Grayswandir's Tree

[kingstoken]

Username: Grayswandir (grayswandir)
AO3 Username: gothic_gray

Medium Likes:
❤️ Fanfiction (for any of my requested show/book canons) (...or any movie/drama featuring Andy Lau)
❤️ Icons (of Wang Yang)
❤️ Recs for Cantonese-language media — movies, (sad) music, books, audiobooks, or radio dramas (for "Hong Kong media" as a fandom)

❤️ General Likes: angst | hurt/comfort or hurt-no-comfort | dark themes | strained relationships | power imbalance | trauma | estrangement | isolation | drinking to cope | bad coping mechanisms in general | pining (mutual or not) | unhappy or bittersweet endings | happy endings are good too ;) | loyalty | trust | domestic moments | only one (bed, etc.) | platonic intimacy | preslash or ambiguous relationships | quiet slice-of-life | mission fic | worldbuilding | clothing | characters dressing or undressing | vivid imagery, scenery, objects, textures | unconventional formats | drabbles, ficlets, any length | (for media recs, any genre is good, but especially darker stuff like crime or psychological horror)

Medium DNWs:
❌ English-language audio media (music, podfic, etc.)
❌ art or manips
❌ RPF

❌ General DNWs: explicit sexual content or overt mention/description of sex organs or sex acts | non-canonical major character death or permanent mutilation (anything canonical is fine; near death, presumed dead, horrific nightmares etc. are all fine) | AU or major canon divergence (brief or minor divergence from canon is fine) | crossover or fusion with a different canon | characters using non-canon pet names like “baby,” “honey,” etc. | adult/child ships | major focus on ships with OCs | (these DNWs only apply to fanfic; for media recs I have no DNWs, any content is fine)

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Fandom: Hong Kong media

• Recs for Cantonese-language movies: I'd especially love recs for older iconic movies (anything all the way back to old black & white films), but also just literally anything you've enjoyed that I haven't seen (you can find a list of most of the HK movies I've watched here at my MyDramaList watchlist. I tend to prefer darker media (dramas, psychological thrillers, crime, etc.) over comedy or romance or fun action romps, but I'm willing to try anything. I like most of the major HK film stars of the 80s/90s and would be happy to see more of their work, and am also interested in seeing movies with actors I'm not familiar with yet. Any content/rating is fine. No spoilers please!

(To the person who recced me Flowers of Shanghai in Fandom Trees a while back, I have a copy now, I just haven't watched it yet! Ditto for most of the TV dramas that have been recced to me here in the past — they're on my watch list! I'm just slow at starting/finishing dramas. >_> BUT to anyone who has recced me movies elsewhere, e.g. on c_ent or in my journal, feel free to rec the same things again here! I may have forgotten!)

• Recs for (sad) Cantonese-language music: Rec me all your favorite dark/sad/angsty songs. Older or newer music/artists are both good. I probably don't need any recs for Andy Lau's stuff, as I'm already familiar with most of his work, but I've never delved that far into any other HK singers'/bands' discographies, so feel free to rec me songs by anyone else! :)

• Recs for Cantonese-language radio dramas or audiobooks: I’m using these for listening practice while learning Cantonese, and would love recs for anything you’ve enjoyed. I especially like darker media (crime stories, horror, dramas with dark themes), or things that are sort of philosophical or arty, or anything with voice-acting by major HK stars of the 80s/90s. But seriously any recs would be appreciated! Any content is fine, no warnings necessary. :)

• Recs for books or comics in written Cantonese: I read a couple of Cantonese/粵文 novels a few years ago as a way to get more language practice, and I really enjoyed it. The books I read were suspense/horror/sci-fi web novels, and I'd love more of any of that, but I'd be interested in other genres as well. Any content is fine, no need for warnings, and no plot spoilers please! :)

• Talk to me about Andy Lau: I don't even know if this is a legitimate Fandom Trees request, but I'm trying it out anyway. ;) Literally just leave me a comment about any Andy Lau movie you've liked him in, or any of his songs you like, or picspam me with some photos of him that you like and I will be delighted. :D

Or if there are any movies of his that you'd be interested in writing fic about (avoiding my DNWs), feel free to gift it to me. Yes, literally any movie. XD (Drabbles are great, worldbuilding or slice-of-life or missing scenes are great, plotty fic is great. Genfic is great for any canon, and I'm also cool with any canonical ships, or basically any m/m ships that canon makes even remotely plausible.)

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Fandom: 鹿鼎記 | The Deer and the Cauldron – Jin Yong

Mediums: Fanfiction

Characters: Wei Xiaobao, Kangxi Emperor

Prompts: I’d love pretty much anything about these two, or either of them separately. Hurt/comfort, general shenanigans around the palace complex, Wei Xiaobao corrupting the Emperor with forbidden amusements, wrestling scenes, faux-historical documents. Gen, slash, or ambiguous relationships are all good.

