Radiant Emperor Week 2024
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Through the Years by Jinxed_Ink for mackerel_pizza, mispatchedgreens
Fandoms: The Radiant Emperor Series - Shelley Parker-Chan
25 Aug 2024
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Summary
“Would you like to hold him?” the Empress asks. The words stretch between them. They make Baoxiang wonder if this meeting was as accidental as it initially looked like. They make him wonder if the Emperor knows, if this is a trap or a test.
It doesn’t matter. Baoxiang has been dead for more than a year, and if wanting to hold the son he’s made is what kills him it will have been worth it. It might kill him regardless of what the Emperor does. “Please,” he says, and his voice sounds rough and strangled to his own ears. He sounds, he realizes with an edge of hysteria, like Ouyang had. Wanting and not wanting, tearing himself apart over it.
The baby is heavier than he expected, surprisingly muscular, twisting and turning in his arms like a cat. It takes a moment for Baoxiang to see his scowling little face, and once he does his heart throbs. He’d been prepared to see himself, or to see the Empress, but the Imperial Prince Zhu Di, at six months old, soft and round-cheeked and scowling, looks like he could be the son Esen never had.
After a new dynasty is established, Wang Baoxiang learns how to live again.
Series
- Part 1 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
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Esen-Temur's Foolproof Manual to Ghostly Cohabitation by Jinxed_Ink
Fandoms: The Radiant Emperor Series - Shelley Parker-Chan
26 Aug 2024
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Summary
“And then there’s the ghost,” the real estate agent said.
Right. Esen had been wondering when she’d get to that. He’d seen ghosts before, of course. A Qing dynasty scholar who’d died by suicide had haunted his undergrad dormitory. It’d been a category two haunting - a looper, repeating the scene of its death over and over, stepping on a long-gone stool and hanging itself from a length of silk that disappeared, swaying, into the rafters. This one didn’t do anything of the sort: it just stood there, immobile, in the middle of the living room. It would have looked kind of cool, actually, with gleaming armor and long, swaying hair that could have been right out of a historical drama, if it hadn’t been for its face.
In that it didn’t have one.
Series
- Part 2 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
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Galactic Sector Twelve, Eight Month, 2356 by Jinxed_Ink
Fandoms: The Radiant Emperor Series - Shelley Parker-Chan
27 Aug 2024
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Summary
“Your boyfriend’s on the holos again.” Baoxiang’s voice through the speakers was melodious, carefully modulated. A bit deeper than it had been the previous day, because he always liked to play around with it, the same way he played around with his avatar.
Esen pressed the button on his wristband to turn the nearest screen on, and then, only belatedly, as he navigated to a news channel, said, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Against his shoulder, the metal wall of The Iridescent Scholar warmed and began, gently, to vibrate. Baoxiang’s way of laughing, followed only a beat or two later by an audible laugh through the speakers. “Your celebrity crush, then.”
One day, in a thousand years, the pattern of the world brings General Ouyang and Esen-Temur together again.
Series
- Part 3 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
- Part 1 of Among the Stars
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Summary
The rules of Man’s Best Friend are simple: sixteen young, conventionally attractive women compete for the chance to marry a rich, conventionally attractive man. He decides who wins. His best friend decides who makes it to the finals.
The rules of the seasonal bet between the handlers on Man’s Best Friend are also simple: they all pick a contestant, and the one whose pick is eliminated first buys all the drinks until filming for the season wraps up.
“That doesn’t count!” Ma says, incensed. “He’s not even in the running. I should get to pick someone else.”
“Sorry, Teacher Ma,” Zhu says, not sounding very sorry at all, “the law is the law.”
Series
- Part 4 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
- Part 1 of Man's Best Friend
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To Love a Thing Undying by Jinxed_Ink
Fandoms: The Radiant Emperor Series - Shelley Parker-Chan
29 Aug 2024
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“Whatever,” The Third Prince said. “You’re just some provincial space station trash. How’s the sunlight feel? Is it how you’ve always imagined it?”
“No,” Baoxiang said. He tipped his head up, towards the sky. The first planet of the Khaganate had an atmosphere like the one of the old earth. A single star hovered in the sky, close enough to nurture, too far away to burn. A sun. Baoxiang had never seen one before. He looked straight at it, in a way no human ever could have done. “It’s nothing like the poems. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“Do you think I read poetry?” The Third Prince asked with a scoff. He was looking at the sun, too, but he was squinting, as though the light pained him. He was doing it wrong; his eyes were too open, and the rest of his face was too relaxed.
“You might as well stop pretending to be human,” Baoxiang said. “It won’t fool them, and it won’t make them love you.”
A sun, a moon, ten years, two conversations.
Series
- Part 5 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
- Part 2 of Among the Stars
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Summary
“You have snow in your hair.”
“Thank you, darling,” Esen said. He had paused in the doorway of their chambers, probably hesitating at the sight of the dry, pristine stretch of floor ahead of him. Then he shrugged and started stripping off out there on the patio. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Series
- Part 6 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
- Part 4 of Rivers and Mountains
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The Inevitability of It All by Jinxed_Ink
Fandoms: The Radiant Emperor Series - Shelley Parker-Chan
31 Aug 2024
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Summary
“I’m thirty years old. And now that dad…” he trails off. He doesn’t want to talk about their father. “I need to marry. I need an heir.”
“You’re not a medieval lord,” Baoxiang says. “I need an heir. Honestly. Can’t you just go clubbing or download a dating app like everyone else?”
“This will be faster,” Esen says, because it will be. “I’ll be engaged in less than six months. And it’ll be good publicity for the company.”
“Sure,” Baoxiang says, “the board and the shareholders will love the CEO being a show pony on World’s Most Homoerotic Heterosexual Dating Show.”
Series
- Part 7 of Radiant Emperor Week 2024
- Part 2 of Man's Best Friend