Hualian Mix'n'Match, Day 5 Fox Hua Cheng Wu Ming And Calamity Xie Lian

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

I've been ultra sick, so I forgot to post what I got done from this challenge.

"Finish a recent WIP" and "Finish any WIP/Free Space" got crossed once I finished posting Treasure Hunting in the Clouds.

"Update your newest WIP" and "Update a partially posted WIP" got crossed with the new chapter of Cariño para Wu Ming.

I want to cross all the slots eventually, hopefully this year. I'll update when/if I do!

(text description in ALT and below the cut)

Based on some rumblings I heard, I ended up quickly throwing together a fun little WIP bingo sheet! I'll admit I largely wrote the prompts for writing, but I think a good number of them should also apply to art!

Ultimately, the goal is to have fun, and finish whatever WIPs you can (without burning yourself out or having a bad time). If you needed a sign to pick up that project you've been putting off, the time is now!

3x4 Bingo square titled "Finish your fucking fics february"

the top three across left to right read "Update your oldest WIP", "Finish a WIP that's been buried deep in your drafts", and "Finish a WIP that you haven't posted yet"

the second row reads "Finish a recent WIP", "Finish a WIP you're scared of" and "Finish a WIP that's been haunting you"

the third row reads "Update a partially posted WIP", "Finish any WIP/Free Space", and "Finish the next WIP in a series you've been avoiding"

the last row reads "Update your newest WIP", "Finish a WIP that's been ignored for at least 6 months", and "Finish the next chapter for a fic you've been meaning to for months"

I love, love, LOVE it when I can tell a fic author has integrated their specialized knowledge in a fic. I was reading a fic that at some point included the character going to visit an art therapist, and it's so clear that the author is an art therapist themself, and the details included are just immaculate and I love it. I've previously read about a character doing fencing for no other reason than the author clearly wanting to write a sport they understood. A character being given a hyperfixation on bugs just so the author can infodump themselves.

I eat it up every time, it brings such a smile to my face

Bonding time with Ruoye.

My brain for the whole of January: what if Lucanis but Gokushufudou Way of the Househusband

Some screenshot redraws and other things

Starring: Lucanis as Tatsu, my Rook Eranto Aldwir as Miku, Spite as Gin, Viago as a Former Yakuza Boss, Viago's Snake as Yakuza Boss' Dog, Assan and Manfred as random animal neighbors and Strife and Emmrich as Rook's adoptive parents(?) for some reason.

Yaban has two roots: the original in Japanese is 野蛮 (yaban) and it means "barbaric" or "wild". The second is Chinese 假扮 (jiǎbàn) and it means "to impersonate". Adding to that the powers of the character that inspired me to take the name in the first place, Ban Midou from Get Backers, my superpowers include: super strength, hypnosis/mind control, shape shifting and a berserk mode. Plus creation, whatever that means, lol. Not bad!

Open tag! Have fun~

zeekayart, with the power of phonetic pronunciation of letters, and general art snobbery!

I depend on you.

Inspired by this twitter post

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.                            

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!