china_shop's 2024 Wishlist

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Username: china_shop
AO3 Username: china_shop
Does your account accept gifts? Yes


Medium Likes:

• Fic, including drabble forms and ficlets, missing scenes, episode tags, vignettes, character studies, and excerpts of a non-existent longer work. Second or third person POVs.
• Art, including cartoons and in-universe doodles.
• Podfic: my own fic or someone else's.
• Picspams: focus on a particular character or ship.
• Meta: headcanons or speculations that mesh with canon, like nnozomi's theory that Li Qian and Guo Changcheng become friends, based on the way she calls him “Changcheng” in a later episode.
• Vids/vidlets: anything, platonic or shippy! I prefer not to have lyrics or text incorporated in the visuals (I always end up reading instead of looking at the overall image/the characters’ faces). Optional subtitles are great, though.
• Art, covers or podfic for any of my stories.

Medium DNWs:
Fic or meta longer than about 4k. Fic that remixes my fic, unless requested. Gifsets. Promo or behind-the-scenes pics or anything actor-y, including mention of the actors' names.

General Likes:
Themes of loneliness and belonging, stoic angst, romantic or platonic clothes-sharing, scruffiness and domestic disasteriness, secret identities (reveal optional), oblique conversations. Happy endings, bittersweetness, narrative irony. Crack-taken-seriously, heists, people being in cahoots, time travel, outsider POV. Team as family. Interspecies, cross-cultural and cross-class relationships and friendships, inter-cultural politics. Using OCs to expand the world.

Good people who like each other, even if they have trouble admitting it. Understanding (ie, being able to read each other; not necessarily knowing all the secrets), and shared humour. Trust and trust issues. Kissing. Flirting/UST, get-togethers, established relationship. Intimacy being hard. Self-worth issues along the lines of “I have an important job to do; I don't deserve nice things,” especially for Zhao Yunlan (deep down) and Chu Shuzhi. Non-standard domestic arrangements, eg, established relationships where they don't officially live together, "couple + friend" (or “couple/throuple + Cat”) dynamics, etc.

General DNWs:
Except where prompted below, anything that leans heavily into the hurt/comfort genre, especially whump, gore, or torture (exception: I love comfort for canon hurts). Dubcon, noncon, cruelty, hopelessness, non-consensual mindwipes. BDSM (a little light/spontaneous bondage is okay), other unasked-for kinks, omegaverse and similar tropes, age-play including daddy kink. Infidelity, jealousy (passing feelings are okay, but not as a major focus). Kidfic, pregnancy, weddings, proposals. Framing of work relationships as parent/child. Incest. Different-setting AUs including reincarnation. No-powers AUs or outcomes. Shit-takes mocking canon or the characters. Doylist takes.

Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)

Characters and relationships

• Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan ± & Da Qing
• post-canon AU Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan/& Chu Shuzhi & Da Qing family unit
• Guo Changcheng &/ Chu Shuzhi &/Ye Huo
• Chu Shuzhi/Zhao Yunlan (non-romantic, see illustrative picspam and prompt below)
• Chu Shuzhi &/ Zhao Xinci – one-night-stand to partners or lovers, or simply having to team up for some reason; just the idea of them interacting makes me grin, and Zhang Shi would be a fascinating complication
• Zhao Xinci &/ Zhang Shi ± &/ Shen Xi – if Shen Xi makes an appearance, I'd prefer an AU where she finds out about Zhang Shi before there's significant physical intimacy
• pre-canon Shen Wei & Zhao Xinci (± & Zhang Shi?)
• Any other pairings mentioned in my prompts.

Characters, in any platonic combination: Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei, Da Qing, Chu Shuzhi, Guo Changcheng, Zhu Hong, Lin Jing, Wang Zheng, Sang Zan, Fu You, Da Ji, and any other "good guy" characters. Zhao Xinci, Zhang Shi, Shen Xi. Anyone else mentioned in my prompts below, or other similar characters.

I'd love to see more of the inhabitants of Dixing, including OCs.

Fix-its or vignettes for minor characters like Li Qian's grandmother, Dr Feng (Miracle Doctor), Ji Xiaobai (Mirror Girl's fiancé), the Dixing bartender, Da Ji, etc.

