Latest Posts by yabancreations - Page 7

ABCDMXTX - Day 6: Feng Xin.

My little angry hyacinth~

I based his clothes on the donghua design.

List of prompts.

ABCDMXTX - Day 5: E-Ming.

I made a reference to this image in my fic Let me see you (how I want to be seen), which is basically 9k words of tooth-rotting E-Ming loving hours fluff and Xie Lian dancing, lol.

List of prompts.

ABCDMXTX - Day 4: Death.

I chose Wen Ning for this prompt because his destiny and afterlife are a good illustration of how, in the MXTX novels, death is more often than not a luxury that few characters can afford.

List of prompts.

ABCDMXTX - Day 3: Creature.

Scum Villain has the coolest creatures and the Black Moon Rhinoceros Python is the best among them.

List of prompts.

ABCDMXTX - Day 2: Ban Yue.

Ban Yue checks all the boxes of my personal preferences, to the point I couldn't believe she was a character made by someone else. Even our names are homophones!

Based on Starember's design.

List of prompts.

ABCDMXTX - Day 1: A-Yuan.

Yes, I know, 啊 (A- or Ah-) is a prefix and not part of Lan Shizui's name. I just wanted an alphabet prompt list and thought I could start it this way because he's called that a lot as a kid, and he's cute as a kid (as a teenager too, but that's beyond the point).

List of prompts.

Nothing quite like getting obsessed to ensure you'll get into the habit of practising. This kind of challenge is very arduous, but let's see how I do (and if this interests you, feel free to try it!)

my toxic xennial trait is that i believe something should either be software (in which case after i download it i shouldn't need to be connected to use it) or a web page (which shouldn't require me to download anything to use it, however badly, in a browser). fuck your mandatory single function constant connection apps

Dinghai Love Week 2023 Day 2: Side character / Death.

Xie An, the man, the legend, who I didn't expect to like but here we are. I based his design on his first description on the novel. Also, spoilers without context, I guess.

"Let me see you (how I want to be seen)", also known in my WIPs as "Dancer Xie Lian" or "E-Ming's wish", is a Tian Guan Ci Fu fanfic I started writing eons ago and that is finally here with:

Hualian post-canon domestic tooth-rotting fluff.

E-Ming loving hours in which Ruoye gets love too.

Hua Cheng being a headache while having a headache.

Dance!

Summary: When Xie Lian woke up, two things were unexpectedly the same as how they were hundreds of years ago: he spontaneously got in the mood to dance —something that he didn’t remember happening since his first banishment— and Hua Cheng decided to hide his face.

Thanks a lot to Massie for beta-reading~

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

Are you frustrated you can't leave second kudos on AO3? or third kudos? or whatever-who's-counting kudos?

Well, have I got the html for you!

Plop any of these in a comment (by copy&pasting the code) to make an author's day and show your appreciation!

Second kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/tHMjbb6/second-kudos.png" alt="second kudos">

Third kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/52bggQH/third-kudos.png" alt="third kudos">

nth kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/6y7qGtC/nth-kudos.png" alt="nth kudos">

yet another kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/wKtcj0s/yet-another-kudos.png" alt="yet another kudos">

It will look something like this (and will be transparent with white outline on dark backgrounds):

Feel free to spread and use these as much as you like! (and if you have ideas for other variations, let me know ✌️)

Reminder that capitalism is the death of art

Tbh, I think if you read an mxtx novel with the expectation that the story’s hero is meant to learn some valuable lesson that fundamentally changes their character and views on life, then you are reading her books wrong. There’s not a single mxtx protag (currently) in existence who changes by the end of the story. It’s the world they live in that is changed because of their actions:

—Shen Yuan’s Shen Qingqiu transforms a toxic masculinity fantasy into a queer romance in which the unhappy stallion protagonist with a harem in the 100s is given his monogamous happy ending with a husband he actually loves and values with reciprocity. They fuck off to their forever honeymoon after exposing the corruptness of the cultivation world that ruined Luo Binghe’s life to begin with, and all of this was only possibly because Shen Yuan was just a genuinely nice fucking person. The world lives to see another day and a fuckton of people who died (or didn’t even get to exist) in the original stallion novel get to live long, more fulfilled lives in Shen Yuan’s revision.

