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March recs
Managed to post these on Tumblr just under the wire (despite Tumblr's best attempts to eat my post), but I’m a bit late crossposting this month. March started with binge-watching The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty with @inmyriadbits, so there’s ten recs for that, seven for The Untamed, and four miscellaneous (Supernatural, Star Wars, Avatar, and BNHA), all under the cut because I couldn’t be bothered sorting them a second time.
(pretty much all Tang Fan/Sui Zhou unless otherwise marked)
One sheet, thirteen lines by Hope
Nearly a year after Li Zilong’s failed coup, Wang Zhi writes to his friends in the capital, asking for help. Assembling a team of friends and experts, Tang Fan answers the call. What they find on the border is not what they expected.
Fantastic plotty casefile+get-together that also follows up on a lot of minor characters’ fates and loose plot threads. Hope is an excellent classic hurt/comfort writer, and I’m just gonna gently shove all of her stories in this fandom at my fellow h/c lovers around here.
Double Edged by triedunture
"You never told me you had a brother!"
"Yes I did," Sui Zhou says. "I've mentioned I'm a second son, haven't I?"
"Yes, but—" Tang Fan gestures with frantic little flicks of his hand at the man currently wearing Sui Zhou's face and examining the baby goat tethered to one of the courtyard lanterns. "You never said you were a twin."
Sui Zhou's identical twin brother makes an unannounced visit to the SuiTang residence. They may look the same, but they are nothing alike.
Bless this fandom and its many tropes, Sui Zhou having an evil twin is PERFECT, and triedunture exects it with plenty of feels and Tang Fan having to figure out his shit.
we'll make it to the other side by KiaraSayre / @starsandatoms
Tang Fan really needs to stop acting as bait for serial killers. It never ends well.
Brilliantly creepy villain in this, who uses Tang Fan’s love of food to really mess with his head while he’s a captive. The aftermath of his rescue is so wrenching and tender.
longing to linger til dawn by Desdemon
It appears his mind has taken the tiniest seed of a thought he really had, when Sui Zhou took his candy away and stuck it in his belt, where it stayed like a tiny red flag signaling for Tang Fan’s attention all day - the candy could melt, that close to his skin - and has run completely wild with it.
Tang Fan is not complaining.
In which Tang Fan circa episode 8 fantasizes about Sui Zhou. Very funny but hot, and Tang Fan’s POV is hilariously in-character and whimsical and totally smitten even though he hasn’t quite realized it yet.
Care and Feeding by Hope
After the showdown with the Ji'an magistrate, Tang Fan takes care of Sui Zhou.
Missing scene for episode 10. Lovely h/c -- Hope has a great feel for Sui Zhou’s silences, and Tang Fan starting to figure them out.
A Long Night Turning to Dawn by triedunture
Missing scene from Episode 40: what happens immediately after THAT part.
Sui Zhou just wants to take Tang Fan home. If it can still be called home.
There’s quite a bit of fic dealing with the explosion’s aftermath, but this is hands down my favorite. I feel like the fandom often focuses on how Sui Zhou takes care of and cooks for Tang Fan (because of course we do), but this really nails the balance there.
if you let me down (let me down slow) by KiaraSayre (Duo’erla/Qing Ge)
Tang Fan goes undercover and Duo'erla gets forcibly made a distraction. It all turns out okay, though.
Episode 42 fix-it AU, where Duo’erla tags along to the conspiracy meeting at the brothel and ends up running interference on Qing Ge. Short but it packs a punch. *wistful sigh this fic is not longer or canon*
Mending is a Process by Iseult_Variante
Sui Zhou wakes in the night and watches Tang Fan sew.
Very delicately and well done, from the dream that kicks things off to the way their domesticity and affection tip over into something new.
dream of the things yet to come by ribena
Sui Zhou makes mooncakes for his family.
Soft, insightful portrait of Sui Zhou as the calm center of his domestic universe, with people orbiting in and out - and Tang Fan comes crashing in perfectly at the end.
so long as you can feel it all by @wildehacked (tyleet) (Tang Fan/Wang Zhi with background Sui Zhou poly)
Wang Zhi decides to try something. Tang Fan assists.
I don’t have a lot of Wang Zhi fic saved for this fandom because I am immensely picky about his characterization, but this is pitch-perfect: the realities of having sex as a eunuch, Wang Zhi’s difficulties with trust and vulnerability, and the ways Tang Fan continually defies all his expectations.
THE UNTAMED
all that and more by Euphorion
Wei Wuxian locks his phone and puts it down, blinks at his ceiling, and picks it up again. The pictures are still there.
His first thought is that Lan Zhan meant them for someone else. That he just woke up at—he checks the timestamp—6:30 am on a Sunday and decided to go absolute full nuclear seduction option on some poor boy he met on Grindr, who would now be missing out on the best thing to ever happen to him because Wei Wuxian had a bad habit of distracting—of—oh.
Pieces of last night start to resurface and paste themselves together in his head. He winces.
Lovely modern AU that kicks off with WWX asking LWJ for nudes on a drunken dare from NHS, and then panicking when LWJ *does*. Which is a hilarious premise, but what carries it is the fantastic WWX characterization, as the story peels back layers of trauma and WWX gets caught in an avalanche of delayed gender-and-sexual-identity revelations.
love, in fire and blood by cicer
"You want Wen Ruohan dead," the Patriarch continued idly. "You want his corpse puppets eliminated. You want his halls burned to the ground and his soldiers disemboweled and begging for mercy. Have I about covered it?"
He gave another knife-edged smile.
"But what will you give me in return?"
"We would be willing to offer quite a bit in return for Wen Ruohan's defeat," Lan Xichen admitted. "But I'm afraid we don't know what an immortal such as yourself desires. Please advise us."