For more specific prompts and a lot more rambling, check out my Yuletide letter!

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Fandom: 鹿鼎記 | The Duke of Mount Deer (TVB 1984)

Mediums: Fanfiction

Characters: Wai Siu-Bou, Hong-Hei Emperor

Prompts: I'd love anything about either character or both. Hurt/comfort, general sneaking-around-the-palace shenanigans, excursions out of the Forbidden City, post-canon reunions, sparring-room scenes, arguments, mutual or one-sided pining. Gen, slash, or ambiguous relationships are all good.

For more specific prompts and a lot more rambling, check out my Yuletide letter!

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Fandom: 老洞 | The Old Miao Myth (1983)

Mediums: Fanfiction

Characters: any

Prompts: I'd love to see fanfic about any characters from this series! In exchanges I usually request Tse Seung-cho and Jin Bong, and obviously I'd still love fic about them, but for real please write me fic about literally any character(s) from this show — any member of the Tse family, their chauffeur, Dr. Ha, the French Consul's irritable secretary, Sou Sam's parents — truly I will be delighted with anything. Backstory, domestic moments, angst, hurt/comfort, late-night conversations, drinking scenes, spending the night, arguments, confessions, betrayals. Dark content and unhappy endings are fine!

For more specific prompts for Tse Seung-cho and Jin Bong (and a lot more general rambling), check out my Yuletide letter!

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Fandom:叛逆者 | The Rebel (TV 2021)

Mediums: Fanfiction

Characters: Chen Moqun, Gu Shenyan, Wang Shi’an

Prompts: I'd really just love to see more fic about any of these characters — whatever you're up for writing. Any of them solo, or interacting with each other in any configuration, at any point in canon or pre-canon. Chen Moqun &/ Lin Nansheng is also great, or I'd also be interested in an exploration of whatever was going on with Chen Moqun and Meng Annan. (Feel free to interpret any of these relationships however you like; ship or gen or any level of UST or conflicted fascination/respect/antagonism are all good.)

I love the setting of this show — the sets and costumes and props and cinematography are just stunning — and especially in the early episodes, I love all the spy drama stuff with everyone quietly scheming against and suspecting and investigating and trying to out-maneuver one another. The cat-and-mouse games between Chen Moqun and Gu Shenyan early on, and the ever-shifting relations of antagonism and strained civility between Chen Moqun and Wang Shi'an, are some of my favorite elements of the show, along with, of course, the extreme emotional intensity and weirdly mingled gentleness and aggression in the relationship between Chen Moqun and Lin Nansheng. And Chen Moqun's life just getting destroyed over and over again.

I'd be interested to just see any interaction among any of these characters as seen through the eyes of one of the others. What does Gu Shenyan think of Wang Shi'an? How does Wang Shi'an feel about Chen Moqun? What were Gu Shenyan and Chen Moqun's relations like before they both came to work at the Bureau? What were either of them like when they were younger? Basically if you're interested in any of these characters, please take this as an invitation to write whatever you want about them. :)

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Fandom: 盗墓笔记重启 | The Lost Tomb Reboot (TV)

Pairings: Wu Xie & Wang Pangzi, Wu Xie & Wang Pangzi & Xiaoge

Prompts: I love all the dark underground tomb exploration stuff on this show, dangerous ancient traps and mechanisms, possibly-haunted artifacts, psychological horror, labyrinths, thunder and rain, rescue missions, competence porn, etc., and would be delighted with Tomb Shenanigans in any form. :D Mission fic, or a spooky drabble in a rainstorm, or some quiet shared moment in the van on the way back from a tomb raid, or someone saving Wu Xie from his usual indifference to self-preservation...

I'd prefer no shipfic for this fandom, but I love the Iron Triangle and platonic OT3 vibes are great. Hurt/comfort is also great. All the domestic stuff at Wushanju and during the Warehouse 11 sequence, Pangzi putting blankets on Wu Xie, carrying him, both of them sleeping against each other’s shoulders all the damn time, canonical Iron Triangle huddling for warmth, etc. For additional or background characters, I'm quite fond of pretty much everyone who ended up on Wu Xie's haphazardly-assembled team(s) in S2. Horror vibes welcome! Ghosts, possession, cursed objects, uncanny sea monsters, etc...

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Fandom: Wang Yang

Characters: For this request I'm mainly thinking of non-character promo photos etc., but I've seen most of his shows and would also be interested in icons of him in-character in any of them :) (except The Rebel because I already got a bunch of icons for that one when I requested it here before!)

