Pocketful of Soul

This fanfic was part of Fandom Trumps Hate, and @fencesit helped support the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.

If you enjoy this fic, please consider also supporting either the TLDEF or one of the many organizations supporting refugees from Ukraine. My own grandfather was a refugee from Ukraine about a hundred years ago, so this is close to my heart.

I normally write about 1k for every $5-10 donation. This was a larger than usual donation, but nowhere near that level (by my choice,) so I’d love to see more money donated if you are so moved and are able. If you do donate, please let me know via private message on Twitter or Tumblr (I check them often. If you know who I am on Facebook, I check that often, too. I do not check insta or dreamwidth on the regular.) See this page for more specific donation possibilities. Let me know if you want me to consider the donation as a contribution to the story or to more art.

Despite the bid being for something in the 10-20k range, I loved the prompt so much that I decided to go all out. The prompt was so meaty, y’all… I couldn’t resist writing the full thing, even though I’d have met my obligation from the notes alone. I began writing in early March of 2022, and as of mid-April was at well over 100k words. At the end of May, this was rough-draft complete, and 176376 words according to Google Docs, which does not including any of the appendices. The final count will probably be a little off from that, but including the appendices, this is over 180k.

Fencesit wrote:

The two fics I've wanted the most since I watched The Untamed is a fic where A) someone is trapped in a time loop or using time travel over and over again and having a LOT of trouble getting a satisfactory end result because every time they turn around they're stumbling over some new, horrible secret or unforseen problem and B) Qin Su gets a better ending because damn she got a rough deal

Qin Su as the time traveler would be great, but I don't have my heart set on it, nor am I even dying for the whole fic to be about her -- literally just a fic where she's got a good scene or two would be so wonderful.

In terms of shipping and other content, I'm not interested in sex scenes but I don't otherwise have any ship preferences. I thought WWX/LQG/WQ worked super well, so although I'm not looking for a fic set in the time charm universe I'm totally down if you want to write more of that ship!

I haven't consumed the MDZS novel or the cartoon so I would prefer something mostly CQL focused, but the worldbuilding and timeline and everything you used for Time Charm really worked for me, so I doubt that that will be a problem. The only characters I'm not interested in are Xue Yang, Xiao Xingchen, and Song Lan.

Excerpt from exchange letter about why I want a fic about "Time Loop Where Character Makes Things Worse Before Making Them Better" for The Untamed:

Oh my god the potential. The POTENTIAL. I want to see characters making things worse because A) they just have character flaws that make it inevitable before they have some character growth and/or B) they don't understand what the fuck is going on with, like, Meng Yao's various plots and/or C) they don't understand the people they're trying to help. I want to see the character start out thinking "Okay, that first time around was bad, but if I just—" and then there's no simple fix because everything is terrible in so many ways, so they have to change their whole approach in order to actually achieve a fixit!

Per my DNW section, please feel free to adjust what you think "making them better" means for each character based on their own POV — I don't need absolutely every character in the fandom to have a happy ending as long as the time looping POV character thinks it's a good ending.

Related to the above: I also have explanations about why I think this set up would be neat with several characters including Qin Su, Lan Qiren, Jin Zixuan, and so on.

I couldn’t quite get my mind around Qin Su as the time traveling character, but the minute I said “What if Mo Xuanyu did time travel instead of sacrifice summon?” we were off to the races.

Other donations provided in support of this fic:

@cesy on Tumblr donated to TLDEF as well! Thank you!

"Stop, I need to look at that." Digital manipulation and digital art by Jenrose

Wei Wuxian's faulty time travel talisman, art by Jenrose

The bloody time travel talisman. Art by Jenrose

Mo Xuanyu's first time travel talisman. Digital art by Jenrose, using a variety of fonts from 1001freefonts.com.

There's a list of the font and Chinese character generator sites elsewhere on this page.

Content advisory:

This story does not contain sex.

It does, however, contain the Wangxian speedrun at three different ages, which means they are under 18 when they get married the last two times. It is not implied that they immediately start banging in those timelines.

If the very notion that two teenagers of similar age might possibly be interested in sexual activity bothers you, this probably isn’t going to be comfortable for you. It is not, however, presented in a way which I would be uncomfortable describing as YA, and is, in fact, far less explicit than the first story of Time Charm by a significant margin, and that one wasn’t all that explicit.

Whole papers could be written on Lan Wangji’s improved level of self control having not been deprived of Wei Wuxian for 13/16 years. But it’s not their story, and they’re not doing anything rated higher than PG in front of the viewpoint characters.