I also enjoy rare/unexpected gen combinations, for example (off the top of my head), Cong Bo & Zhu Hong, Da Qing & Zhao Xinci, Dr Cheng & Ye Huo, Li Qian & Ying Chun, An Bai & Guo Changcheng, post-canon Guo Changcheng & Zhang Shi. Go wild! (As you can see, I usually gravitate towards cross-species dynamics. :-)

Fandom-specific likes
My current favs are:

• Zhao Yunlan!! I adore his calculated casual/scruffy/faux bad boy aesthetic, the way he disguises his astuteness and absolute commitment to his work with slouching and lollipops. (Please don't tidy him up, even temporarily!)
• Chu Shuzhi, with his loyalty and soft-hearted gruffness. I see him at the start of the show as remote and stoic (and self-denying and not very happy), feeling like he doesn't really belong anywhere -- at the SID, in Haixing or in Dixing either. I'd love some kind of connection for him, be it Guo Changcheng, Zhao Yunlan, Zhu Hong, Shen Wei, or someone (anyone) else.
• Ye Huo, living in the grey areas, trying to do right by the fight club kids when he had no legal standing and nowhere to turn for help. His outsider POV on the SID. Anything about his past or future, his feelings about the Envoy letting him stay, about wearing a mask and why he might choose to take it off.

I love Shen Wei, Da Qing and the rest of the SID team a lot, too. Zhao Xinci is my problematic fav.

I really love the setting and mythos of the show, as well as the characters, so I prefer fanworks that are set in Haixing/Dixing/YOHE. I adore the canon ending, and am also very happy with fixits or handwavy post-canon AUs. I love positive takes on post-canon Dixing.

I have a special fondness for Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan fanworks set pre-Envoy reveal (identity porn, Zhao Yunlan's suspicion and flirting, their cat-and-mouse games, no one has any boundaries!), and post-canon (late get/togethers, established relationships, lower stakes, knowing each other deeply, no one has any boundaries!).

I prefer my Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng/&Ye Huo get-togethers set late in canon, or post-canon, once Changcheng has found his feet. I like the age and experience gaps to be balanced/mitigated somewhat before they get together, and I think Changcheng's power helps with that, too. I do like Chu Shuzhi & Guo Changcheng mentor or friendship fic set earlier, though.

See prompts below for the other pairings.

Other delightful things: Envoy reveals for people other than Zhao Yunlan; Hallows-instigated shenanigans; Yashou culture and politics; hopeful/progressive political developments in Haixing; taking canon events and extrapolating wider effects.

Fandom-specific DNWs:
Passive, very innocent or clueless Shen Wei. Shen Wei retiring from either Envoying or academia. Novel canon or characterisation (incl. Zhao Yunlan saying "baby" or "wife" or other endearments). Da Qing in a romantic/sexual relationship. Ditto Ye Zun. Zhao Yunlan/Zhu Hong. Anything that draws attention to the artifice of the production (eg, referring to Zhu Jiu's hair as a wig or wiglike, mention of the actors).

Prompts
Here are some semi-random prompts. Please ignore them if the above has sparked other inspiration!

A hundred billion fic/meta/story prompts

• In 2022, Sasamelons and Buriedbybooks ran a Guardian anniversary event called The Marvelous (Mis)adventures of Da Qing, King of Cats, in which people wrote more-or-less canon-compliant episode tags about Da Qing, like little post-credit sequences on a TV show. I loved this so much, now I want fic or art episode tags for other SID members, too! These could be set anywhere in the episode -- or be flashbacks, or dream sequences, or something else loosely tied to the ep. Like... Lin Jing's feelings after the web novelist case? Guo Changcheng's diary entry about Zhao Xinci's first visit to the SID? Chu Shuzhi post-fight club – did he enjoy the limelight? What does Dr Cheng do after the video game (does she ever apologise to Zhao Yunlan for drugging him)? Vignettes or ficlets for any of them at any time, basically. :D


• Early canon, Zhao Yunlan trying to catch Shen Wei out, or creating spaces for him to confess his secrets (and how he deals with Shen Wei side-stepping those opportunities). Shen Wei juggling his identities as the professor and the Envoy, and Zhao Yunlan being attracted and smart/suspicious at the same time. All the get-togethers! Established relationship domesticity or badass-saving-the-world-ery. Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan helping out any SID Team member in distress, or interacting with the Dixing government in an official capacity, or (respectfully) with the Yashou Tribes.


• Zhao Yunlan accidentally leaves something in his pocket when he gives his jacket to Shen Wei in the Hanga arc -- it could just be a lollipop, or else something that reveals his feelings, or makes Shen Wei go "he's so adorkable!" Does Shen Wei return it? Respond? Do they end up furtively passing flirty notes?


• Someone (Chu Shuzhi? Da Qing? Zhu Hong?) finds out sooner about Zhang Shi and Zhao Xinci, and has to decide what to do about it.


