What CLJ and Black Sails have in common (almost nothing! EXCEPT!!) is that they both do a thing that makes me absolutely feral about a show: internal narrative consistency.

Think of a show like a high school essay, where you present a thesis* and provide supporting arguments. (*not every show needs to do this! some shows can just be fun and entertaining! and that's valid and fine and great! sometimes it's nice to just come for the pretty pictures and cool explosions. not everything needs to """elevate the genre""" or be a """cultural reset""")

Inspired by the recent real-life experience of @_ceesaw buying @SBDLWJ0523 a present, and with their kind permission, I present (lol) to you The Carrot Dildo Incident: a threadfic. It all starts when LWJ acquires some rabbits. WWX, supportive roommate that he is, decides to celebrate this event by buying LWJ some rabbit-related gifts -- pet supplies, some treats, and this novelty carrot from Etsy:

etsy.com/listing/884464…

On this most glorious occasion of our beloved @aeryies's birthday, I present a humble threadfic offering to answer a question I'd neglected to address during my original Wenzhou Chinese New Year threadfic: how the heck did ZZS not starve to death before he met WKX?

Let's go: So, ZZS retires from his Dubiously Legal and Even More Dubiously Moral Job. The retiring itself happens relatively peacefully (ZZS wants out, his employer wants a 'cleaner' image, paying ZZS a severance package wastes less money and manpower than trying to put a hit out on him).

In honour of my family confirming my belief that Chinese People Don't Communicate, I am now contemplating the idea of post-canon!ZZS marrying WKX and just. not telling him. Obviously, it's WKX's fault; ZZS has been giving increasingly obvious hints he's DFM (Down For Marriage) for ages. Those hints have just gone over WKX's beautiful head, and ZZS isn't getting any younger! (uh, or older. But that's not the point). The point is this:

Wenzhou concert!AU where everyone lives, Zhao Jing and Xie Wang aren’t evil. Everyone gets together for Chinese New Year, and Luo-yi nags WKX about how he’s still single. Warning: this is 90% just Chinese family dinner jokes, and may not be funny if you're not Chinese.

Let's go. It all starts when A-Xiang texts in the family Wechat that she’s going to bring her boyfriend to CNY dinner this year. This is, of course, a Big Deal, because everyone knows that bringing a significant other to CNY dinner means that marriage is imminent.

For a dear friend, who's having a very big day tomorrow:

LWJ realizing that the Venn diagram of WWX's idea of aftercare vs. actual aftercare is just two completely separate circles, a nsfw🔞threadfic: It starts when WWX's staying overnight at LWJ's one day, and the baggy lounge pants that he's borrowing to wear as after-shower PJs sags down his hips and reveals a watercolour splay of bruises.

LWJ notices immediately, of course. "Wei Ying?"

"Hm?" He looks down. "Oh. OH!"

My Wife @marybethdecker and I spent the day discussing marriage politics in her fic, "cast your bitterness into the sea" (archiveofourown.org/works/23633263) in which Wen Ruohan gets taken down by his much cooler older sister who then marries Jiang Cheng (shhh, it works, trust me). And we realized that given the highly unbalanced ratio of male to female cultivators that we see in canon, and given the importance of getting married and having kids, it must SUCK to be a male cultivator in WWX's generation:

A thread.

Accidental matchmaker Jin Zixuan who has great intentions but very poor instincts for what makes for a successful couple, a threadfic: let's go. It all starts when JZX gets married, and becomes one of those people who's so happily married that he wants to set up all his single friends so that they too, can enjoy marital bliss. And oh look, his perfect angel goddess wife also has single brothers! What luck!

I blame @wwxsAJ1s's baby dragonji and foxxian for making me so feral over how cute they are that I must threadfic. So: baby dragonji and baby foxxian meet as children and then again as young adults:

https://twitter.com/wwxsAJ1s/status/1347829295025188866

WY has already been on his own for a while, when he finds the dragon spirit. At first he thinks it's a silvery blue ribbon that someone had dropped, sprawled on the ground and getting pecked at by crows (WY doesn't like crows; they're almost as mean as dogs).

But then it MOVES.

Because I need to distract myself from the devastation that is Legend of Fei, here is a threadfic about 5 curses that people place on WWX that end up backfiring in happy (for WWX) ways. Let's go: Not everyone is pleased by, or even believes in the exoneration of the Yiling Patriarch. There are some who feel that death was not sufficient punishment for his sins! His suffering should be horrific and eternal! So a bunch of like-minded cultivators band together to curse him.

Ok I'm on break, finally catching up on months of sleep debt, so it is time for: fic crimes.

So: Orpheus and Eurydice AU, in which LWJ is Eurydice, WWX is an unhinged Orpheus, and Hua Cheng cameos as Hades. LET'S GO. LWJ dies. It doesn't matter how (a curse, a simple curse), or when (a revoltingly sunny day), or who did it (dead, long dead). All that matters is this: LWJ, unnaturally cold and still in WWX's arms. Dead, his soul trapped in hell bc WWX was too stupid, too slow, too weak.

"50 not-First Dates" where WWX decides that he should make up for the fact that LWJ missed out on dating him for 16 years by making every subsequent encounter they have into a meet cute -- a CQL-verse threadfic, by me. It all starts when WWX, a few years into his marriage, sees a courting couple giggling as they walk through the marketplace and sighs wistfully, "that could've been us but I was oblivious and also dead for 16 years."

But then, he thinks, whoever said married people CAN'T date?

Jumping in on this (wonderful) trend of Twitter thread-fics, here's mine:
Wherein WWX means to send a photo of his face slathered in cinnamon roll icing (captioned: cummies!💦) to NHS as part of an ongoing inside joke but accidentally sends it to his crush LWJ instead. Let's go. First, some backstory: it all starts when WWX and LWJ are at a party together, LWJ drunk on spiked punch, WWX keeping him out of trouble. They’re sitting out on the balcony when the conversation turns to their ideal type.

LWJ, looking at WWX: Generous. Thoughtful. Always kind.