—Wei Wuxian is killed for sticking up for a condemned clan, is resurrected against his will, and still stands by his actions in his first life while protecting those that continued to wrongfully condemn him. As a reward, the corpses of the people he died protecting save him and his loved ones (and the rest of the bystanders who killed them), he bags himself the most perfect and perfectly matched man in the cultivation world, and he continues to help others and do what he wants to the ire of the cultivation world who are now too embarrassed to fight him. The younger generation look to him as a beloved teacher, protector, and role model to aspire towards.

—Xie Lian rebelled against hierarchy as a beloved prince of a prospering kingdom, then as a beloved god against the older gods, then as a reviled scrap gods against the then most popular gods of the present day. He was always willing to lend a hand to anyone who needed it and to never hold resentment even if that kindness blew up in his face (and it often did). He gets to marry the man (ghost) who has seen him at his best and absolute worst and chooses him unconditionally, something no one else has ever done before. At the end of the novel, he is the god that all the other gods look to for guidance and strength.

None of these stories humble these characters for being good people. Even when their morally righteous actions net them unimaginably terrible results, even when they falter in the face of their failures, they ultimately remain true to their goodness. And none of the books humble them for that, because being good is not a character flaw. So in short: please stop talking about how mxtx protags “needed” to learn valuable lessons to “be good people” when they were already good people from the very beginning. These stories are not about how the world changes people but how genuinely good people can change the world just by actively being kind even with no benefit to themselves and especially if that kindness leads to detriment.

What’s better than a vampire? What’s better than a horse. A Vampire Horse, of course. I made this comic a few months ago.

ALOK VAID-MENON Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness 1x03 (2022)

Five of Cups for the Song of Clarity MDZS tarot deck

Anime Opening: GetBackers Song Title: Yuragu Koto Nai Ai Artist: Naomi Tamura

Yknow what while I’m here I know we as a website agreed to oppress the business majors but all the bullshit that comes around every April over ao3’s business practices makes me think we should’ve kept at least one to explain to people how nonprofits, despite their name, still need money to function and do not in fact run on rainbows and dreams alone

Fic WIPs Openings

@boomchickfanfiction changed a meme that consisted of sharing the first lines of ten fics for one of sharing the first lines of ten fic WIPs, which suits me wonderfully because it's the only way many of these texts are ever going to see the light, lol. 1 to 7 are TGCF, 8 is MDZS, 9 is Hades and 10 is BotW.

"Ghost, ghost! How can you say that I'm not dead? How would I be able to see you again, if I weren't?"

Hua Cheng seemed to toss the dice casually, but the two little cubes dented the skull of the last demon standing like stones shot from a powerful slingshot, nailing it to the bloody floor. Two sixes.

Neither gods nor ghosts needed to sleep. The fact that they didn’t need to, though, didn’t mean that they didn’t do it.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Hua Cheng didn’t know if that was the best of the worst day of his afterlife.

Upon waking up, the first thing Xie Lian noticed was the unusual warmth. Yawning, he pushed the blanket away and supported himself on his elbows, blinking hard in the darkness.

Despite the generalised hatred its inhabitants felt against the sun, Ghost City did have days and nights.

“Cheng’er is too old to share beds with grown-ups, you are going to spoil him.”

When the only sound coming from Wei Ying arriving to the Cloud Recesses was the clapping of Little Apple’s hooves against the stone road, Lan Zhan knew something had gone wrong.

The waters of the river Styx were warm, and their bitter flavour managed to get inside his mouth as it always did, no matter how tightly he kept his mouth shut.

The sunset made their secret lake glow with an orange hue. Link sat at the shore and splashed the water with his feet, which made Sidon smile.

Feel free to join if you want!

Cuando, luego de leer las tres novelas de MXTX, decidí explorar los fanfics dedicados a cada historia, dejé a SAVE para el final. Lo que me hizo retrasarlo fue la reticencia a leer algo en ese universo que no tuviera la comedia emocional y a veces trágica tan característica de la novela, la cual me parece su más grande acierto y lo que la hace una lectura tan particular y disfrutable. Es posible que jamás hubiese dado el paso si no fuera porque ‘open my lungs to let you in’ me apareció un día en Twitter y el resumen, expuesto en una captura de pantalla, me hizo soltar la carcajada. Ghost escribe con sensibilidad e ingenio, su caracterización es fresca, hilarante y capaz de alcanzar ese precario nivel de parodia absurda que hace reír y llorar, y de hacerme volver para releer una y otra vez. Finalmente, decidí pedir permiso para traducir el fic y ahora lo dejo aquí, en español de aires colombianos, con la esperanza de que nuevos públicos puedan acceder a esta expansión creativa del mundo de SAVE.

