Pocket Too Deep for Play

I can't believe I never posted an entry about the second fic I ever published to AO3, "Pocket Too Deep for Play," which I wrote in the fandom "陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)." I published the first three chapters of this back on April 8, 2023, and posted a chapter once a week after that. I finished it up on July 9, 2023, and that included a vacation out of state in which I needed to pre-write the chapter and then post it from the hotel room while on my way out the door somewhere!

Writing this fic was formative for me. It helped me establish my desired cadence of updating -- ideally, one chapter every weekend until it's done -- and it helped me figure out my authorial voice when it comes to summaries and author's notes. I tossed in random bits of pop culture that were amusing me at the time. I also used Chapter 14 as a way to try to reconcile the Christian faith of my childhood with accepting and approving of same-sex relationships, via going back to the original Bible verses.

The fic is a modern AU college gender-swapped retelling of The Untamed's main romance between Lan Zhan and Wei Ying. Parallels between my retelling and the original story:

• Lan Zhan is the captain of the women's lacrosse team, sweeping across the opposing players with her stick. This mirrors how Lan Zhan in the original would sweep across fields of bad guys with his sword


• She comes from money and has her own apartment off-campus. She drives a hybrid electric car and has expensive things.


• Wei Ying is the disowned adoptive child of an extremely image-focused "Christian" Chinese-American mom who is the queen bee at her church. The mom has used Christianity to control the family and abuse Wei Ying, since she favors her two bio kids. The father does nothing about any of this.


• Since Wei Ying was kicked out of the family (unfairly, I need hardly add), she's been living in shared housing with Wen Qing and Wen Ning, and working in a sex toy shop while trying to complete her classes. She doesn't have a car at all, and gets around by biking everywhere and showing up sweaty and late. (This mirrors how post-core-extraction Wei Ying can't fly on his sword anymore and refuses to admit it.)


• I'm drawing parallels between sex and sex toys, which Wei Ying's conservative Christian mother would never accept, and the original Wei Ying's path of ghost cultivation, which is unfairly maligned as "demonic cultivation" even though it was never anything of the sort.


• I have Nie Huaisang as Wei Ying's childhood friend who is now fabulously nonbinary and queer and who throws fabulous parties and gives good advice.


• I have Lan Huan, Lan Zhan's older brother, dating Nie Mingjue off-screen. He swoops in for a scene or two, is delighted that his little sister is finally noticing someone 'that way,' and tries to help her out.


• I have Lan Qiren as the benevolent uncle who, in this retelling, had to grapple with his previous beliefs when Lan Huan came out as gay. Qiren has more than come to terms with it, and is the vehicle for the aforementioned Bible-verse showdown with Wei Ying's adoptive mom. I think more fics should treat Qiren as a benevolent force, which he clearly COULD have been if he'd chosen to.


• I put in lots of my own remembered baggage around dressing up nice and pretty for church even though that's not what you're really like on the inside (Wei Ying); coming to terms with having sexual urges even though it's new and scary to you (Lan Zhan), getting drunk and making out with the wrong people to prove a hazy point to yourself (Wei Ying), and being extremely jealous (Lan Zhan). To me, all of those seemed fairly in line with the original characters.


• I was particularly pleased by my handling of the supporting cast in this fic. In a way, the side characters matter more than the two mains, because our two mains would never have 'sealed the deal' if not for the side characters helping them out. I wanted to make my readers wonder if there were people obviously needing help in their own lives that maybe they could help out a bit. We should all strive to be actors for good, like Huaisang or Qiren or Jiang Yanli in this fic of mine, and not actors for evil, like Wei Ying's mom Yu Ziyuan, or people who are too passive to do anything at all, like Jiang Fengmian.


• Lan Zhan is autistic, only since it's set in modern day America, she actually knows she's autistic and has received multiple years of interventions to help her function in basic life. The original Lan Zhan didn't get that.


• Wei Ying pretty clearly has ADHD and is struggling. I hope that with the increased resources she'll have access to by her association with the supportive Lan family, she'll be able to get some help that will make her life easier.


• Jiang Cheng wants to be a good brother to Wei Ying, but the one time he shows up at her shared housing, he clashes with her. This mirrors Jiang Cheng in the original showing up outside the Burial Mounds and fighting with Wei Ying (my version has less blood, though). He also sees Wen Qing and is smitten with her, and I hint that something might happen there. In fact, in my headcanon about my own story that I didn't actually put in the story, the reason Jiang Cheng doesn't show up for the Easter service is because he's all sweaty and fucked-out after an EXCELLENT first date with Wen Qing, and he decides that his mom can go pound rocks for once.


• The sex scenes were pretty basic. I was worried that after the summary, people might expect more spice, but I did what I could. The focus of the story turned out to NOT be the vibrating vaginal eggs that Wei Ying was experimenting with (my parallel for ghost cultivation), but rather, the obligations that we have to show up for each other even when it's hard.


• (But there were also sex scenes with vibrating vaginal eggs, lol.)

Overall, I was pleased with this story, which stretched my abilities during the course of writing it.

Pocket Too Deep for Play
Author: ArtemisDart
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Ship: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Wordcount: 57,566

Summary: Wei Ying drew in another breath. “I just need someone to, like, be accountable to. And you are very, very accountable-to-able. Responsible. All those -able words. You probably have a spreadsheet to keep track of all your spreadsheets! I know if you were the one I had to report my results to, you would make sure they were all sorted out. Right?”

“So, you want me to be your scientific research supervisor for your non-University-approved sex toy experiments on yourself?” Lan Zhan’s eyes dipped back down to Wei Ying’s throat again for some reason.

“Well, when you put it that way –”

“I accept.” Lan Zhan sat back in her chair, crossing her arms.

I haven't wanted to revisit The Untamed fandom since publishing this, partly since there are already so many stories for this ship that more of mine would feel superfluous to me. I was also concerned that I wouldn't be able to get the details of Chinese culture correct if I wrote more stories. That's one reason I set this one in modern America, and specifically in a college setting. I understand that setting and can write about it easily without having to do too much research.

Instead, after this, I moved into the fandom for the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, which seemed to need my services a lot more than the fandom for The Untamed. But I'll always have a soft spot for Lan Zhan / Wei Ying in my heart.