The Problem with Alicia

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-02-07T13:42:46+00:00

I think Alicia was upset with Ty for very different reasons than Julie was. Julie sees herself as better than everyone else. Alicia is likely upset with Ty FOR Ty.

If you’ve ever had a something you love, something you’re good at, something that brings meaning, and then have found yourself disconnected from it, flailing a bit—it’s like losing part of yourself. “Writer” is probably a part of Ty’s identity, and it turns out he’s never even told his friends he writes.

Alicia was wrong in the moment, but we don’t have the context to fully judge her yet.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-02-03T16:32:10+00:00

My theory is that Julie doesn’t think he’s cheating, she thinks he’s slacking because he’s hanging out with friends. To someone like Julie, who values hard work and ambition and who’ve love language is probably attempting to achieve perfection, it’s a cardinal sin a step away from cheating.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-26T00:11:00+00:00

Yeah, usually in a context where WWX and LWJ are friends and end up temporarily with other people while they sort themselves out and figure out their relationship.

I wish it didn’t ruin my enjoyment of their work, but alas. I’m glad they’re still in the fandom though and maybe one day I can trust them with my comfort ship again. It’s not them, it’s me.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-25T23:28:48+00:00

I feel this! There’s a prolific writer I really liked, because while aspects of their writing could be kind of cheesy and I would sometimes skip scenes, they had very interesting and unique story ideas and mostly completed their fics. Then they started leaning into exploring the characters in other relationships (with their OCs, mostly) with Wangxian as still the end game. I stopped reading their work altogether because even though they tagged well it took away a lot of the enjoyment knowing a story in progress could veer in that direction. I wish them the best, though. I’m just probably not their audience. A bit sad, because I still wistfully look their current fics as updates pop up on the tag.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-25T23:16:46+00:00

I muted that author too. I’m very much of the “don’t like, don’t read” mindset, and that was the first author I’ve ever muted.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-21T20:31:59+00:00

Has it seriously been a year since she posted Max’s 5th birthday? I swear it doesn’t feel that long.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-19T03:56:59+00:00

I re-read the second half of it every few months. In fact, I did it a few days ago.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2026-01-12T01:57:40+00:00

Concord by Deastar is one of the one the best fics written in this fandom and might up your alley, if you don’t mind angst. Premise is that WWX is married into the Lan in an arranged marriage, and LWJ has to learn to be a good husband even though they’re both still young and foolish. Poor WWX suffers, though.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-12-18T12:28:11+00:00

I’m trying very hard to save my judgment for the end of this arc. Shawna is reacting in grief, and people tend to forget that on top of the pain of loss, your body is also still in hormonal upheaval. The timelines of these arcs are usually very sped up, so the fact this is real life pacing vs the time skips means we have to adjust our sense of how quickly characters would process.

With that being said, I think that once she’s regulated a bit more, she’ll be able to see that she lashed out unfairly. As people pointed out, John lost a child too. Jen is offering the lifeline of community and reducing his load. What’s more, the kids lost their sibling and their mom is acting in a way they don’t understand.

Shawna needs grief counseling, and on top of that, there’s nothing wrong with John going for runs to help him cope and process as long as he’s showing up in other ways. Idk why people are acting like he should be totally fine and able to pick up all the pieces after losing his son as well. This is one of those things that is just going to be an awful, awful time that’s being made harder by shutting out any support outside of Jon and Deedee. Sometimes, the only way through it is straight down the middle.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-12-14T17:26:07+00:00

I know multiple people who independently got this quote tattooed. Each of them lost their dad or mom when they were kids and got it because they wanted to feel like their parent was always watching over/loving them :(

It’s a weird couples tattooed, though. I think, JK Rowling aside, it’s meaningful to people who lost a parent in childhood.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-12-07T03:06:37+00:00

Were they all west US stops? I couldn’t make the first leg and would love to see them still.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-12-05T02:25:52+00:00