En español: Abro mis pulmones para dejarte entrar.

En inglés: open my lungs to let you in

My pieces for the fic After School Paranormal Club by sleepthief, made as part of the TGCF Minibang 2022.

Summary: 

"Hello, my name is Hua Cheng and there's a demon living in my right eye." It's his good grades, art talent and creative video pitch that got him the principal's okay to set up the After School Paranormal Club. But there really is a demon living in his right eye. And it's in love with gege!

High school AU in which the creepy goth kid is in love with the school's most popular jock. Pining ensues, as do curses, demons, hormones and midterms.

Dinghai Love Week 2023 Day 1: Chile Chuan Under the Yin Mountains.

Horses are a blessing and a curse for Dinghai Fusheng Lu readers and I didn't want to leave them out of the event. Here's Huleishan, pride of the Akele tribe, hanging out in Chile Chuan.

My piece for the fic the color sum by StarsinmyTea, made as part of the TGCF Minibang 2022.

Summary: Xie Lian, Mu Qing, and Feng Xin are finally moving in together. They've worked hard to build up their relationship and are wary of unbalancing that. But people change, whether they want to or not. Xie Lian develops a crush on someone for the first time in years, and he wonders how his boyfriends will react. Feng Xin has known for a while that he doesn’t like sex, and he’s afraid that saying that out loud will cause cracks in their life together. Mu Qing’s therapy isn’t working as well as he wants, no matter how hard he pushes himself. This is the day their relationship reaches a turning point, with their new home as witness.

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

Exercises for all the homies who want to have a long career drawing.

The true problem with being an artist and drawing all day (as I wanted my whole life) is that human backs are not designed to hold that position, so it is very common for artists and designers to have really stiff shoulder blades, creating a chain of muscle strain towards the arm AND the back… and a lot of pain.

These are some physical exercises for artists and honestly anyone who works at a desk.

(all credit to my physiotherapist)

Can y'all BELIEVE this art? Tiira, you're the best ;A;

I participated in the TGCF Mini Bang 2022 as an artist for Withering Lotus, a modern heavy metal au fic written by Yabanned and beta-read by Leonidskies!

Working with Ban on this series has been an absolute joy and I love this fic and everything about the work process more than I can describe. Ban is a lovely writer and I recommend this fic to everyone who enjoys mostly fluffy and healing modern au fics with a twinge of angst! The Xie Lian lotus cover art was based on an idea and a sketch from Ban!

TGCF Mini Bang 2022 collection

You're not just giving new names to your Barbie dolls, right?

You're not just giving new names to your Barbie dolls, right?

me whenever I see posts about how canon is shit and can be discarded

Valentine's Day is over, but Hualian are gonna celebrate their love until the end of time.

Close-ups of art by the wonderful Tiira. See it in full while reading Withering Lotus (part 1 of 3) on AO3.

Consider: TGCF... but metal.

Written by: Yabanned. Art by: Tiiracotta. Beta-read by: Leonidskies.

Read Withering Lotus (part 1 of 3) on AO3.

Summary:

Xie Lian is a talented multi-instrumentalist who had a meteoric rise as a metal star when his band, White Lotus, released their first EP and got the attention of the prestigious label Immortal Records. When he became the youngest artist to sign with them at the age of 17, he felt that he had the world in the palm of his hand. Three years later, though, a song he wrote tore everything down: he lost his contract, his career, his friends and his family. Vetoed and blacklisted, he was forced to live on the move, as far away from the offices of his old record label as possible, picking little odd jobs related to music in order to survive.

After eight years, a bureaucratic nightmare forces Xie Lian to come back to the capital. He tries his best to go unnoticed, yet he receives two unsettling requests upon arrival: a man in red wants his permission to cover a song he wrote, and a man in white wants him to inherit his mask.

Part of the TGCF Minibang 2022.