The story also contains a queerplatonic relationship in which one of the partners time travels to a young age, but the relationship is clearly explained to have literally never been sexual. If queerplatonic relationships confuse you, this is probably not the right story for you, and you might want to go educate yourself about it. The younger partner does occasionally talk obliquely about adult matters, but it is clear in context that his mind is closer to thirty than seven, and I’m writing him as a-spec with a heaping helping of genderfluidity. His relationship is more about the genderfluidity than the sexuality.

Trigger Warnings (with heavy spoilers)

Canon typical EVERYTHING. Especially suicidality. Mo Xuanyu is shown in a deep depressive/grieving state of the sort that would end in Sacrifice Summon without the presence of a time travel talisman.

Lots of people die temporarily. A few of them that we don’t like die permanently. One character commits an act of self-sacrifice which costs him his life, permanently, but honestly, it’s fine.

There’s a whole lot of shitty parenting going on in here, which gradually improves in some areas. Jin Guangshan is a homophobic philandering rapist asshole. That doesn’t change.

Yu Ziyuan improves once she enters the picture and has things explained to her. She’s still herself, just redirected to more productive ends.

Lan Qiren, likewise improves when he has more information.

I did not write Qingheng-Jun into this because he sucks. In one version of CQL they talk about him having already died when the lecture series starts, and I went with that because he’s just terrible in a particularly boring awful way, and I didn’t want to deal with him, like, at all. His story comes up but even his kids refer to him by his title. (I once asked Sami if she'd named him and she was like, "lol, no he sucks." I don't think I named him in Time Charm either, even though he WAS in that.)

Mo Xuanyu’s mother takes some severe talking to in order for her to stop being 100% focused on image, prestige, and what Mo Xuanyu means to her potential status.

Mo-Furen gets less dire the farther back we get, and it’s explained in story, that the older her son got, the more she saw Mo Xuanyu as a threat to her son’s status and started doing everything she could to tear him down. Early on, he’s her nephew, and she cares when he’s ill, and sees his potential connection to Jin Guangshan as a positive, but also Jin Guangshan is a child- molesting asshole who diddled her sister but she doesn’t have any power whatsoever about going against a powerful sect leader, so she compartmentalizes it. This is not an apology for Mo-Furen. She survives the story, and that’s basically all I give her.

Unfortunately, Madam Lan’s story is worse here than it was implied to be in canon, because I needed her to have a sister in the Dafan Wen. The story is similar to but not identical to Sami’s short about Lan Qiren in Paper Moons.

The story contains canon-typical mentions of sexual assault, rape, incest, murder, family murder, clan murder. Several attempted and actual murders happen “on screen” but no sexual assaults do. Jiggy gonna Jiggy when he’s backed into a corner.

Some people die in some timelines who do not die in canon, including major characters. All the major protagonists survive, ultimately.

There are mentions of pregnancy loss, abortion, death in childbirth, loss of spouse, loss of parent, loss of child.

There are anxiety attacks and PTSD symptoms.

Several people who had redemption arcs in Time Charm do not survive.

There are curses and talismans used which alter perception and memory and self control, about on the level of the control talisman where Wei Wuxian makes Lan Wangji drink in the drama, for the most part, but refined. It’s a kind of industrial- grade gaslighting which is primarily used in extremis to avoid worse things.

Wen Qing is an inherently practical, morally gray character and she will protect her family by whatever means she deems necessary, and we love her for it. She looks at the trolley problem and pulls the switch without hesitation because there's ten thousand people on one track and like maybe ten she doesn't like on the other.

Excessive amounts of plot-convenient merging of physics and cultivation theory are used in potentially implausible ways. I figure if you can go for fierce corpses, soul summoning, and qiankun pouches, nothing I do to the magic system is really going to be weirder, and I try to keep it internally consistent, while ignoring things like mass/energy are not as easily separated as all that. I figure if qiankun pouches exist, then FTL is therefore possible in the story universe and therefore time travel is a logical extension, as long as you don’t get messy and try to, IDK, push an entire human body into the past, Nie Huaisang what were you thinking?

Provided for your amusement, or if you thought something didn't sound right.

Family tree

The family tree is kinda spoilery but fun to poke around in.

