I did better today than yesterday, I guess?
I mean, I did write more words (though not by as much as I'd like) and I got through two scenes instead of one, but...gnh. It doesn't feel like I accomplished much. But I just can't face writing the next scene today. The ones I already wrote were pretty hard to deal with because of what was going on (in the first, an asshole is harassing the leads of the original work (who are only supporting characters in this fanfiction), and in the second is smarmy politics) and the next scene is harrowing as well (they come across a village that has been half-slaughtered).
But actually, I remembered something I should have posted about yesterday or even the day before.
I've managed to add what I feel is probably one of the weirdest (and tamest) love triangles ever. Though it's almost a love triangle for one?
To explain fully, I need to sum up the characters involved (in case anyone happens to read this that isn't familiar with the original work). Two of them are from the original work, Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed, and one of them is original to this fanfic. The canon characters are the Nie brothers, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang. The elder, Nie Mingjue, is the leader of their clan, a straight-edged badass, albeit one with a bit of a temper. The younger, Nie Huaisang, is about as unlike his brother as possible, being quiet, preferring painting to learning the saber, and generally a bit of a lay-about dandy (but in a good way). I love them both, really, though I'm a bit more partial to Nie Huaisang, since he was one of the characters in the drama who excited my usually-latent maternal instinct, and I just wanted to hug him and take care of him. (Ironically, just like the other one, Wen Ning, he really doesn't need anyone to baby him. Though unlike Wen Ning, he'd probably be thrilled to have someone decide to shelter and protect him.)
Anyway, neither of them has an official love interest of any kind; people popularly pair them off with various characters, but there is never a moment in any version of the original work where they actually say they have romantic or sexual feelings for anyone, nor does either of them ever marry. (Uh, as far as we know. Technically, NHS really ought to be married by the novel's present, but if he had a wife, her existence was never mentioned. That doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't have one, just that she never happened to be mentioned. Though he probably doesn't have one...) Part of my own aromantic and asexual nature is that I have difficulty just shipping two characters because I like them or they seem like their personalities could mesh well with each other, so if a character doesn't have blatantly expressed interest in anyone, I'm likely to think of them as fairly ace, just because that comes more naturally to me. In a setting like the MDZS setting, though, I do expect most people from prominent families to enter a heterosexual marriage because in any ancient setting you would expect that, just for the continuation of the bloodline, regardless of the person's actual sexual preferences. (In that regard, the novel's present is already pretty weird, because you have numerous men in their mid to late thirties who are still single, despite being clan leaders and/or their heirs. A real person in their situation likely would have entered into a marriage with a woman they didn't care about if they couldn't find one they did care about, fathered a child or two on her and then promptly started ignoring her. At least, in most cultures they would have; I haven't done enough research on the reality of ancient China to be 100% sure of that there. But...yeah, most likely it was the case there, too. Because life prior to the 20th century was harsh everywhere, and the human race wanted to survive, and having children was a big part of that survival.) Long story short, my own take on the Nie brothers' sexuality in canon is that Nie Mingjue is largely asexual, but with a strong homosocial/homoromantic side, and that Nie Huaisang is more or less aroace. I have a few fics planned where NHS is not ace, but not many. (Actually, there may only be the one where he isn't ace, come to think of it. The other one I have planned where he has a wife is a post-canon fic where he specifically marries a girl who is as much like Jiang Yanli as possible, in order to try to get Wei Wuxian to forgive him. Also to curry favor with Jiang Cheng, but mostly because he really wants Wei Wuxian to be his friend again, because there weren't many people who actually wanted to be his friend when they still thought he was a pathetic loser.)
(This is them, from The Untamed...which is the version of canon I'm using for this fic.)
Moving on to the third character, the one I made up, she's from the Yu Clan, the niece of Yu Ziyuan, Jiang Cheng's mother. Earlier in this monster of a fic, I introduced Yu Jiayi, the heiress to the Yu Clan (the fandom has concluded that the Yu Clan is probably matriarchal, which is too awesome a conclusion to ignore), eldest sister of Yu Ziyuan. I consider Yu Jiayi to be only about halfway a true OC, since she's someone whose existence is necessarily implied by canon, only without any details about name or personality. (Because we know that Yu Ziyuan was the third daughter, so obviously she has to have two elder sisters. Much like one of the other OCs in the fic is the father of Lan Jingyi; we don't know anything about his father other than that he has to be closely enough related to Lan Wangji for Lan Jingyi to be considered part of the main family, so he's a blank slate, but he has to exist in canon, because if he didn't then where would Lan Jingyi have come from?) Anyway, more recently I introduced Yu Zongying, daughter of Yu Jiayi, and thus cousin to Jiang Cheng. (Hilariously, I hadn't even noticed that I had given her the same initials as her aunt until much later; it was just that the only name I got from the name generator for female names that still had a badass enough meaning for her happened to give her the initial YZY.) She announces that she's come along on this mission that Wei Wuxian is going on in order to make sure that he doesn't humiliate the Jiang Clan and her cousin, its leader. Fair enough, right?
Only that's not actually the whole reason she's there. It turns out her mother sent her to join this expedition--which was starting in Qinghe, home of the Nie brothers--in the hopes that Yu Zongying would be able to catch Nie Mingjue's eye and manage to marry him. However, he's not her type, as she prefers a man who's a little bit weak, so she can protect him...meaning that Nie Huaisang is exactly her type. So she's one corner of the triangle, having her hopes set on Nie Huaisang. Who, meanwhile, has decided that Yu Zongying would make the perfect wife for his brother. Who, of course, is oblivious to the whole thing, having a lot else on his mind. So I ended up with a "triangle" that looks like this:
I feel like that could actually be fun to mess with, but it probably won't even be brought up again. 😅 Maybe at most a mention in passing about her having managed to snag one of them as a husband, but if she returns home in failure (highly likely) then it would never have need of being mentioned, because it's not like anyone other than her knows about her own feelings, and only she and her mother know she was supposed to be trying to catch Nie Mingjue as a husband. 🤣 Though, in all honesty, I think I've spent more words on the attempted relationships in this post than I did in the fic. Since she never told anyone else, it's just in the one scene in her POV, and she's already had to drop out of the expedition because she got injured protecting someone else, so... 🤷🏻♀️
Mostly, all this just seemed more interesting to post about than just saying "yup, I wrote words today."
Speaking of which...
Yup, I wrote words today.
Total words in document: 286,341
Words written today: 2,701
Words written in November to date: 36,341
Pretty version:
I've also done another kind of chart, looking at the words written by day. (Someone was posting that chart of theirs from the NaNo site, and I had to admit that it's a fun way of looking at the data, so I did my own. Only unfortunately it doesn't leave it without a line for the remaining days, instead posting those points as zeros, which is why I haven't posted it yet, since it looks bad this way.)
I would probably be more productive if I didn't have this peaks and troughs thing going on, but...🤷🏻♀️
