Chapter 1: Character Illustrations
Chapter Text
Illustrations by noxeulalie. Left to right: Xiao Xingchen, Xue Yang, Song Lan, Nie Huaisang.
Chapter 2: Tattoo Concept Art
Notes:
Eli's original commentary on twitter: "I have a brain illness where I couldn’t rest until I drew references for AU xiao xingchen and song lan’s tattoos (the brain illness is ADHD)."
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Tattoo concept art by noxeulalie. Top to bottom: Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan.
Chapter 3: think i lied a little
Summary:
Four years ago. A lifetime ago. Meng Yao has certainly learned new things about himself in all that time. Clearly Mingjue has as well.
Notes:
There are extensive backstories and other characters' plotlines going on in the background of the wider AU. This is a tiny scrap of the 3zun story thread, originally written by iodhadh as a twitter ficlet on a prompt from tellingetienne. It has been cleaned up and lightly edited for posting to AO3.
As with much of the rest of the AU, the chapter title is from Dua Lipa's Pretty Please.
Chapter Text
The cuffs are black leather, heavy and solid, fitted with sturdy steel D-rings and only lightly padded on the inside. There are two pairs: a lighter one for the wrists and a bulkier one for the ankles, linked by a set of double snap hooks. Meng Yao runs his fingers over them, contemplative. They’re stiffer than what he’d have picked out for himself—but then, he supposes, on a man like Nie Mingjue, delicacy simply wouldn’t do.
Meng Yao raises his eyes to him, hiking a brow in a subtle arch. “How long have you owned these?” he says, and means: was this something you would have wanted from me, four years ago, before it all fell apart the first time around?
Mingjue just looks back at him, implacable and intent. “I bought them a couple years ago,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate. Despite himself Meng Yao still feels a thrill race down his spine: there’s a steadiness to Mingjue now that is new to him, a restrained line of want in the angle of his jaw.
This is only the third time they’ve been alone like this without Xichen to keep the balance between them. Before that—
Four years ago. A lifetime ago. Meng Yao has certainly learned new things about himself in all that time. Clearly Mingjue has as well.
Meng Yao takes a step forward. He lifts his hand, winding his fingers into the thick fall of Mingjue’s hair. He doesn’t pull—just tightens his grip, relentless and precise, until Mingjue’s lips part gently and he exhales a soft breath.
“Kneel, da-ge,” Meng Yao says, and gives Mingjue his best dimples. “Put your hands behind your back.”
His eyes sliding closed, Mingjue obeys.
Chapter 4: Picrew Images
Notes:
These images of the Yi City crew were made in Makowka's Character Maker II. Yes, A-Qing will be making her appearance in the AU proper. Be patient.
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Chapter 5: A Very Important Meme
Notes:
I said the memes were canonical and I meant it.
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rozarria: xue yang and nie huaisang showing up at the same club in the same “baby slut” crop top
Chapter 6: Non-Yi City Q&A
Summary:
Actually, you know what? Kink AU AMA for the characters who aren't in Yi City. Wanna know what the rest of the mdzs cast are up to? Jobs? Relationships? What kind of kink are they involved with? I guarantee you I've got an answer, there is over 160k of chatlog about All This.
Notes:
Compiled from a bsky thread by iodhadh, with questions and contributions from assorted friends and followers.
Chapter Text
Jing: what are jin zixuan and jiang cheng getting up to im always curious abt them
iodhadh: Jiang Cheng is busy experiencing a weird-college-situationship-to-mutual-pining-to-relationship with Nie Huaisang. It’s kinda messy and takes a while for them to work through but it’s mostly just regular interpersonal dramas.
Jing: love this for him
iodhadh: They were in the same circles at university. Huaisang was a dedicated planner of parties, and Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng were sharing an apartment, so it was an easy spot to host.
iodhadh: Jiang Cheng had a crush on Wen Qing, which did not work out (not least because she was already fwbs with Wei Wuxian at the time and that would have been insanely awkward) and he ended up hooking up with Huaisang some as a rejection rebound. Things got weird for a while.