Assumptions about/tweaks of canon which do not spoil the story:

1. Mo Xuanyu was about 24 when he cast Sacrifice Summon. His mother was 16 when he was born.
2. Mo Xuanyu went to Koi Tower at about age 14, which would have been 2 years after WWX died, and stayed until just after Jin Guangshan’s death, when Jin Guangyao kicked him out, say, five-ish years later. That’s the point at which this story diverges, when JGY kicks him out.
3. Wei Wuxian was 15 when he met Lan Wangji for the first time.
4. I know CQL has a funky, compressed timeline, and I don’t like it, so in this world, they started at Gusu in mid August when Wei Wuxian was 15, and ended just after Qixi when he was 16. Gusu lectures lasted a year, we just didn’t see the many boring parts. (As a parent I have a lot easier time seeing Jiang Fengmian being willing for Wei Wuxian to go haring off at 16 than at 15. I, also would give a 16 yo more latitude.)
5. They wandered around looking for pieces parts for weeks, not days.
6. Burning of Cloud Recesses 6 weeks after classes originally. (So, mid- October)
7. Indoctrination 1 week later.
8. Indoctrination lasted longer.
9. Xuanwu killed just after Wei Wuxian turned 17. He was at Lotus Pier for the last harvest before the Lotus Pier massacre.
10. He was 17 in the Burial Mounds, when Sunshot started, circa December.
11. Sunshot lasted until the following August.
12. There was a month between the end of Sunshot and the autumn Phoenix Mountain hunt, which precipitated the Burial Mounds arc, so Wei Wuxian turns 18 right around that time.
13. It is a month before Jiang Wanyin shows up.
14. It is a number of months before Lan Wangji goes to Yiling the first time.
15. Wei Wuxian was around 20 years old when he died at Nightless City, a la CQL.
16. 13 years passed between Nightless City and the point at which Mo Xuanyu was driven to action, so at that point in this story, Lan Wangji is about 33 and Mo Xuanyu is 24.
17. Xue Yang is basically as he appears in CQL. He gets very little on-screen time in this.
18. I’ve made some assumptions about where places are. If you think I’m wrong, just consider this an AU where those places are where I think they are. I spent way too much time trying to find more information.
19. Mo Village is an in-between place, on the road between Lanling Jin and Qishan Wen. They are close enough to Gusu Lan to send for help to them, but who they actually “belong” to is irrelevant most of the time. They were a stopover place for Jin Guangshan when he was cozying up to Wen Ruohan.
20. Dafan Mountain is not very far from Mo Village, say, 20 miles, tops, but Dafan Mountain is NOT on the main road, and Mo Village is.
21. Yiling is between Qishan and Yunmeng, on the border of Yunmeng and closer to Lotus Pier than Nightless City, but close enough to Nightless City to be readily accessible. It is at least 60 miles+ from Mo Village, and the roads are not very direct.
22. I’m going to say that they were too cheap to hire a baby actor for Wen Yuan, and say he was a fat baby, not-quite-toddler when we first saw him at Dafan Wen with the first dancing goddess incident when the boys are 16/17. In Time Charm, in the new timeline, they were 18-ish when Wei Yuan was born. In this case, his mother is already pregnant in the earliest timeline, and he is born when they are both 16. Lan Wangji turns 17 shortly after his birth.
23. The CQL timeline is somewhat compressed compared to the book. WWX was at most 20 when he died in the show, if you REALLY push it, and he was 20 when he went into the Burial Mounds in the book, and died several years later. It matters kind of a lot in a time travel story, and this is more strongly CQL-based, and CQL is notoriously bad for specific ages, so we’re going to take a rough order-of-events from the book and compress it to a plausible CQL-ish timeline where we can. This basically means the things that happened before WWX died were compressed. But it’s 13 years from death to Mo Xuanyu taking action, because otherwise things get very weird with Mo Xuanyu’s age. This is different from Time Charm, where Mo Xuanyu is Sir Not Appearing In This Film and so I can get away with the 16 year thing and thus his mother is actually younger in that story than she is in this relative to Wangxian.
24. There are a couple of places where the order of events does not quite match either the book or the show, this is an AU in which things happen in the order I say they do. (For example, Nie Mingjue’s death relative to other things, and when Mo Xuanyu came to Jinlintai compared to when Jin Guangyao got married.)

I have named many unnamed characters. Some of those names I borrowed (with permission) from Sami’s And Time Is But a Paper Moon and sequels. Specifically, Lan Wangji’s mother is Tang Lijuan (and her backstory is assumed to be similar to Sami’s Coming Up With Love (But It's So Slashed And Torn.)  Jin Zixuan’s mother, likewise, is Duan Ai.

Names I didn’t borrow but invented from name lists: Second Young Lady Mo is Mo Xiuying, her mother is a servant, Liu Yun, not Madam Mo’s mother, hence some of the family tension.

Popo had six kids, and by the time of the story, all but two of them are dead. All of her grandchildren call her Popo, even if she’s technically Nainai for some of them, because Wen Qing had extremely strong opinions as a toddler and everyone just went with it because the Dafan Wen are just cool like that.

