Yakarmi - Yakarmi

Another year, another rec list with some of the best xuexiao I've read these last 12 months!! >w<

And like last year's rec list, this isn't either exhaustive or limited to fics posted in 2023. It's just the things I have found, which I liked, and want to spread the love about ^-^

Here's, in no particular order, my favourite xuexiao (and occasional songxuexiao) fics. Also, take a look down below for other mxtx or danmei pairings!

You're mine by twilightshards. This is a phenomenal oneshot where Xue Yang does not wait patiently to take revenge on Baixue temple, but rather follows the annoying daoshi out of Jinlintai as soon as he gets off the hook. He catches up with them a couple of nights later, only to find Xiao Xingchen in a... compromised position. While moaning Xue Yang's name.

The tamed by @fieri-sentio-et-excrucior. Last year I recommended the wonderful The Prisoner of Jinlintai fic, and now we got a sequel to that!!! Exciting stuff, very exciting... Xiao Xingchen saves Xue Yang from his botched execution and Song Lan is there raging at what he thinks is a psycho taking full advantage of his friend's kindness. Absolutely loved it!

蛇 - shé by shoujorei. A spectacular oviposition fic with blind snake hybrid Xiao Xingchen and enemy-posing-as-housemate Xue Yang, who really didn't know what he was volunteering for when he offered to "help" daozhang with his next heat. An absolute delight!

good lies go bad by istilfearkanna One of the Yi City what-if's I like so much, showing what would happen if Song Lan is successful in killing Xue Yang and, as per canon, vows not to tell his friend anything. So naturally you have Xiao Xingchen happy about his rekindled friendship, but also deeply worried about his missing friend... breaks my heart every time T-T (thx lionfish13 for the rec!!!)

Down in the black sea by @10holmes. A mermaid AU which has to be the sweetest Xue Yang /Xiao Xingchen tale I've seen in a while, with xxc being a revered merman saving the life of a handsome pirate... without realizing that is the infamous Xue Yang, mermaid hunter and slayer of plenty of his kinsmen!! But of course, they fall in love. It's downright adorable (and deliciously angst-inducing!) Also, the worldbuilding in this one is marvelous!

promises, promises by an anonymous author. Time travel fic!!! This one follows Song Lan trying to right the wrongs of his life in the easiest way possible: that is, to eliminate Xue Yang before he has the chance to hurt anyone else. Except... he gets distracted saving the life of a poor child with a mangled left hand. Still ongoing, and XXC isn't in the picture yet, but the new chapters are highly anticipated and the writing style is so, so, so good.

the non-con opition by the same anonymous author. How do I know? None of your business!! But the awesome writing style continues here, as well as the song lan/xue yang being brought together by fate is just as awesome. It promises to be songxuexiao eventually, for now it's a delightful soulmates/omegaverse with alpha!Song Lan in rut nonconning the hell out of a mysterious omega with a foul mouth.

Sant Xingchen i el drac by @ergbolli45 A little sweet adorable spin of a traditional legend very dear to my heart. It's winter, the Yi City crew are bored around their campfire, and A-Qing wants a story. So, Xue Yang offers to tell a tale from some exotic land on the west about a little princess, a brave knight and a fearsome dragon.

sticking their dick in crazy by Sectionladvivi. I'm not generally one for modern AUs, but this one is such a stupid and shameless pwp that it skyrocketed through my rankings XD SongXueXiao, and oddly enough, the crazy one alluded in the title isn't Xue Yang!! Delicious and filthy. No thoughts, just horn.

Priceless by @fieri-sentio-et-excrucior. Another modern AU!! but how can I resist, when this is Xue Yang breaking and entering happily married songxiao's domicile, who were getting ready for a very sexy night... and end up, Song Lan tied up and forced to watch the criminal fuck Xiao Xingchen senseless (and unaware it's not his husband the one in bed with him!). Evil and sexy, another wonderful fic by such a wonderful author <3

hands, reaching out by @neriine. A retelling of Yi City but with mutation-like special powers, making it especially interesting when it comes to xuexiao's backstory (song lan is also there, in the background) and the night hunts. It's sweet, sweet, Xue Yang as always a murder gremlin who thinks he has it all under control when the first thing that he doesn't know half-way about is his own feelings... Very well-written, and creative in its worldbuilding!

THIS lovely picture is not from a fic (well, not yet, unless I manage to do something cute with it >w<) but serves as an example of all the wonderful pic manips @wangxianswuji has made, which maybe it's cheating a bit for a fanfic rec post, but. They're just so good. Go check their profile and drool with me ^-^

and speaking of art, I can't not mention @wrathyforest's art done for the fic Now that I see you, particularly one of my favourite moments with Xiao Xingchen defending Xue Yang from an undesirable... this fic was in last year's rec list, and very deservingly so!