The Patriarch waved at hand at the front of the tent. "I want Second Young Master Lan."
(In which the Sunshot Campaign ends through an arranged marriage to the Yiling Patriarch, and Lan Wangji suffers the mortifying ordeal of falling in love with his own husband.)
A++ arranged marriage AU. Cicer’s work often swings too fluffy for me to save, but this one balanced the plot and pining and domesticity and fix-it elements beautifully.
in the blossom season (in the pouring rain) by varnes
“A-Yuan,” he says, carefully, “did—did you make the flowers grow like this?”
A-Yuan shakes his head in exasperation. “Baba, I said. Doctor Flowers did it.”
“Doctor Flowers,” Lan Zhan repeats, pointing at the tiny plum tree, just to confirm that his son is suggesting a magical tree named Doctor Flowers sprouted overnight and made their tame family project turn into a verdant jungle.
A-Yuan nods. “Doctor Flowers,” he confirms. “He’s funny! I like him.”A mysterious garden blooms on Lan Zhan's rooftop. His internet forum pen pal gives great gardening advice but never seems to sleep. The man who works at the florist, who keeps reviving the plants that Lan Zhan can't seem to keep alive, has a beautiful smile.
These things are related.
Weird but gorgeous modern magical AU, with a dash of identity shenanigans.
artificial nocturne by idrilka & Care and Feeding by mrsronweasley
It’s nearing two in the morning when Wei Ying steps out of the club. In the middle of December, the air is chilly at this hour of the night even this far south, and the flimsy jacket thrown over a crop top does very little to keep the sting of the cold out.
The hunger is so loud tonight. It’s been a while since Wei Ying properly made out with someone until the guy started to all but hump his leg and Wei Ying could feed off more than just wisps of the yang energy that flowed between them. In more ways than one, he’s been feeding off scraps for so long that he doesn’t even remember what it’s like to feel full.
Sex demon Wei Ying meets cultivator Lan Zhan in front of a night club on a cold winter night. Things escalate from there.
I read the first story and liked it but felt like it was missing something, so I was delighted to see MRW’s sequel turnup in the MXTX Remix collection. Cool worldbuilding, hot sex, and plenty of feelings.
a different field, a different time (但願人長酒) by yesterdaychild
Tianzixiao doesn't taste as good as it used to, and Wei Wuxian notices. Naturally, Lan Wangji vows to fix it.
(Inspired by the scene in CQL after Wei Wuxian's just been brought back to life and he notices the peanuts don't taste the same.)
Just the softest casefile ever, funny and sweetly romantic.
Blue runs the Water by Elenothar
When Lan Xichen meets Jiang Yanli at the announcement of her engagement to Jin Zixuan, a lifelong friendship is born - and the world changes. Because kind people deserve kind friends, and gentleness has never meant incapability.
The power of FRIENDSHIP and soft older siblings, yes, thank you. Thoroughly enjoyable fix-it AU.
MISCstaring down the barrel of the hot sun by magneticwave (Star Wars, Din/Luke)
“Gone to a Child of the Watch, the Darksaber has,” Grand Master Yoda announces in his creaky little voice. “Peace, there is not, and yet peace, there must be.”
AU where the Republic survived, but the events of The Mandalorian happened anyway (shh don’t worry about it), and Luke (Jedi Knight and notorious trouble magnet) is sent to Mandalore to handle the fallout of Din winning the Darksaber. God, I missed this kind of Luke characterization, and the worldbuilding is great, and the romance (+Grogu) is very sweet.
Phone a Friend by noviembre (Supernatural, gen + background Dean/Cas)
Whoever is answering the phone as "FBI Assistant Director Robert Harvelle," she really hopes they come through for her, because her handcuff-slipping skills are definitely not up to par yet.
In which Dean takes over Bobby’s hotline. Ignores the series ending, because fuck that, and just a thoroughly charming outsider POV with cryptid/legend!Winchesters and the recovering hunting community.
The Cavern and the Koi Pond by Rosie447 (ATLA, gen)
The last thing Zuko remembered clearly was being on the bridge in the North Pole, and losing his grip on the railing with the sudden realization that offering mercy to the man who’d thrown fire at his back the last time he’d beaten him was perhaps not amongst his best ideas.
Or, Zhao takes Zuko's hand and pulls. The Spirit World is not entirely sure what to do with the unexpected stowaway.
Great premise, and the author nails both Zuko’s stubbornness/goodness spectrum and the show’s mix of eerieness and humor when dealing with the Spirit World.
In His Element(s) by WriterGreenReads (ATLA/BNHA, gen)
"“So… one more time.” Shouta pinched the bridge of his nose, regretting both waking up this morning and possibly existence in general. “You’re the spiritual avatar of an entirely different world, and in the process of keeping the peace with said spirits, originating from your… dimension, you’ve come to our world to stop the actively malicious versions of your spirits, because our world told your world that something was wrong.”
The child shrugged and grinned, looking much too cheery for someone currently in handcuffs.
“Pretty much!” he chirped. “Your world spirit is really polite, too. Ours was super grumpy about all the spirits escaping, but then yours said it was ok, so long as I teach her more about them on the way back!”"Aang chases some renegade spirits across worldly borders and possibly makes some new friends along the way.
Never knew I need Aang getting some Dadzawa action but I REALLY did! If anyone’s going to look at Aang and see a traumatized teen who’s already dealt with too much, it’s gonna be superhero teacher Aizawa with his own set of trauma and a pack of students the same age. Overall the story is excellent, too -- plot! action! spirit nonsense! Aang making friends with everyone in sight like a benevolent tornado! -- but that was the heart of it for me.