Wen Qing’s parents are both Wen. Her grandfather on her father’s side was Qishan Wen. Either he trained with the Dafan Wen and defected to marry into the Dafan Wen. The Dafan Wen have a common ancestor with the Qishan Wen who predates Wen Mao, so there isn’t a consanguinity issue. It was still a scandal, because her father was technically in the line of succession until he married out.

Wen Popo was actually Gao-furen for a long time but when she started having grandbabies and her husband died, she stopped letting anyone call her anything but Popo or Wen Popo if they really needed to differentiate her from another popo.

Mo Xiuying got pregnant when WWX and LWJ were 7-ish, Zixuan and Meng Yao were 9. Jin Guangshan kept visiting the village until MXY was about 4 years old, when JZX was 14 and LWJ was 12.

When Wangxian met, MXY was 7. (LWJ 16, WWX 15)

Sunshot happened through age 10. (WWX 17, LWJ 18)

WWX went to the Burial Mounds when MXY was 10, and Nightless City happened when he was 12.

Birthdays mostly as per wiki, Mo Xuanyu born March something. See spreadsheet for relative ages:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cA8u4hqg_jMShYw37jaGlM1Af2PdO36i7vtbGIsx8ik/edit?usp=sharing

Most of the Chinese in this story is in terms of address, familial and sect relationships, especially those that don’t translate cleanly into English. I don’t speak Chinese, this has been heavily gleaned from a variety of sources. Specifically:

Yabla Pinyin Chinese-English dictionary  This is what I used to crosscheck things from Google Translate and name lists of questionable accuracy.

The MDZS Fandom site

Italki list of Chinese Family Relationships

A guide to commonly used honorifics in 魔道祖师/The Untamed

Reference for Modao Zushi Writers: Chinese terms

Wikipedia article on Chinese Kinship

Chinese Name Tools

Commonly used ones include:

Xiongzhang: older brother (respectful) This is what Lan Wangji often calls Lan Xichen in the Untamed.
Gege: older brother (affectionate, general, not necessarily family) -xiong can be a respectful address for older brothers or male close friends. Wei-xiong, shixiong, for example. (Shi=sect, xiong=older brother)
___-ge (Xichen-ge, da-ge, er-ge, san-ge): affectionate older brother, biological, sworn or just informal/close relationship. The “e” is a full schwa, like “uh”, so sounds more like “guh” than anything, which ends up sounding very cute, especially when little A-Yuan says gege. It’s almost a diphthong, like gu-ah, but quite fast, unless the person saying it is whining. “Da-guuuahhh”
Didi: little brother. -di can be tacked onto a name, it’s affectionate and maybe be used to assert an age difference, and is not always indicative of a biological bond. Shidi, for example, shi=sect, di=little brother.

Xiandu: Chief cultivator, i.e. Wen Ruohan->Jin Guangshan->Jin Guangyao->Hanguang-Jun in CQL canon.
Zongzhu: clan leader
Shao-zongzhu: heir to the clan leader, literally “young clan leader”
-furen: Madam/Mrs., respectful address for an adult woman, assumed married. Can be lastname-furen or clan-furen, this varies in canon, with Jin-furen and Lan-furen who would absolutely not have the last name Jin or Lan, or Yu-furen. Jin-furen is still Duan Ai, and could theoretically be Duan-furen. Furen with no name attached to it is more of a generic, “Ma’am”.
Daifu: doctor

BabaDiedie appears at least once, and is a play on the tendency for Chinese to squash the relevant terms together for broader descriptive terms for relatives. BabaMama=parents. Bama ALSO equals parents, but for people who call their parents Ba and Ma rather than Baba and Mama. Siblings is xiongdijuimei, which is just a mashup of older brother, younger brother, older sister, younger sister. In Time Charm, I referred to Wangxian’s two moms as Nananainai for similar reasons. This tends to show up with small children the most, because in adult conversations I am more prone to just use parents. With children speaking or parents speaking to children, the cuter term is going to happen.

For familial relationships, I relied on a combination of Wikipedia, Italki, and a couple other sites.

Some which may be less familiar:

Saozi: Sister-in-law, specifically older brother’s wife. i.e. Jiang Yanli’s relationship to Mo Xuanyu.
Guzi: Husband’s sister, also sister-in-law, also Jiang Yanli, but in relationship to Lan Wangji.

Jiuma: Aunt, father’s younger brother’s wife. Tang Mingxi in relationship to Wen Qing.
Ayi: Auntie (generic) and mother’s sisters. Tang Mingxi for the Twin Jades.
Sanjiu: third younger maternal uncle. (San=3, jiu=maternal uncle, much as shu=paternal younger uncle.)