Jing: i think the funniest and most awkward option would be if jiang cheng ended up rebounding w wen ning after getting rejected by wen qing but he’s not really jcs type and also uh. the other thing
iodhadh: Wen Ning is a very sweet metalhead/goth boy who works for a landscaping company and quietly makes sure his sister remembers to eat and sleep while she’s doing her residency and he ends up getting together with mall goth Mo Xuanyu.
Jing: aww thats cute
iodhadh: Anyway Jiang Cheng and Huaisang were kind of in and out of contact after university, often ended up hooking up again and then distancing themselves, Jiang Cheng was always afraid of being too much and Huaisang was pretty sure Jiang Cheng wasn’t actually interested, not least because he kept pushing him away.
iodhadh: Plus Huaisang had kind of an image as a slut (and was in fact hooking up with some other people, including Xue Yang for a while for convoluted reasons) and Jiang Cheng has an inferiority complex the size of the moon, so like, what could Huaisang possibly see in him? He had loads of better options.
Jing: oh xue yang and nhs hooking up is Not something i ever thought of thats so smart
iodhadh: Anyway, they were stupid and pining about it for ages before Jiang Cheng figured out that actually Huaisang hadn’t been hooking up with anyone else for quite some time. They sorted it out eventually and now they win the best dressed couple award.
iodhadh: Meanwhile, Jin Zixuan is not sure how he got here but he and Yanli are both dating Mianmian now and he’s very happy? Eventually he and Yanli get married (Mianmian is his best man). She does not ever move in with them because she’d kill Zixuan within a week but she has their spare key and is over all the time.
iodhadh: Later she reconnects with her childhood sweetheart and introduces him to her partners and causes Zixuan to have a very confused bisexual awakening in his thirties. They have weekly poly family dinners and raise their kids as cousins.
Jing: awww thats really cute
iodhadh: 3zun poly: absolute drama bomb of interpersonal conflict. sxx poly: loving couple very carefully taming a vicious feral cat. Xuanmianli poly: sweet, normal, basically drama-free, they actually know how to communicate like reasonable humans (well, Zixuan doesn’t, but he’s trying to very hard).
iodhadh: Literally the worst that happens is that Mianmian is pining horribly in silence for her couple friends for a few months until Yanli figures it out and has the “what if we considered not being monogamous” conversation with her boyfriend. He and Mianmian were basically attached at the hip already.
Pigeon: I am seconding curiosity about my best boy Jin Zixuan. Or, depending on what you’re doing with chronologies/ages, my other best boy Ouyang Zizhen.
iodhadh: The Juniors are littles at this point in the chronology, so Zizhen is mostly getting up to grade school shenanigans and absolutely devouring every magical girl comic book he can get his romantic little hands on.
iodhadh: We bumped A-Qing’s age up a bit so she could be someone Songxiao know through the kink scene but Juniors are effectively constrained by Yanli and Zixuan’s ability to have a baby, so they get to be tinies.
Pigeon: Perfect yes no notes, Zizhen would absolutely love magical girl stuff.
Puddle: Hardball maybe: Is Wen Zhuliu up to anything in this AU?
iodhadh: Nothing specific but the Wens are around more generally and he works for Wen Ruohan, who is a CEO of... probably some horrible tech thing. Xue Yang has met Wen Zhuliu because he was briefly fostered by the Wens as part of a PR stunt that, for several reasons, did not particularly benefit anyone.
Puddle: Oh I can only imagine that disaster...!
iodhadh: The best thing to come out of it (from Xue Yang’s perspective) is that it’s where he met Meng Yao.
Puddle: What’s their relationship like in the AU?
iodhadh: They consider each other best friends but neither of them would ever say that, ew. They were fucked up foster kids together and have seen each other at their absolute worst, so neither of them ever has to sugarcoat anything for each other. They’re complete bitches to each other. They have hooked up.
