#a different way through

[thelaithlyworm]

Rarepair Exchange Director’s Commentary

– I looked up so many references to noodle cooking for this one. I read about Changsha-style rice noodles and I rewatched Tampopo and I looked up recipes, and then I used almost none of it in the actual fic. So it goes.

What we see in the drama looks like a fairly plain bowl of flat noodles, without extra vegetables but once with some crab meat. Er Yuehong calls them yangchun (spring) noodles. (Which… should have had skinnier noodles but we’ll let that go. Personal preferences, etc.)

Yang Chun Mian/���春面, literally meaning “Spring Noodles”, is also known as Guang Mian/光面 or Qing Tang Mian/清汤面 in Chinese. It’s one of the most humble dishes popular in the Jiangnan region … Yang Chun Mian epitomizes simplicity, allowing each element of the dish to shine through with its clean, natural flavors. A simple bowlful lets you enjoy the subtle aroma of wheat, the umami from the stock and soy sauce, the mild pungency of scallions, and the rich fragrance of sesame oil (or traditionally, lard).

(https://redhousespice.com/yang-chun-mian/)

As signature dishes go it suits Yatou, both in the lower class cuisine and the simplicity that lets each ingredient sing.

There would have been a lot of careful cooking that went into that clear broth. Simmer out bone marrow, let water from rehydrated mushrooms in there for flavour, don’t get it too hot or it will cloud, etc. And I wanted to show Yatou exercising an actual skill instead of (admittedly v. sweetly) ladling water over the pretty flowers. I still love the paragraph of her skilful cleaver work.

– Also, this is one of those times where I learn something about the characters as I write the story. In this case: Why does Er Yuehong love Yatou so much? Well, apart from just that she’s a very sweet young lady… maybe she lets him be simple, instead of the young master of the Hong family, the star performer of the troupe, the expert grave robber, all of those roles played perfectly by necessity. Maybe she lets him be a simple man.

– This is sort of a sequel to “Broth” but can be read separately. I wanted to explore Fo-ye’s relationship with this new marriage that appeared on his horizon. I, ah, didn’t expect him to be quite so sad at the end but so it goes. The scene that I built this around was both Fo-ye and Yatou sitting in the back of the theatre with her sharing stories about Er-ye as a boy. I just liked the different shades of intimacy these two people had with Er-ye.

I did a fair chunk of reading for this one, but unlike “Broth” I could put a lot of it on the page. \o/

– Also interesting to explore Er-ye’s lifelong career specialising in female roles – and then, when he walks around at home he has those intricate, delicate clothes, but also he walks and sits and stands in the most self-conscious manspreading in the show. A bit of an onion, that man.

– So it turns out there were female performers sneaking onto the stage as early as the late Qing Dynasty despite an official ban, which was revoked around 1912. Old Master Hong comes across as a bit of a dick in the short stories and the Qing Shan Haitang movie, so it pleased me to make him a hardline stickler and his son pointedly training female apprentices both to please Yatou and as a grand up-yours to his dad. That said, Hong Xiu and Hong Dou do belong in drama canon – from the side movie Flowers Bloom in February, – and they have a lovely time with the acrobatics and the fighting and the looking elegant at all times, just like their teacher. Good for them!

The roles Er-ye demonstrates on stage were the qingyi (elegant young lady), huadan (beguiling young lady), xiaosheng (young man, complete with scripted puberty-driven voice-breaking), and wudan (martial lady). I had to break the pattern of girl roles because of the voice-breaking. I had to.

– (It’s not just that Yatou comes from a noodle shop that’s making people unwilling to discuss the story. To round up the money to redeem her in a hurry, Er-ye broke a grave robber taboo and raided a grave that was only three months old. Nor does Fo-ye exactly know that, in the drama, until Qi Tiezui explains that to him. As far as fic-worldbuilding goes, in this continuity no-one really wanted to be the one who told Fo-ye his besty had made such a transgression and there was a lot of hemming and hawing until it became old news.)

