), makes sure he's comfortably tucked in and has water/food/medicine in arm's reach, and then leaves ZYL his dorm room phone number to reach him later (and memorizes his cell number and address, too, of course); tells him as he's tucking him in bed (and reinforces by leaving in a note as well), that once he’s sober, if he's still so inclined, SW would be really really really interested in taking this not-quite-too-young-devastatingly-shameless-distractingly-sweet-and-FAR-too-reckless! version of Kunlun up on some of the ideas he was proposing, and convincing him that it would be worth getting to know one another and entwining their lives more closely all around.
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Trying to picture how Professor Shen's utterly gob-smacked reaction to initially spotting Zhao Yunlan in that window would translate while he's in Hei Pao Shi-mode is just always hilarity-inducing.
And the identity!porn aspect of him having to navigate addressing the existence of his alter-ego (in either form) is totally cat-nip to me.
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This fic ('Carbon') is a major canon-divergence story that veers off-course in season three of The Clone Wars and pulls a group of characters forward in the timeline into the Rebels era!
When the Jedi formed their plan to infiltrate the Citadel to extract Even Piell and his men, in this version of events, Palpatine makes contact with Anakin, and Anakin ends up spilling all the operational details, to include their intentions of freezing the infiltration party in carbonite to sneak past the sensors. Palpatine sees a golden opportunity to rid himself of the nuisance of Obi-Wan Kenobi once and for all and seizes it; he works behind the scenes to get Anakin pulled from the mission at the last minute and sabotages the ship/the droids piloting it. But instead of the ship being fully destroyed like he intended, the explosion only severely damages it, engines dead, droids disabled, left to drift in space with Obi-Wan and the troopers who were accompanying him on the mission (Cody, Rex, Fives, Echo, Charger, Longshot, +2x u/i 501st/212th troopers) all still frozen in carbonite while the final days of the war and the rise of the Empire plays out. Large-scale events happen generally the same as they did in canon, with Palpatine convincing Anakin to choose the dark side and support him in tearing down the Republic to establish his fascist Empire.
Decades later, Kanan and Phoenix Squad find the ship (either through a Force-guided vision or perhaps the Sith holocron leads Ezra/Maul towards it, like when it was used to find Obi-Wan hiding on Tatooine), and the group gets woken/revived into the Rebels era timeline.
I don’t have the full fic plotted out from here, but obviously Obi-Wan and the others join the cause of the Rebellion and support the efforts of Mon Mothma and the other rebels, working to overthrow the Empire, while Obi-Wan and the other men somehow manage to come to grips with everything that was lost while they were helpless and frozen. He finds a small measure of peace in growing close with Kanan and Ezra and helping to teach them more of their heritage.
Fun fact, I never DID decide what I was going to do with Ahsoka in this fic! She stowed away and joined in on the original mission, which I think could be a fun option to stick with… her and Ezra and all the other trouble-makers in Phoenix would make AWESOME chaos-companions, and I’d love to explore a closer training dynamic between her and Obi-Wan… BUT, if I have her extracted out of the mission at the same time Anakin is, we get to have grown up and seasoned Fulcrum!Ahsoka interacting with mid-Clone War-era Obi-Wan, with allllll the delightful emotional baggage THAT would drag along… and *that* would be a *fascinating* dynamic to explore as well.
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If you also want to tell me about random fic idea #7 I won't complain :D
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The backbone of it is essentially that Shen Wei wakes with slightly different timing and under different circumstances from his 10k-year-dirt-nap… in this version the Regent/ruling elite decide Shen Wei has too much potential to disrupt the current status quo to allow him to get comfy and establish a power-base for himself, so they turn against him and set up an ambush almost immediately after his waking. He barely manages to escape with his life from the trap and eventually flees from Dixing and makes his way to Haixing… but he has no ID, no friends, no knowledge of modern culture, no resources other than his own powers (which he will never allow himself to abuse to harm or exploit others), and has to avoid drawing attention from both the authorities in Haixing and Dixing if he wants to survive. He has a pretty rough time of it, basically squatting in abandoned warehouses and tenements, scavenging for scraps and trying to do odd under-the-table jobs when he really needs to/thinks it’s worth the risk of exposure (there are still undercover Dixing agents trying to quietly hunt him down on the Regent’s orders, but everyone’s trying to keep the whole situation away from the notice of Haixing's populace/government), but, the way he sees it, even this relatively under-privileged life is far better than what he was accustomed to during his youth or during the war, so it's easy for him to be content with the small corners he manages to carve out for himself.