• The SID team find out about [insert pairing here] and Have Opinions. Maybe someone walks in on the pairing kissing or even just standing too close, and rumours spread? Or rumours spread before they've actually got together!


• Something about Chu Shuzhi (and maybe the rest of the SID, too) learning and reacting to the fact that Zhao Yunlan and the Envoy have agreed on a new "only troublemakers have to go back" policy. Do they approve? What does it mean to them?


• Chu Shuzhi has a different first meeting with Professor Shen, maybe before Shen Wei is on the SID's official radar. What does he make of him? How does Professor Shen treat him?


• Masked!Chu Shuzhi AU (in an “all Dixingren wear masks” AU, or as a tribute to the Envoy, or with some other explanation). I feel this would be particularly delicious in the context of CSZ/GCC, with Changcheng increasingly desperate for a glimpse of his crush's face, but not wanting to be rude and ask.


• I could go for some "one-night-stand/rebound to platonic friends" fic, or "friends to fuckbuddies to friends"– and there are so many pairings this could work for: Zhu Hong/Lin Jing, Zhu Hong/Chu Shuzhi, Zhu Hong/Da Ji, Lin Jing/Wang Zheng (pre-Hanga arc), Ye Huo/Chu Shuzhi. The possibilities are endless! (But not Zhao Yunlan/Zhu Hong or Da Qing/anyone, please.)


• I think Zhao Yunlan and Chu Shuzhi are really hot together, and I enjoy the tension, prickliness and mutual respect between them, whether they're working together or yelling at each other. If you can make an ill-advised fling work, pre- or early-canon (without Zhao Yunlan cheating on the beginnings of him and Shen Wei), I would love that so much! Or Shen Wei finding out about a random hook-up retrospectively, post-Envoy reveal as discussed in the comments here!—maybe it could even lead to an experiment in threesome-osity. (I'm not 100% sure Shen Wei would go there, but I'm willing to be convinced!)


• I'm not into typical hurt/comfort dynamics, but I think I'd really enjoy some platonic comfort, particularly if it was a romantic or friendship pairing comforting a third party who's feeling down or lonely. For example, Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng cheering up Zhu Hong to help her get over her crush on Zhao Yunlan, maybe taking her out on a friend date; Wang Zheng/Sang Zan adopting Lin Jing, giving him somewhere to belong; Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan (& Da Qing) having Li Qian or Lin Jing or Chu Shuzhi over for dinner after a gruelling case and it turning into (or promising to turn into) a regular thing. Found family, basically.


• Anything (romantic or not) about Zhao Xinci and Zhang Shi's complicated, messed-up situation, without glossing over the effects of Zhao Xinci's anti-Dixing bigotry or Zhang Shi's consent-troubling occupation and Lantern-adjacent mission. With or without Shen Xi (but please have her be aware of Zhang Shi's presence if they're in intimate situations).
  Or post-canon: what happens once they're not sharing a body? Does Zhang Shi make other friends? Is Zhao Xinci jealous or disapproving? Do they remain family? How Extremely Awkward is it that Zhang Shi is occupying Zhao Yunlan's body?


• Post-canon everyone-lives, Chu Shuzhi becomes a regular visitor at Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan's household, and essentially finds a place as part of their family in a platonic/non-sexual way. This might work well as a three- or five-times thing? Maybe it starts when Zhao Yunlan gets him to bring something over from the SID and he ends up hanging out for the evening, and then some combination of them take on a shared project? And Da Qing is there, too, of course. I'd love it if Zhao Yunlan respected the existing loyalty relationship between Shen Wei and Chu Shuzhi in an almost-metamours-y way (while still teasing them about it, probably :D), and they all gradually found their way to friendship, Chu Shuzhi coming to see Shen Wei as Shen Wei, until they were all just, like, family enjoying and supporting each other, with Chu Shuzhi ultimately confident of his place there. Very happy for this to include ace!Chu Shuzhi.
  (Note: I'm not super interested in Ye Zun being part of this scenario in a domestic way, though I'm okay with mentions.)


• Exploration of the immigrant/refugee/outsider aspects of ordinary Dixingren in Haixing. (For meta: observations drawn from real world situations and applied to canon?) Similarly, individual Yashou joining human society in Dragon City, or a human joining Yashou society for some reason (romantic attachment to a Yashou, anthropology, a novelist researching a book, someone on the run from family or the authorities). OCs welcome!


• Zhu Hong shows up in YOHE. Bonus points for her immediately spilling secrets about the timeline, and Zhao Yunlan scrambling to cover and explain them away. More bonus points for Zhu Hong/Fu You.