Puddle: oh ofc the last goes without saying 😆
Mary: Nie Mingjue please!
iodhadh: Mingjue owns the butcher shop Xue Yang works at. Meng Yao was also working there (he was Mingjue’s boyfriend), which is probably how Xue Yang got a job. Eventually Meng Yao left to work for Jin Guangshan when he agreed to recognize him. This ultimately led to a lot of fights and Nieyao’s eventual breakup.
iodhadh: Mingjue was kind of a mess for a while after that. He’d got his heart broken. He was lonely. He got more involved with the kink scene for a while (he was one of Songxiao’s regular thirds for a bit, they helped him work through some stuff). He reconnected with Lan Xichen, who was partnered but poly.
iodhadh: Can You Guess Who Xichen Was Dating. Yeah, it does not go well once they all figure that out. Lots of disastrous drama later they eventually settle into a stable triad but for fuck’s sake does it take them forever to get there.
Mary: Yay, thank you SO much, I am delighted by everything about this answer.
Yonah: I’m v curious about the 3zun kink dynamic, especially in light of that NieYao snippet. Had they been into kink during the first go-around? If so, what changes when they get together with (and independent of) LXC?
iodhadh: They definitely were but they were less experienced and didn’t know their own desires as well, and Meng Yao, in particular, had a lot of walls up, and they kind of fell into a pattern where Mingjue was more dominant and Meng Yao was more submissive. And, like, it’s not that they didn’t like that, but…
iodhadh: That was tied to the problems they started having when Meng Yao was working for his father—he assumed there was a way he was Expected To Be and that failing would lead to rejection, whereas Mingjue just wanted him to be honest, ugly edges and all, and didn’t understand the pressures he was under.
iodhadh: When Meng Yao started dating Xichen he was still definitely putting up a front of being perfect (Nieyao can’t help their jagged parts clashing, Xiyao act like they have no jagged parts at all) but Xichen being openly enthused about submission and service topping gave him a new space to stretch out.
iodhadh: Nielan fit comfortably into a loving dom/eager sub dynamic, so that was easy for them. But Mingjue having explored a lot more in the meantime has unlocked the knowledge of his own submissive desires as well. Once he and Meng Yao get re-involved they’re able to negotiate from a place of deeper truth.
iodhadh: And like, again, it’s not that Mingjue isn’t a dom or Meng Yao never subs, but there were a lot of assumptions being made, about both parties and from both sides. Mingjue had never really thought about submitting, his partners always expected him not to. Meng Yao thought he had to be Pleasing.
iodhadh: So when they all come back together with more honesty between them, the Nieyao dynamic has (mostly—none of them are 100% strict about roles) flipped, and is also a hell of a lot more sadistic than it once was. For Xichen, Mingjue is mostly a dom top, and for Meng Yao, Xichen is mostly a service top.
iodhadh: Sometimes Nielan team up on Meng Yao to Make Him Take A Fucking Break (also it’s good for him to not be in control in a positive way) but for the most part he gives Mingjue vicious dominance and Xichen caretaking dominance. Mingjue calls himself a switch. Xichen mostly identifies with service.
Yonah: ALSO, SECOND THREAD: tell me about the SongXiao + NMJ hookups 👀
iodhadh: Songxiao were key players in the process of Mingjue figuring out his tastes were broader than straightforward dominance! He met them at a kink club and saw them interacting casually before he got to witness a scene. Like many people he had kind of assumed the bigger, sterner guy was the dom. Not so.
Yonah: :hellmo:
iodhadh: Witnessing sweet, gentle Xingchen absolutely breaking Song Lan down was living in his head rent-free for a while, and eventually after he’d gotten to know them a bit better he broached the idea of a scene at the club (Songxiao freely play nonsexually with other people).
iodhadh: He was expecting initially to negotiate something with Xingchen, but they were both interested and they fucked him up (positive). Their first scene was nonsexual and at the club but afterward all three of them were like “okay but you felt that too right, do you want to come home with us next time.”
iodhadh: They had a really fun time trying out different new stuff, and they helped Mingjue to expand his views of what kinds of dynamics were possible by a lot. They’re not the only people he explored with but they were some of the first and there was a lot of safety in it, they put people at ease.
iodhadh: Eventually they drifted out of hookups mostly because it wasn’t working for their schedules anymore, but they still see each other at clubs or in casual settings and there’s a lot of fondness there.
iodhadh: No, they have no idea he’s Xue Yang’s boss, and it’s going to be real funny when they find out.
Yonah: I loooove a messy queer social circle reveal lmao
Stark: Hmm is Wen Qing around?
