Words of Wood

Well, the Sundial Exchange went live on Friday, with 169 fanworks! Which was pretty amazing - we had just over 60 last year - and nearly 70 participants. I really love how our little fandom is still going strong, and also branching out into new avenues like Tomb Show, which had quite a lot of works of its own in the exchange this year.

From my end, this was an absolute pleasure of an exchange to run, and I very much hope to do so again next year! The matching and everything seemed to go well, and we had SO MANY people make treats, it was absolutely delightful.

-

This year I decided to ask primarily for fanart! And I got FOUR pieces of art, which was amazing.

Bite by zvaize
During the mission in a cave Zhao Yunlan is attacked by a stray Youchu.
This is an entire GRAPHIC STORY and it's fantastic! Beautiful art, full of tiny details, and a great story, and the character drawings and expressions are just so good. I really can't believe I got something so excellent made for me!

Aftermath by rlyqueer
Zhao Yunlan embraces Shen Wei as they sit on the floor together. His expression is pinched, while Shen Wei appears bashful—yet unrepentant—and covered in minor wounds that have been treated with a first aid kit.
A sweet bit of caretaking between the two of them! I love how they're so curled around each other and I love Shen Wei in casual clothing, this is lovely!

Up among the clouds, down among the trees by naye
Art for The Cloudfarers
These two pieces made me smile so much! Naye used some of her own photos and turned them into illustrations for my story -- the sky-ship sailing into the sunset, and the GIANT CENTIPEDE FIGHT. So much fun!

In Need of Saving Still by teyla
There'll never be a time when Pangzi and Wu Xie won't need saving.
A lovely moment of Pangzi and Wu Xie with their heads pressed together, depending on each other. A redraw of an awesome scene in Ultimate Note with LTR actors - as Teyla points out, that sort of situation does happen to them a lot!!

Also, tinypinkmouse made a podfic of The Cloudfarers. Yes, all five hours of it :O

-

I made two things for the exchange myself! I was planning on doing more, but my main gift was a fic that when I started writing I expected to be... 2k maybe? A missing scene? Except then it developed MORE scenes, and MORE drama, and ended up 9k, mostly written in 200-words-a-day increments XD (It's by far the longest thing I've written in 6 months, I'm very happy!) It was for hils, with whom I have previously commiserated about the sad lack of Liu Sang hurt/comfort, so I just poured allllll of my feelings about him into this fic. (I kept saying "but surely this is too much melodrama?" but fortunately I was only reassured that there is no such thing in this fandom.)

All the maps were wrong, Gen, Liu Sang h/c and team
On the way back from Thunder City, Liu Sang is struggling more than he wants to admit.


And also, while trying to get unstuck on a bit of the above fic, I randomly decided to do some art and painted a scene from naye's fic State of Matter that I have had such a vivid image of in my head since reading it. I still definitely hold a vision of myself as Bad At Art, so it was quite scary to do a non-abstract painting and share it! But I was really pleased with how it came out.

Transformation
That had been tons and tons of water and ice that Shen Wei had somehow vaporized. He'd turned an entire lake into a cloud.



-

I'm now going through the collection! This year as a mod I was VERY GOOD and didn't do much peeking at all, even though I was doing the completeness/accessibility checks :> I've still only seen a fraction of the fanworks, but I am keeping a Sundial recs thread on twitter here. (I finally cracked and made an unlocked twitter frithinthorns so that I can join in conversations and post my fanworks publically there, although its main purpose is really to point people to my locked couldbeadragon one.) Anyway, I'm going to keep adding to that thread as I move through the collection.

Thank you so much everyone for playing!

The Sundial Exchange is live! Here is the AO3 collection, with 60 fanworks for Guardian and adjacent fandoms!

It's been a really great exchange to run, and I'm so grateful to glymr, yue_ix, and amara1783 for co-modding with me, especially after I got really sick and had to drop most of the balls I was was trying to hold. (I *really* enjoyed doing the spreadsheeting, though.) Thanks flist for the encouragement on twitter and here when I said I wanted to create this thing! Hopefully you'll see us again :)

-

In the exchange I got TWO things! A sweet Detective L fic from geckoholic:

What's Worth Defending (fic, 587 words)
Tags: Luó Fēi & Qín Xiǎo Màn, Běn Jié Míng & Qín Xiǎo Màn, Qín Xiǎo Màn, Běn Jié Míng, Luó Fēi, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Unconsciousness, Aftermath of a Case
In a hospital room, Qin Xiaoman keeps watch over an unconscious Luo Fei.

And a set of very RTMI gifs from naye:

he's so pretty when he hurts (gifset)
Tags: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán, Shěn Wēi, Zhào Yúnlán, Animated GIFs, Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Treat
Hurt/comfort-themed gifs of Shen Wei.

Thank you so much, both! :D

My contribution was a fic for marycrawford:

Ice and Shard (fic, 5367 words)
Tags: Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán, Shěn Wēi, Zhào Yúnlán, Hurt/Comfort, Snow and Ice, Dixing powers do what I want them to, Fever, Delirium, handwavy post-canon
Zhao Yunlan didn't know what made him realise that something was wrong. But something definitely was.

-

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone celebrating!