ANd now for the other ships!

Love of my life, don't hurt me by @foreheadkissesforzewu-jun This is a delightful and spectacularly cruel tale of unrequired love by a gallant cultivator spiriting his soulmate away. At least, that's what Wen Zhuliu sees it, when in fact this fic is him kidnapping and brutally assaulting Lan Xichen, while following the events of the Wen war and the sunshot campaign. Loved it, but PLEASE read the tags.

Jade pillar, bending like reed by awkwardrecline. dark jades (and dark!Lan Xichen in particular) are so so sooo very dear to my heart... this fic has it all, a tyrannical Lan clan leader who will abuse his power left right and center, a jealous didi who wants nothing but possessive love, so much smut everywhere... Cloud Recesses is never as sexy as when the jades are so unrestrained, I love it! ^-^

My future mommy's mistake by tenwudzvrs. Is this fic pretty much what many people consider nono kinks? mpreg, noncon, xue yang being an utter dick? and do I love it precisely because of it? XD pregnant Wei Wuxian goes home one evening but comes across a ruffian in a back alley, who does everything to him up to and including speaking with his husband through the phone while nailing him to the wall. Lan Zhan isn't happy. I am delighted.

What brother needs, brother gets by @foreheadkissesforzewu-jun. a modern AU jadecest pwp which... to be honest, it's pure oral fixation Lan Xichen going to his didi after he got dumped by some idiot and Lan Wangji doing the best he can to comfort him. It's ridiculously shameless and incredibly enjoyable, just to see these two come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to fuck each other!! XD Wei Ying will find a surprise when he gets back home from his travels and finds his husband has collected another husband...

furious love by @alipeeps. From Till the end of the moon, a very nasty and wonderfully in-canon insight on the disastrous marriage between Ye Xiwu (the original) and Tantai Jin. Let's just say she decides to take her marital rights to the extreme, and using the very same lust potion that originally landed her in that marriage to begin with! Tantai Jin is one of those characters that truly suffer beautifully, and suffer he does here!

a fire, made high and wild by @judiwench. A fic for Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, which is a series that wormed its way into my soul. Sui Zhou desperately searches Tang Fan (him, please, him, not his corpse) only to find him... less than good. I was seriously debating between this one and is the festering that kills a man by the same author, but... Agh, they are both amazing snippets at their obvious mutual love, and the trauma that brings it to light. Highly recommend the series and these fics!

a long sleepless night by @dying-redshirt-noises. This one is from Mysterious Lotus Casebook, a wonderful three-way pwp in the Girls' Mansion where Fang Duobing gets doused with sex pollen... of course, Li Lianhua wants to help, but there is not much he can do with his yang disfunction. How handy to have someone like a-Fei nearby to rail the young master, then!! It is sexy and wonderfully in-canon, and I'm all for it.

And I'm probably still forgetting a few fics, there is nowhere near enough jadecest here compared to what I know I have read and enjoyed... Shame on me again for forgetting to bookmark more often than not.

I'm a bit sad that I barely found any of this year's authors on tumblr (don't know if they don't have accounts here, or do under different usernames) so if anyone knows about them, repost bc I'd like to engage and give them my most sincere praise.

Also, I will say I purposefully avoided tgcf fics for fear of spoilers until I read the whole book, so... next year I'm surely filling this with hualian and such!! >w<

Finally, since we're at it, I just will get a bit of self-promotion with the 5 fics I liked most of what I wrote on this year. I'm IMMENSELY PROUD to have produced 36 fics in this year of our lord 2023 (3 per month!!! omfg!!) and while I can't claim favourites, these might be the ones I'm most proud of:

Some kind of dream. Xuexiao roleplaying after a night hunt, with some nice power dynamics, very mutually enthusiastic consensual non-con, and Xue Yang all but confessing that he is Xiao Xingchen's worse enemy... Smut and fluff, all in one. I do love the 3 year bliss in Yi City, and all the in-canon opportunities it offers!!!

Incensed nights. An INSANE endeavor for kinktober, with WangXian dreaming each night a different cozy, cruel, smutty or simply crack-y scenario. 31 fics for the price of one!! multiple pairings, I can't stress how much Lan Zhan dreams of his brother, or wei wuxian's mind follows other ships... Extremely happy with this one, and I nearly went crazy, seriously.

Shards of morning nights and forbidden kisses. My attempt at jadecest, niecest and omegaverse, all in one. ANd quite successful, might I say! Both clan leaders Lan and Nie want to find a way to claim and marry their respective omega didis, but something something clan rules forces them to play a delicate and sexy political game. It ends in a very nice orgy XD

A Comedy of Yi City Errors. This one, I'm particularly happy with the sheer amount of planning and interlocking plotpoints it has, with Song Lan coming across Xiao Xingchen, a-Qing and Xue Yang without even realizing. I'm told it is quite funny... And I like it very much >w<

...what did you call it again? the only one not mdzs in the list, this is for Till the end of the moon and it's yet again Tantai Jin suffering in his so beautiful way! It was done for an exchange, following the premise: take a canon even and make it worse. Do you think ttj had it bad in the series, with the servants mistreating him in Ye Manor? Ya have seen nuffin!!!