The degree of humbleness of his life is more than a little ludicrous, because he could live a comfortable lifestyle *so easily* by taking just a little bit from immoral people who have plenty to spare by using his powers, but he *absolutely* refuses to compromise his morals in any way to do so, convinced that using power in such a way inherently corrupts, and once he lets himself start down that path, it’s just a slippery slope before he’d be willing to justify taking more and more; he’s seen the results of power being abused too often to allow himself even an inch of leeway with his own... if he had the option of using his powers to make an honest living, that would be one thing, but his fugitive status really does keep him in a difficult position). He mostly lives day by day blending in anonymously among the Haixing populace when he's out and about, but he does still occasionally maintain his identity as a robed/masked figure who intercedes to protect those in need; it’s the garb he woke in and what he was wearing when he fled to Haixing to begin with, but it’s not connected to any official role or authority this time. So, he can only act in vigilante-mode when he sees/hears about an unavoidable situation where he feels compelled to intervene. (And he’s really trying to keep his head down; he isn't looking for a life of prestige, there's no existential war that needs his power and leadership now, the world has moved on and apparently there's no place in it for him anymore...and the last thing he wants is to be the cause of bystanders being harmed in a firefight that he's the target of or to be used as an excuse to incite an uprising/war).
So, ZYL’s first meeting with him is him showing up as the infamous and elusive (almost cryptid levels of elusive here) Black Cloaked vigilante when he absolutely needs to step in to save the SID/innocent bystanders from a ruthless Dixingren criminal on a rampage with deadly powers they can’t contain. (The impression he makes does not exactly hold up well in comparison to the propaganda/official information passed from Dixing government channels about the 'powerful and ruthless criminal operating from the shadows' he is purported to be...)
I have a couple variations of how different the world is otherwise from canon (one variant is Very Different Indeed! involving a Dixing that never lost the Hallows so never went into decline; its relationship with Haixing being very different as a result as well, while the other version sticks fairly close to the canon set-up, with Ye Zun’s rise/Shen Wei’s waking being just a *little* bit later in the timeline than in canon, with that making all the difference.
I don’t really have any snippets written out for it, but for a bit of background world/character building:
Shen Wei discovers public libraries fairly early on and they become his refuge; he camps out in the quietest, darkest corners among the bookshelves he can find, for hours at a time, just reading and coming as close to happy as he ever has in his adult life by absorbing all this *knowledge* miraculously just *there*, that any member of the public can freely come inside and peacefully learn from... The librarians of his most-often-used haunts all come to recognize him, and are invariably charmed by him, and want to take care of him/spoil him, but quickly learn how skittishly he responds to any attention/overt acts of kindness… so they’ll come up with these convoluted schemes to do nice things for him, like organize a whole lil’ small-scale conference room community event, just to have an excuse to offer him some ‘leftover’ tea and pastries that he won’t shy away from accepting.
Heh, and I *promise* I’m not cheating, but fic idea bullet that lands on #7 in the document is:
---A few vignettes told parallel to the canon story, where a series of ‘un-important’, not-powerful, background characters decide to do the right thing, make sacrifices or take risks or even give their lives to stop the evil taking shape around them, and that’s why good *actually* prevailed in the end, as much as because of the epic Protagonist!character actions that moved the main/visible plot of the show along… Background Characters Making a Difference in ways that weave in with the main narrative plot, who supported and empowered the victory against violent genocide, and who ended up being significant drivers that allowed the Main Characters to achieve victory in the end (impact/format a la Rogue One, minus the team-coming-together bits)
Possible vignette characters: Shadowman (and/or a member of his family, who Shen Wei had visited to ‘console’), one of the Dixing invaders recruited by Ye Zun who has regrets and acts on them when he sees all the civilians being slaughtered in the streets (including the kids), a Haixing lab worker, a palace guard/worker (maybe finds Shen Wei’s weapon/Guo Changcheng and drags them out of sight), Dixing bar owner pov, maybe Ye Huo or Dr. Cheng?