– Fo-ye wondering if Yatou’s name was really ‘Qionghua’ was… Well. I’d put in a bit about how he couldn’t work out where she came from, because she’s so lower-class and non-crimey that she doesn’t even figure in his mental map of the city and people are a bit too scandalised to discuss her origins just now. I thought I might get in a droll reference to one of those stories about beautiful women appearing out of bookmarks and marrying poor scholars but couldn’t remember the details. So I opened up a copy of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio and the very first page I turned to was about a man who makes friends with the courtesan Qionghua (or ‘Coral’ in the translation I have) and eventually they get married and live happily as platonic, loving companions for decades raising his kid from his first, disastrous marriage, and then at the end she’s revealed to be a heavenly maiden come to earth… and it seemed to fit that air Er-ye and Yatou both have, of being a little more, I dunno, innocent? less trammeled in mortal dust? than their companions, so I stuck with that.

– You know how sometimes there’s a ship you don’t have any particular feelings about, and then maybe one or two fics drop and suddenly you’re all Ohhhhh? Thank you mumblemutter and lunarriviera – your work is inspiring. Thank you Mo_on_raccoon for requesting this pairing!

– Titles came a bit hard for this one – the working name was “Travails of a Thing-less Man” which seemed a little inelegant, but I ended up with “Circumlocutions” because that conversation at the dinner table does involve a lot of talking around the things they’re talking about, and because Wu Xie does a lot of circling around the main topic throughout the fic. (But he’s enjoying himself.)

– Speaking of the dinner table, it’s not a huge deal, but one of the Rain Village stories mentions that Wu Xie used to eat prawns, rice, and white vinegar a lot when he was a small child, when it was just him and his dad. I wanted a homey feel to the scene.

– It didn’t quite make it to the finished fic – killed the flow – but there was originally a section about Wu Xie deliberately encouraging Xiao-Bai and Xiaoge to spend time together, for the entirely pragmatic reason that he wanted somebody to care as much about Xiaoge as he and Pangzi did – someone who had a few decades of extra life in their body. (Caring for Zhang Qiling takes a dynasty.)

– While the focus of this was Xiao-Bai getting to climb that old man, and being petted and pleased and admired while she did so, fics don’t happen in a vacuum either. This isn’t a sequel to “And set them as a banner” any more than it’s a sequel to “Getting It Sorted”, or “Peanuts” for that matter – they are all of them standalone stories. But they’re not unrelated either, exploring approaches to physical and emotional intimacy.

Eh. The very first version of Wu Xie I saw was in Reboot, and in that he backpedals pretty fast from romantic advances by people he’s clearly fond of. There’s certainly room for calling that bad timing or that he’s saving it for Xiaoge. But there’s also room for calling that a person who’s good at a lot of different kinds of intimacy but sex? romance stuff? Would rather not. Contrast that with Xiaoge, who adores Wu Xie but also spends a lot of his time watching from a distance and hugs rarely… that made for an interesting dynamic. For the purposes of this fic, once Xiaoge decides that sex might be a fun thing to do he has very few hang-ups about it. It’s fun, if he’s not doing it there are other fun things to do, but also… being able to choose something just because it’s fun is also a huge deal for him and he’s enjoying that freedom. Still, in this fic at least, falling properly asleep with a warm body nearby is something that he wants to do but struggles with.

(I’m not sure if Xiao-Bai has any particular issues. But she’s getting rawed by the Zhang Patriarch while her crush of several years looks on in wonderment so I think whatever her needs might be they are being fulfilled adequately, yeah?)

– I was trying pretty hard to give all members of the threesome equal weight despite the asymmetry of who’s doing what and of how long various pairs have known each other, and there was a deliberate choice to put in echoes between characters. Wu Xie and Xiao-Bai both blush right down to the neckline and call Xiaoge bossy; Wu Xie admires both Xiaoge and Xiao-Bai’s exquisitely toned musculature; Xiaoge and Wu Xie both touch Xiao-Bai with the backs of their curled up fingers. Everybody gets a spot where they admire the other two, sort of thing.

Anyway anyway, I love stories where people decide how they’re going to be together in their own way, a way that works for them. So this was fun to work on, and I hope folk enjoy the extra I snuck in once reveals were over.

– So the story I recorded here is one of the ones that turned me onto the Xiao-Bai/Wu Xie/Zhang Qiling ship (thank you, thank you). It’s both extremely steamy and very, very sweet and I loved all the scene details (dark aroma baijiu, Xiao-Bai’s little dangly earrings, the tapping language at the end. You know.)