• Zhao Xinci meets the Envoy for the first time and/or finds out Shen Wei is the Envoy. (Note: I'm agnostic about whether he knows Shen Wei's identity when he warns Zhao Yunlan to stay away from him; he might just know Shen Wei is Dixingren, after hearing what happened at the wedding. So later Envoy reveals work for me as well as earlier ones. And for earlier ones, I'd appreciate some hint as to why Shen Wei chose to break his cover, if it was voluntary.) Does Shen Wei recognise Zhang Shi's presence? If so, how does that affect his dynamic with Zhao Xinci?


• Rehabilitate Da Ji agenda: Da Ji is so prickly and unlucky in love, and super traumatised when we meet her. I feel like she could really use some kindness and a happy ending, either romantic (pref femslashy) or friendship. Maybe Zhu Hong could take her under her wing and basically do the equivalent of fostering the little trauma kitty?


• A list of Dixing businesses, with descriptions. If you want to make it a fic, maybe anecdotes about or histories of a few shops, craft workshops, factories or mines?


• Thoughts about Zhang Shi's agenda/history/take on the world. Why did he leave The Ancient Mysteries in the SID library for Zhao Yunlan to find? Why didn't he tell anyone that the Lantern at the SID was one of the Hallows? Did he have any qualms about setting Changcheng up as a sacrifice? (I find him mysterious but fairly sympathetic, so if you don't like him, maybe skip this. :-)


• Ooh, post-canon (canon compliant) Chu Shuzhi/Zhang Shi?! That would be gloriously fucked up, and I'd be so there for it. Zhang Shi finally having autonomy, a body to himself, and Chu Shuzhi having a billion feelings about the fact he looks like Zhao Yunlan, but also, Zhang Shi is another Dixingren with his own complicated past, and maybe they have things in common, too. Can they find a happy ending? (I'm fine with this being a bit emotional h/c-y. In fact, feel free to kill off Guo Changcheng if you need added angst/impetus. (Sorry, Changcheng! ILU!))

Art prompts

• Pre-canon Zhao Yunlan, sprawling and smoking.
• The Hallows follow Zhao Yunlan home and hide in his disaster!flat. (Da Qing finds one, and his fur stands on end?)
• In-universe doodles by any character.
• Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan making out/fucking, Shen Wei in the shoulder holster, and Zhao Yunlan in the sleeve garters (maybe one around his thigh? Or around his wrist and hooked on something?).
• Chu Shuzhi, secret jazz musician.
• Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng (/Ye Huo) walking Guo Changcheng's dog, or having a movie night.
• That scene where Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan are saving Li Qian from falling off the roof, but instead of Li Qian, it's Da Qing.
• Guo Changcheng wearing Chu Shuzhi's clothes, or vice versa.
• Guo Changcheng practising first aid on members of the SID.
• Chu Shuzhi and Zhao Xinci glaring at each other – snap, crackle, pop!
• Ye Huo taking off his mask to kiss Chu Shuzhi.
• Zhao Yunlan and Chu Shuzhi making out against a wall.

Themed picspam prompts

• Zhao Yunlan sprawling, lounging, sitting in inappropriate places.
• A selection of Zhao Yunlan's warm genuine smiles, or Zhao Yunlan smiling at Shen Wei specifically.
• Zhao Yunlan having a moment with each of his team members in turn.
• Chu Shuzhi emoting.
• Ye Huo's anything.
• Zhao Yunlan & Da Qing, or Shen Wei & Da Qing.
• Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng shippiness.
• Any of my requested pairings, especially if you can make it look like they're interacting via a juxtaposition of screencaps, when canonically they're not.
• A favourite scene or moment.

Podfic prompts

• I always love hearing how people perform/interpret my work, so if any of my fics appeal to you (particularly anything from my author's favs collection), I'd really enjoy that. (If you want to edit or adapt the text (eg, taking out speech tags or whatever), feel free.)


• Examples of other people's fic I love (obviously far from an exhaustive list!): dorinda's work (permission statement), teaotter's (permission statement), rheasilvia's (permission statement), mumblemutter (permission statement), and nnozomi's (permission statement (note caveat)).

Vid or vidlet prompts

Feel absolutely free to cut these to pieces, rearrange them, just do an excerpt or whatever.

• Early canon either Shen Wei or Zhao Yunlan pov to "All For Believing" by Missy Higgins.
• Early canon Shen Wei pov to "Stay" by Bic Runga.
• Wistful Shen Wei pov to "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan.
• YOHE and contemporary Shen Wei to "Throw Your Arms Around Me" by Hunters & Collectors.

(Oops, all my prompts are for Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan; honestly, I'd be thrilled by anything that fits my likes. :D)

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