(You can find screencaps of a bunch of his shows at my journal under my Wang Yang tag. [The image links might currently be broken for some reason — if so, apologies, I'll check into it and work on getting them fixed!])

Prompts: I got some lovely Chen Moqun icons here a few years back and would love some more Wang Yang icons that are not all Chen Moqun. ;D Whatever you want to do — any kind of theme or mood(s) are great.

(I think my only significant preference is that I'd prefer either no text or Chinese text. Text emojis like <3 or :D are fine, though! :)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I hope this is the correct Wang Yang, OP - your image links are broken so I couldn't see the screenshots and I was picking my way through the C-drama listings! 😅

[grayswandir]

Yes, this is the correct Wang Yang! :D And the icons are lovely, thank you so much. I especially like the second and third ones with the black jacket. Saving them for future use! Thank you for hunting down the photos and making icons for me! <3

(And agh, sorry about the image links! I was hoping they might only be broken for me due to some kind of geoblocking or something, because they were all working when I originally posted them, and they still work just fine if I open them in a separate tab... they just won't load on Dreamwidth anymore for some reason. :( I'll have to try to solve this so all my old image posts stop being broken...)

[mumblemumble]

I must have mentioned this to you already, so it won't come as a huge surprise, but the first Andy Lau movie I watched was Infernal Affairs, and it left such an impression on me that I never want to watch it again. 😅 The tragedy of it all! My heart is too squishy for this much tragedy. At the time, I was very moved by Tony Leung's character especially (and I was very into spy/handler relationships, so his whole deal with Superintendent Wong was 👌), but also I thought Andy Lau was the most handsome man ever.

I watched a few more Hong Kong movies with my friend after that, but I can only recall Hard Boiled right now. I think my friend introduced me to them. I checked my bookmarks; someone wrote an Infernal Affairs fic for me while I was obsessed with the movie, and the fic was posted in 2011, so I guess that's how long ago it was. And now, completely unrelatedly, I've been to Hong Kong! After paying another visit to said friend in Singapore. Fandom is amazing! <3

Also, it was amazing to me at the time that one of the main actors in a movie would then also sing the theme song? Now, of course, all the blorbos in my fandoms can act and sing and do little TikTok dances on command, so. NORMAL! But wow, I listened to 自作自受 so much at the time. Listening to it again right now, and it's still such a pretty song!

Now, as your present! You get to rec me 3-5 more Andy Lau songs. 😄 I love a ballad, for the record. Maybe also a duet? Go with your heart! And thank you!

[grayswandir]

You get to rec me 3-5 more Andy Lau songs.

Aaaa, this is such a lovely gift! <3 And actually your comment was even more of a gift than you probably thought, because I was not familiar with 自作自受 and had to go look it up! (I mean, it's the theme to Infernal Affairs III so I've definitely heard it before, but it was apparently only released on a best-of collection, not a regular album, and I have not yet started trying to acquire all of his many best-of collections.) So now I get a new song, too. :D

And, hah, this also meant I was a bit surprised at first by your comment about "one" of the main actors in Infernal Affairs singing the theme song, because the song I do know is the theme song to the first Infernal Affairs movie, which isn't just one of them — it's a duet between Andy Lau and Tony Leung! Since you mentioned duets, and you also like Tony Leung, I should probably rec you that one. ;) They recorded it in both Cantonese and Mandarin, so I'll rec the Canto one but add a link to the other version as well. (The music is identical, but the lyrics are different and the vocal arrangements are reversed; Andy Lau sings first on the Canto one, Tony Leung on the Mandarin one.)

(You were well ahead of me on watching this movie, by the way! I didn't see it until late 2016. I think when I first watched it, I enjoyed both actors equally — honestly the whole cast does amazing work, so Andy Lau didn't even stand out to me that much until some months later when I ran across him again.)

Now, of course, all the blorbos in my fandoms can act and sing and do little TikTok dances on command, so. NORMAL!

LOL, yes, it's funny how this has become just the normal expected thing for me too. Even the actors who have since decided they hate singing/dancing have at least tried it (and were usually pretty good at it, too).

Okay so here are some recs! (If you prefer just three recs, you can take the first three, or pick three at random. ;)

無間道 | "Endless Road" (3:25) - Infernal Affairs theme song, Cantonese version (Mandarin version here)

一起走過的日子 | "The Days We Passed Together" (3:56) – one of his most famous/iconic songs, so you may have run across it before, but I'll include it as a rec since it's also one of my favorites

情緣等足一輩子 | "Willing to Wait a Lifetime For You" (4:10) – sad ballad <3 (he does a lot of sad ballads and I love basically all of them, but I do particularly like the instrumentation on this one)

夜茫茫 | "Vast Night" (4:06) – something less ballad-y, for variety

我的心只可容納你 | "My Heart Holds Only You" (4:19) (Mandarin) – another love song ballad, but not sad

Thank you for the lovely comment and for giving me an excuse to go scroll through my music collection. <3 And a reason to click around YouTube, which I rarely do! (In the process I stumbled across what looks like a whole concert video I've never seen before... going to go check that out later!)

