I feel that if they ever met, Lan Zhan would be entirely immune to Shen Yuan's wifebeam, and that Shen Yuan would find this total lack of attraction or even interest (that he doesn't want, naturally, because he could never reciprocate!) obscurely but increasingly frustrating.

Still, why would I give out information that would vary depending on the specifics of what you're working with? Measuring a recipe is a sucker's bet! I didn't measure when I cooked it, either. I did follow a method, for which the correct amount of anything is just "an unstinting enough."

Here in Korea, they sell giant jars of fruit teas. The jars are an incredibly useful size, and they even do have glass grips, BUT they are very difficult to grip or open on bad pain days because their size requires a surprising amount of finger strength and puts a lot of strain on the joints.

demisexual is just the funniest sexuality. jumpscare attraction. attraction that just shows up behind you suddenly in the middle of the woods. where did this come from? no clue. it's just there now. but only in certain circumstances.

That said, this book still contains a whole lot of something I do not want to accommodate with space in my brain, and it makes every page a damn minefield.

He is well practiced in circumlocution.

I dunno. I enjoy the fun, I enjoy that others enjoy the fun, but I still do not enjoy One True Wayism in any form it takes, and unfortunately sometimes that vibe shows up when people are busy queering and/or transing ALL the characters, with a vehemence I find deeply uncomfortable.

It is cool and fun!

It is also, occasionally, just a little irksome to me, personally. We're all queer here, and that is glorious, but there's still a reason the word I use is queer. If EVERYONE is like that in the world of a fic, it feels, at times, a bit invalidating. The world SHOULD be diverse!

This is very funny if you have a millisecond of misunderstanding which JC you mean, but then revert to MDZS and reread it...

Do you want the explanation, or are you enjoying the spoiler mystery?

All this to say: writing fanfiction is about a PROCESS, not a product, and that process is inherently analytical, interpretative, and transformative.

We engage in that process not to produce an end product, but because the process itself, and sharing in it with our communities, brings us joy.

Fanfic writers are fully engaged in writing their own what-ifs. Yes, the common source work is a helpful reference point, but by the time we're writing fic, it's clearly something new. We have a common story as origin the same way people have a bible as "origin" for a zillion different religions.

I feel like in some ways, fanfiction can be a similar exercise for writers. Instead of analyzing brush strokes, composition, color mixing, texture, etc. and figuring out how to adapt painting techniques for them, we're analyzing tone, plot, characterization, etc. But we're a LOT more transformative.