Once again, thanks for reading, thanks to all authors for writing, and let's have a wonderful 2024 full of fics and love!!!

SQH, to SQQ: your taste in men is not superior to mine. you just like them a little weepy. you’d fuck a snake if it cried

ZZL, crawling from under the bed: …would you ?

I’m thoroughly convinced that my favorite Harry Potter book is The Goblet of Fire and my least favorite is Prisoner of Azkaban. As much as a I love Sirius, there’s just not really enough going on in PoA... it felt sort of dry. The ending is spectacular but the entire essence of the book could have been capture much more succinctly.

(But after reading PoA, one thing remains clear, Snape is the WORST)

So happy to have internet again 😭 was out for a couple months there and it gave me big depression lol. Here’s a Farrah doodle I did awhile back before the other one.

Jason singing “I can show you the world” to Clive except instead of riding around on a magic carpet over a city, they’re on a cloud vehicle as Jason shows him advanced and rare Astral magic

How all my ships work

This person gets it

not to be an edgelord but sometimes i see tags like this and i wonder if i'm some kind of fucked up joker guy. like this is for real and not a bit? the hunger games was too dark for y'all at 12-16? at the target audience age it was written for? seriously?

I find the thought of Clark being openly obsessed with Batman in front of his parents adorable

(wayne family adventures ep. 47 & injustice 2 annual 2)

Yep! I’m hoping to finish it sometime soon. I like the idea of Spencer coming into the gas station and (very forcibly) making Jack to take care of himself.

I’m going to write something for Jack x Spencer from Tales from the Gas Station… they live rent free in my head. I have to. (Imma call them Jencer as coined by multi-lefaiye)

Here’s a(n unedited) snippet of what I’ve written so far:

The first time it happened, it was only a few minutes to midnight. Early enough for Jack’s shift to still be considered starting but late enough for absolutely nobody except for the odd passerby to walk in through the doors. With a good ten-something hours to go and few, if any, customers, Jack was content to sit slouched back in his chair with his ear plugs in and book in his lap.

An irritated hand flashed over the pages of his book, waving at him.

Jack frowned as he looked up. His ear plugs weren’t that good, surely he’d be able to hear if they just called out his name…

He froze as his gaze met the face of the man in front of him. Bright red hair styled up and an annoyed scowl set across strong features. Spencer fucking Middleton.

Jack’s hand instinctively darted out to grab the gas station landline, only to be stopped by Spencer, who aggravatedly pulled the phone away from him and took it off the hook. A sign that the phone line wasn’t cut and that, if Jack could find the time to pull it off, he could call O’Brien.

The psychopath’s mouth started moving, as if he was speaking, but Jack couldn’t hear anything he was saying.

“What?” He asked, and Spencer’s full body heaved with the force of his sigh. The psychopath gestured with his hands to his ears and that’s when Jack remembered his ear plugs. Right.

After debating the pros and cons of actually hearing the psychopath out, Jack reluctantly took them out. He set them on the counter where Spencer swiped them off onto the gas station floor. Well, Jack was never going to use those again.

“About time,” Spencer snarled. “Who the hell wears ear plugs at work?”

“You would too if you could hear the shit that happens at this place,” Jack muttered.

“What?” Spencer asked, and when Jack didn’t respond, he just shook his head. He then shoved his hand into his pocket and Jack braced himself for whatever it was going to be. It was way past the running away phase.

A poorly wrapped sandwich was tossed onto the table in front of him.

Jack flinched before staring at it, confused, and then looking back up at his arch nemesis.

“What?”

Spencer looked at the sandwich and then at Jack pointedly. Jack just furrowed his brows down at it and stared. For a while. Waiting for whatever torment Jack had planned for him tonight.

“Oh just eat it,” Spencer snarled, and Jack blinked up at him blankly, wondering if Spencer really thought he was that stupid, before pushing it back towards him.

“No thank you.”

“Why not?” Spencer demanded, having the audacity to actually look offended.

“I’m allergic to poison.”

Here's a shitpost meme I drew a while back, with ~book 1 pre-team trio

Sorry I couldn't do the HWFWM fanart stream I wanted to do on Monday, I still had to wrap up stuff for the festival I was drawing at and then I got sick >w>;

Maybe its because I'm sick but I don't care that it's not glazed. I am so TIRED about fretting about posting art online. I don't feel particularly welcome on the internet as an artist anymore, but I still wanna make n share stuff, you know?