Stark: I also personally slot in Qin Su any time I want to imagine a soft curvy lady in Situations so curious if you’ve thought of her even tho she’s a minor character ha
iodhadh: Wen Qing is around, she’s not super involved in Songxiao’s circles but she does know Xue Yang (from his ill-fated fostering by the Wen) and is friends with Wei Wuxian, so they see each other socially sometimes. She’s doing medical school/residency/starting work as a doctor and lives with Wen Ning.
iodhadh: She is for the most part too busy and focused on work for dating, but she does occasionally go out to kink events when she needs to unwind, and also I have nebulous thoughts of her prompting an unwanted bisexual awakening in Wang Lingjiao and stealing her horrible cousin’s girlfriend.
Stark: she deserves to steal a girlfriend 🙏🏻
iodhadh: AND AS FOR QIN SU. She is very much around as well and in fact will, if I actually end up writing the more A-Qing-centric parts of this verse, be featured in a more prominent role than most of the rest of the cast, because she’s going to be A-Qing’s girlfriend. They meet through the scene.
Stark: 👏👏 yesss for qin su inclusion!!
iodhadh: Kink AU is the origin of my weird fixation on A-Qing/Qin Su!! She will definitely be showing up.
Em: Very basic but what are wangxian up to
iodhadh: Song Lan met Wangji at the queer centre on campus in university and they immediately became friends by virtue of being the only people who weren’t Loud. Wangji was the one who suggested kink to him as a way to engage with his sexuality while managing his dislike of touch, and went with him to his first event.
iodhadh: Meanwhile, Xingchen and Wei Wuxian met in some classes and figured out their connection, and adopted each other as family. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were already in each other’s circles by then. Songxiao met independently of them and for a good while none of them realized there was a link.
iodhadh: They all use different names for each other: Wei Wuxian hears Zichen from Xingchen and Song Lan from Wangji, Wangji hears Xingchen from Song Lan and Xiao-shishu from Wei Wuxian, Song Lan hears Wei Ying from Lan Wangji and A-Xian from Xingchen, and Xingchen hears Lan Wangji from Song Lan and Lan Zhan from Wei Wuxian.
iodhadh: Are courtesy names realistic in modern day? No, but I like them, and also they lead to hilarious situations like this. Anyway, they do eventually sort it out and it’s very funny. Wangxian are low-key looking at Songxiao like “I want what they have.” It does take them several more years to get there.
iodhadh: Lan Wangji goes to kink clubs and regularly does platonic scenes with Songxiao—mostly rope stuff, because Song Lan doesn’t like being tied up or have much interest in learning to tie (even that stresses him out some tbh), but Xingchen likes rope. Wangji is mostly a dom and doesn’t fuck in the scene.
iodhadh: Wei Wuxian, despite the ambient aura of kink in his friends’ social circles, takes ages to figure out that’s a thing. He doesn’t start going to events until after Wangxian get together. He does like to hear Xingchen’s (conscientiously anonymized) scene gossip when they meet up for coffee though.
Meatloaf: Who is having the wildest time in the AU and/or is there a character you want to talk about that no one has asked for yet?
iodhadh: I’m trying to remember if there’s anyone I haven’t yet talked about across the various questions people have already asked, and I’m coming up blank. Wen Chao exists and Xue Yang did fuck him one (1) time while the Wens were fostering him, mostly because he found Wen Chao’s sexuality crisis funny.
iodhadh: Su She also exists and is primarily orbiting Lan Wangji in the kink scene being furious about the fact that Wangji has turned him down multiple times, both for play and for sex. Wei Wuxian has heard some of that gossip but with zero reference to names so he has no idea who Su She is.
iodhadh: Jin Zixun exists too and he’s working for Jin Guangshan and making Meng Yao’s life hell, as per usual. If he ever was involved in the kink scene, which I’m not convinced of, he’s long ago been banned from everywhere due to being a pushy asshole who can’t take no for an answer.
iodhadh: Honestly, the people who are having the wildest time are probably sxx and A-Qing/Qin Su. They’re the ones most deeply enmeshed in kink culture and there’s all kinds of stuff they’re getting up to that I’m only just starting to scrape the surface of now in the series.