Yima: Aunt, Mother’s older sister. Mo-furen for Mo Xuanyu.

Zhizi: nephew. Jin Ling, usually.
Ershu, sanshu, sishu: second, third, fourth uncle, on the father’s side, younger.

Bofu/Bobo: uncle: father’s older brother

Tang-ge=older male cousin (Wen Ning for Wen Yuan and Wen Juan)

Shuzufu=Paternal grandfather’s younger brother (formal) Shu: father’s younger brother, zu: grand, fu: father. In this story, Wen Ruohan’s relationship to Wen Qing.

Tianzumu: Literally God-grandmother, but technically great-great-great grandmother. The Jiang trio’s, in this case.

Jiangjun: General (military rank). Specifically Wen Juncai. He is also Shifu for certain proteges, and shixiong for Wen Andu.

Others:

Dimo is the thin reed membrane that goes inside a dizi, a traditional horizontal flute, in order to give it the characteristic buzz of the instrument.

A matong is a Chinese version of a chamber pot. Yes, I looked this up for the Time Charm series, and now know much more than I ever wanted to about ancient practices regarding “night soil”.

Shichen: 2 hours
Half a shichen: 1 hour

Shimo is graphite, which can be used in inkmaking. Graphite is conductive—you can draw circuits with it.

Siheyuan is a traditional home design for extended families, built around courtyards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan  If I say house, think the Jingshi. If I say siheyuan, think something quite a bit larger, with one or more courtyards in the middle. If I say cottage or hut, it’s probably just one or two rooms, and not spacious, no courtyard.

Reminder that Zi Zhizhu is Yu Ziyuan’s title: Violet Spider.

Wei Chanyu— Mo Xuanyu’s femme alterego

Qishan Wen

Wen Andu (安都): Wen Ruohan’s distant cousin, age about 41. A general, but not the top one.

Wen Sengbian (僧辯), courtesy Juncai (君才): Born with another surname, was awarded the Wen surname and the courtesy name by Wen Ruohan when he was pegged for top general.  Age 43 (i.e. Lan Qiren’s cohort)

Fa Xingjian (兴建): Age 35, Wen Juncai’s second.

Cui(崔) Huoshan (火山)— resident vulcanologist in Qishan.

Wen Ruochen (若晨)  — (is not alive, but is the father of Wen Ruohan and is Wen Qing’s great-grandfather.)

Wen Ruoshen— Wen Ruohan’s older brother, Wen Rhochen’s first son, Wen Qing’s grandfather.  Also dead.

Dafan Wen

Tang Mingxi (明喜) — 25

Wen Zemin (泽民) is Wen Qing and Wen Ning’s father. His father, Wen Ruoshen (若神) was Wen Ruohan’s older brother, but when Wen Zemin married out into the Dafan Wen, and Wen Ruoshen was about to take a new wife to ensure his lineage within the Qishan Wen, Ruoshen died in a mysterious hunting accident, and Wen Ruohan became heir. Wen Ruochen died a few years later. Did Wen Ruohan consider Wen Zemin a threat? Not really. Was he upset when his nephew died? Not in the least.

Wen Juan— Wen Yuan’s older sister

Fa Meili— One of the Dafan women (Probably a cousin of Fa Xingjian, but it will never come up.)

Gusu Lan

Lan Yunru is one of the Lan disciples and is Mo Xuanyu’s age.

Lan Kaishen (mentioned only) is Qingheng-Jun and Lan Qiren’s uncle, their shufu, father’s younger brother, and the biological father of Lan Xichen.

Meishan Yu:

Tianzumu: Literally God-grandmother, but technically Chinese for great-great-great grandmother. Spoiler: She’s technically Yu Ziyuan’s great-great-grandmother, and Wei Ying’s, Jiang Yanli’s and Jiang Wanyin’s great-great-great grandmother, but everyone has called her Tianzumu for at least fifty years because she had a number of children over the course of a number of years and her eldest and youngest were some 50 years apart, and she has midwifed so many of her descendants that she’s honestly stopped keeping close track, especially on the descendants born to girls who married out. She is neither a Yu or a Jiang, but has been living in Meishan for longer than anyone else can remember, and has not given her full name in at least 70 years.

Did I randomly name a few of my OCs after ancient Chinese generals? Yes. Kinda. There are some amorphous backstories in my head about Wen Andu and Wen Juncai. For example, Wen Juncai was given the Wen surname as a reward, he wasn’t born with it.