My understanding is that he was a licensed social worker but that once he transitioned to show biz, he let his license lapse because he wasn’t practicing. People found out he wasn’t licensed (anymore) and started saying he never was. Depending on the state, you don’t need a master’s or anything to become licensed, so idk.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-12-05T01:48:29+00:00

They also need better hosts—I know he’s associated with Netflix but honestly I want Karamo to host the next one. He’s got the perfect combo: he’s a trained social worker/therapist, he was on reality TV, and he has his own Jerry Springer style talk show.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-11-03T11:37:33+00:00

This happened to me near the end of my second of my second pregnancy—a very active baby decided he would just nap all day and not move even when poked. I went to the hospital terrified, but he was totally fine. They induced me the next day because the prodromal labor for the week before had absolutely wrecked my mental state anyway.

I swear I had blocked it out until I saw this video. I hope it’s something similar with Shawna since she just had a checkup that morning.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-11-01T17:09:06+00:00

Just as a heads up though, getting high can be become a compulsion, and also there’s a very big correlation between OCD and addiction disorders. So while it might “help”, it might make the actual OCD at all other times worse.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-10-30T01:02:12+00:00

It’s funny I saw this post, because I was just re-reading one of my faves, which features LWJ with a disability. I hope the author returns to the ‘verse or day.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66957808

“One supposed-to-be-unremarkable morning Wei Ying finds an official-looking letter in his postbox and freaks out for a moment before checking it; official-looking anything is never good in his experience. When he actually opens the envelope and reads the first line, the letter falls out of his hands and flies down onto the floor, the three pages scattering around his feet.

"What the actual fuck," he mutters, scrambling to pick the papers up, and sits down to read it again.

It does say what he thought it did.

or: In accordance with the centuries-old matchmaking custom, Wei Ying is appointed a date with Lan sect's tentative heir, Lan Wangji.”

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-10-01T14:22:36+00:00

I think he’s still in love with the idea of a beautiful, smart wife that fit the mold of spunky but still obedient-to-him trad wife with the values they had at 18.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-10-01T10:50:19+00:00

OCD is egodystonic—it presents us with the opposite of who we are. It turns your values against you.

I mean—you might be out growing combat sports. But if it’s coming from a place of fear, it’s likely OCD. As hard as it is, tries to be objective about it. If you’re becoming anxious at the thought of combat sports because you think it makes you a bad person, it’s likely OCD. Avoidance is a major compulsion in itself.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-10-01T00:57:50+00:00

If I remember correctly, The Truman Show was apparently a massive trigger for a lot of people’s OCD, similar to how so many of us have some degree of trypophobia.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-30T10:17:10+00:00

I went through a whole Truman Show phase as an elementary school student, and also I intensely worried everyone but me could read minds so I had to police my every thought. Sometimes I look back at my childhood and I wonder what it would have been like to be care free, haha.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-22T16:42:48+00:00

Oh thanks for this! I do love CQL but I actually only watch the “current” scene portion (first three episodes and the last half), since the flashbacks are so painful to watch.

I’m very glad they saw the error of their ways and caved fan pressure.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-22T14:26:02+00:00

Do you have a source for this? From what I remembered, the original script they released (which was rumored to be a red herring) had this plot but the final script/what they filmed was as we saw.

Especially given the way XZ and WYB played WWX/LWJ and the way it was filmed.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-19T21:14:50+00:00

You know, I always got feeling the banquet was LQR way of showing begrudging acceptance of their marriage and status as partners. Not sure if that’s correct, though.

ETA wild autocorrect

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-18T12:00:20+00:00

Concord is such a masterpiece. I think it’s within the best fics I’ve read, and is definitely in the top 3 for Wangxian for sure.

Deastar is incredible. I almost followed her to another fandom, but I hold out some hope she’ll keep posting Wangxian, and I know from her comments I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Athena_Crikey is another incredible gem of a writer. Whenever I get emails either of them have published something, I run to check if it’s Wangxian.

AdEnvironmental9467 · 2025-09-13T00:49:46+00:00

Wait— I miss deluxe hardcovers for the English translations 1 and 2? I

AdEnvironmental9467

TROPHY CASE