Meatloaf: Hell yeah, I’m honestly glad. The people having the wildest times make the most interesting stories
Meatloaf: (big 👀👀👀 to A-Qing/Qin Su)
iodhadh: Qin Su miiiight turn up at some point in the next couple of fics, but where she’d really get to shine would be if I wrote an A-Qing-centric story about her relationships and activities in the scene.
iodhadh: A-Qing will definitely be turning up in the next one after my current WIP but that will be more in the vein of “outsider POV on the Songxuexiao dynamic.”
Meatloaf: Second question: is anyone from the older generation (Lan Qiren, etc) involved in a kink scene? Doing kink at home? Saw something from visiting one of the younger people and is now Thinking Thoughts?
iodhadh: I could definitely see versions of some of the older generations being involved in kink, but I don’t think any of them are in kink AU if only because I don’t want to have to think about the intersection of Lan Wangji and Lan Qiren both attending play parties and how they handle it lmfao.
iodhadh: The truth is I don’t really find most of the older generation very interesting, so I haven’t really thought about them much. I do think the Nie parents were probably in the lifestyle, though, they were poly and were at the very least acquainted with it.
iodhadh: Also Yu Ziyuan and Zidian is too obvious a connection to ignore so probably there’s something there too. But that’s definitely a “privacy of their own home” thing if so, she’s not out in the scene where anyone might recognize her and/or damage her reputation.
Frank: i imagine the juniors aren’t around yet? but i’m curious if you have thoughts on them later in the timeline!
iodhadh: They’re not, they’re little kids at best on the current timeline, Jin Ling is probably like three or four (and the others slightly older). As such I haven’t specifically thought about them but I’m always a fan of a Juniors poly pile, and there are some interesting dynamics that could come into play.
iodhadh: Especially with Jin Ling being raised in a poly household, and all of them seeing kid-friendly examples of dynamics in the lives of their adults, and the no doubt frank and comprehensive sex ed Wen Qing will be giving Sizhui (who will likely not, in a modern context, grow up without his family).
Frank: i love this for them!
iodhadh: I kind of love the idea of all of them going into their teenage sexual exploration phase never having been unaware that kink is a thing or where to find safe and reputable information about it. And of course they know that you can date more than one person, it’s silly that romcoms pretend otherwise.
iodhadh: I am envisioning Jin Ling in a collar. I am envisioning Zizhen wanting to try out waxplay and sensual massage and having some hilarious harmless mishaps about it. I am envisioning Sizhui being the meanest, most sadistic little dom you’ve ever seen. I am envisioning Jingyi absolutely gagging for it.
Frank: i love your vision! dom sizhui is perfect 🥰
iodhadh: I can’t explain it but Sizhui for me has many vibes that overlap with Xingchen’s vibes, it feels only natural.
Frank: You’re so right!
iodhadh: I think the main difference from Xingchen’s meanness and Sizhui’s meanness for me is that Xingchen is going to be more psychological, but also right there with you and involved the whole time. Sizhui will put you in some nasty predicament bondage and then ignore you for an hour without remorse.
Meatloaf: I thought of another question: who runs the kink club sx(x) etc play at? Is it an mdzs character or oc?
iodhadh: So, something that isn’t necessarily obvious if you’re not already familiar with the city, but kink AU is set in Ottawa (where I live) and all the locations in it are either real places or slightly fictionalized adaptations of real places.
iodhadh: The main club Songxiao have a membership at is based on the club I used to go to regularly a couple years ago, and some of the background characters and club hosts are fictional homages to real people I know and like in the kink scene. Definitely not mdzs characters but not really OCs either haha.
Meatloaf: Ooh! I had no idea! That’s pretty cool
iodhadh: If you ever want to look up a map of the city: the bar where they met is called the Lookout; Xue Yang works on Somerset in Chinatown; Songxiao live in Centretown just south and east of Chinatown; Xue Yang lives in Vanier North; Song Lan works at the General Hospital.
iodhadh: The club is unlisted but it’s in the south end, a little ways west of the airport, in an area that’s otherwise primarily industrial workshops. Not uncommon for kink clubs—it’s cheap real estate, it’s reasonably secluded, and it’s basically deserted by six p.m.