[mumblemumble]

Oh gosh. See it was that long ago, I had zero recollection of which theme song went where, only that I had put 自作自受 in a playlist at some point. And oh yeah, it was indeed on a Best Of album!

so Andy Lau didn't even stand out to me that much until some months later when I ran across him again.

And the rest, as they say, is history. 😁

I wasn't familiar with 一起走過的日子, but now that I've looked up the lyrics, oof! 😢 Very "c-drama montage of lost love" vibes. Which I always enjoy.

夜茫茫 was super lovely to listen to, although I can't put my finger on what makes it different from the rest. Does it have a more traditional instrumentation?

I enjoyed all of these, thank you! <3 我的心只可容納你 wasn't available to me, alas. How about something from the last concert you went to, if you'd like?

(And I'm glad there were some hidden gifts in my comment, also in the form of YouTube surprises. 😄)

[grayswandir]

now that I've looked up the lyrics

Oh good, this is actually a very nice translation! I was worried for a second, because there's another "translation" of this song somewhere on YouTube that's like, someone wrote their own rhyming English poem to the tune of the song, but it has nothing to do with the original lyrics. XD But the one you found is good!

I can't put my finger on what makes it different from the rest.

...You know, I think this was partly me having a misunderstanding of the word "ballad" in pop-music contexts, because I've always thought of it as referring to power-ballad type songs that start off slow/quiet and build up to big, dramatic orchestration, often with a dramatic instrumental bridge. Per Wikipedia's definition of a pop ballad, though, I guess all of these except the duet are ballads! I was mostly just comparing the fourth song to the other two I had sandwiched it between, which are more power-ballad-y.

How about something from the last concert you went to, if you'd like?

He actually performed both the Infernal Affairs theme song and the one you found the lyrics to at the show in August! But since you're offering, I'll link you to one more sad ballad. :) This is one of his popular Mandarin songs: 冰雨 | Ice Rain (or alternatively, a live version where he gets very wet :D).

I'll give you the lyrics since you looked up the other one:

冰雨 | Ice Rain

我是在等待一個女孩
I'm waiting for a girl
還是在等待沈淪苦海
Still waiting, submerged in a sea of misery
一段情默默灌溉
A love silently watered
沒有人去管花謝花開
Without anyone caring whether the flowers wither or bloom
無法肯定的愛
Love without certainty
左右搖擺
Wavers this way and that
只好把心酸往深心裡塞
All I can do is stop up the heartache deep inside

我是在等待妳的回來
I'm waiting for you to come back
難道只換回一句活該
Will I get nothing in return but "It served you right?"
一個人靜靜發呆
Alone, I stare silently into space
兩個人卻有不同無奈
The two of us have different difficulties
好好的一份愛啊怎麼會慢慢變壞
How could such a good love slowly fall apart?

冷冷的冰雨在臉上胡亂的拍
Cold ice rain strikes me in the face
暖暖的眼淚跟寒雨混成一塊
Warm tears mingle with the freezing rain
眼前的色彩忽然被掩蓋
The colors before me suddenly become obscured
妳的影子無情在身邊徘徊
Your shadow mercilessly hovers beside me
妳就像一個劊子手把我出賣
Like an executioner, you've betrayed me
我的心彷彿被剌刀狠狠地宰
As if my heart were brutally stabbed with a bayonet
懸崖上的愛
Love at the edge of a precipice
誰會願意接受最痛的意外
Who would willingly accept the most painful outcome?

[repeat verses 2, 3, 3]

懸崖上的愛
Love at the edge of a precipice
誰會敢去採
Who would dare to go and pluck it?
還是願意接受最痛的意外
Still I'm willing to accept the most painful outcome
最愛的女孩
My most beloved

[repeat]

[mumblemumble]

Belated, but OH YES PERFECT. Love a sad ballad. Let's check out this live version, surely he's not gonna get actually wet on stage-- hmm, are they just carefully putting a spray of water around him, I guess that would be-- HE IS SOAKING WET OH MY GOD. Just taking a full shower in front of an audience!!! While singing. The pushing-his-hair-back move is so hot, omg Andy. 🫣

Amazing, thank you.

[grayswandir]

XD I won't throw any more links at you, but the other great thing is he doesn't even go backstage to dry off after the onstage shower. Someone brings him a towel and he dries off and changes shirts while singing the next song. Excellent fanservice all around. XD