Sundial Exchange Dear Creator Letter

[trickytricky]

Please see below the cut for request details/potential prompts for the Sundial Exchange!



Request #1

I'd love to see some sort of canon-divergence work in a setting on a happier track (either post-canon where the final confrontation ended with less death-of-the-protagonists involved, or with a change in events slightly earlier that allowed the protagonists to stop things before they escalated quite so much), but one focused on themes of restitution, justice, and healing for the victims of Ye Zun’s actions. Either Zhao Yunlan or Shen Wei would be very welcome as main/POV characters, them either in a pre-existing relationship, or just beginning to explore one now that they’ve finally managed to secure the Hallows for Dixing/peace between Dixing-Haixing-Yashou, but any other main/POV character would be great too, whatever perspective best inspires. Would like the main elements to focus on people finding justice/healing now that Ye Zun’s mind-controlled victims are free and his violent invasion has been stopped.

Possible examples for inspiration:

• Wu Xiaojun contemplating/relating the horror of being forcibly mind-controlled into serving Ye Zun after he witnessed him murder his father right in front of him, forced to live with the memories of being coerced into committing betrayal and violence on his behalf, and struggling to find his way past that horror towards healing/a sense of safety in the wake of it
• Dan Dan and/or An Song finding comfort in their trio with An Bai in the wake of the horror, that they were mind-controlled into actively working to build/perpetuate an invasion force, to kill, to incite a civil war that targeted their best friend/brother as the current ruler/that they were forced to actively work toward a result of someone they dearly loved being eaten by Ye Zun
• An Bai reaching out to his friends/brother to help stabilize him, help him live with the trauma of having been literally consumed and almost-digested
• Hua Yuzhu mourning Sha Ya after she was consumed by Ye Zun and finding ways to explore joy in life/build new connections/find new purpose beyond her grief (or, if happy-resolution is set a little earlier than in canon, potentially both of them together and finding healing/comfort in each other beyond the trauma they experienced after being saved-just-in-time from being digested inside Ye Zun… in this case Sha Ya’s guitar makes it out safely as well!)
• OC(s) from Haixing who lost friends or family during the invasion, potentially family members of that dead child we see Guo Changcheng bending over in episode 37 (15:30), trying to move past the loss of loved ones, trying to make sense of the world in the wake of the attack, working past/rejecting thconcept of hatred-towards-all-Dixingren in the wake of their loss

Can definitely include elements of the main/supporting cast struggling with healing in the wake of Ye Zun’s actions as well (Shen Wei with his repeated tied-to-a-pillar whipping/torture, Zhao Yunlan with his tied-to-a-pillar beating/Ye Zun-induced blindness, Lin Jing living with the trauma of having been consumed/grieving Sha Ya, if set post-canon everyone mourning loss of Wang Zheng/Sang Zan/Old Li), but I would most dearly love to see this explored from a less-commonly heard voice

***If creator is so inclined, the work can touch on the potential for future-Ye Zun-rehabilitation, if he’s someday willing to acknowledge the harm he’s done, to do some significant work on himself to unlearn all of his deeply ingrained violent/controlling/sadistic tendencies, but the focus should be on his victims, and PLEASE, absolutely no default expectation should be placed on them to forgive him/absolve him from his own actions just because he experienced the same abuse in his own past that he ended up actively perpetuating on others.

DNW: Permanent main character death, Explicit domestic abuse (physical or emotional), Jealousy, Possessiveness, Angst without a hopeful ending, Hurt/No-Comfort, Ye Zun-Did-Nothing-Wrong, A-Problem-Exists-in-Dixing-Therefore-it-is-Shen-Wei’s-Fault

Request #2

Weilan, first-time would be fantastic to see, something exploring all the longing and tenderness finally finding an outlet between them, all the joy in overcoming the challenges between them and delighting in the comfort of getting to care for one another.

Honestly, pretty much just what it says on the tin would be great. I love everything about Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei’s relationship, and I love seeing all the many explorations of how their epic romance could have actually come to fruition between the scenes we’re shown or even sometime post-canon in a divergence. Any level of explicitness for smut would be great, or equally great just a fade-to-black while exploring a new level of intimacy they’re establishing.

Was Shen Wei’s experience of their first time/their actual first time back 10,000 years ago during Shen Wei’s early days, when Zhao Yunlan was in the past, or was it all just a slowly-building getting-to-know-each-other intimacy back then? Was Zhao Yunlan’s experience of their first time/their actual first time during one of the case arcs in the present timeline, after ZYL learns about Shen Wei’s HPS identity? Was their first time after they've both returned from the time travel, when the secrets related to their relationship with one another can finally be laid bare, and Shen Wei doesn’t have to worry about preserving the timeline anymore? Something else entirely? I’d love to see any permutation of this.

DNW: Permanent main character death, Explicit domestic abuse (physical or emotional), Jealousy, Possessiveness, Angst without a hopeful ending, Hurt/No-Comfort, Ye Zun-Did-Nothing-Wrong, A-Problem-Exists-in-Dixing-Therefore-it-is-Shen-Wei’s-Fault