– The fic does not at any point mention that it’s raining outside, but I was podding this as a gift and the recipient mentioned they liked rain sounds, so I shamelessly tucked in a little soundscape of a sudden rain shower as Pangzi’s car drives off. And there’s something a little lovely about people dashing through unexpected weather together. (Also, rain does come up figuratively a couple of times. I quoted them on the cover!) Anyway anyway, I don’t normally mess with the text of a fic so much, and I hope lunarriviera will forgive me. But I certainly had fun recording it!

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

The stewards of the old world are always keen to give you a glimpse of their might... According to legend, the ancients built specialized chambers to seal away false prophets.

The Arcane is waking up.

[chloesimaginationthings]

The REAL lore from the FNAF survival logbook,,

[keets-writing-corner]

Thinking a LOT about Lucifer in the latest Hazbin episode. Idk what I was expecting but not this??

As I was watching my immediate thought was just "huh... Lucifer is kinda of weird..." but as the episode went on I realized the issue

the dude is off the chain depressed, like he says it as a joke but holy cow it is SO BAD

He's manically just creating rubber ducks cuz his daughter really like it that one time but it's empty, it's never good enough but he keeps doing it, maybe cuz he doesn't know how to pass the time otherwise.

like I get the feeling he HAS better things he SHOULD be doing than making rubber duck after rubber duck. At first I was like, "Bruh why isn't the king of hell doing anything?" aaaaand then it became clear...

The dude is disassociating so bad he can barely hold a conversation let alone remember information. He clearly WANTS to, he wants to be involved with his daughter so bad, he wants to care about the things she's doing so bad, but his depression keeps interfering. It's like he can only hear every other word and he grasps onto the ones he does hear semi-out of context. Like you can see every time he catches something that he hadn't before and he just "well shit I didn't catch that part"

and that's why he reacts so weird when people talk to him. He is struggling so bad to engage with the conversation he's only getting 50% of it

does that look like the face of a man who knows what the hell the conversation is even about??? he is STRUGGLING

like Charlie spent so long telling him about the hotel, and he STILL didn't understand what she wanted. Yeah it comes off as ditzy but literally I've been in that position where your brain just "nope, not doing this right now" and nerfs your conversation comprehension. So as someone who's BEEN in that position, to me it feels exactly like what he's dealing with. He's sorta engaged with the conversation, but only as much as his brain will allow

For example, when I'm dealing with this, this is what someone talking to me feels like this where the crossed out parts are what I missed and bold is what I catch, "Hey! You know I was thinking for dinner we could either make some chicken with rice? But if you don't feel like cooking, pasta is super easy and you love that right? What do you want to do?" you can kinda get that someone is trying to talk to you about dinner, and towards the end you get the impression that they asked something that needs your input so you can decently put 2 and 2 together and try and pass off, but crucial bits were left out, I would have no idea that either chicken or pasta is in the conversation only having heard "rice". When someone is just talking at me, I can decently pass off as being engaged but the second I'm required to participate in the conversation I'm screwed. Seem familiar? At which point I have 2 options, try to give a bullshit answer, or admit that I missed what they were saying and ask them to repeat

Lucifer, unfortunately, is trying so damn hard to hide that he's dealing with like 24/7 dissociation, so he can't admit that he's missing entire chunks of the conversation, hence his really weird replies. He does eventually get the full picture and then he and Charlie start having the real conversation

Also, the Alastor/Lucifer rivalry was hilarious but also really indicative of more of what Lucifer is dealing with

Alastor is, unfortunately, really good at picking up people's insecurities, and thanks to Charlie's description earlier and watching Lucifer clearly trying to overcompensate, he immediately picks up on the fact that Lucifer KNOWS he struggles to be a good dad (we know cuz it's cuz of the depression, hard to be engaged when your brain keeps turning off) and decides to rub salt in the wound by pretending he's been acting as a surrogate father to Charlie. Now why Alastor decided to pick a fight with the king of hell is beyond me, I do not understand Alastor (and I LIKE IT) (maybe it's cuz Alastor thinks he's hot shit and was expecting Lucifer to at least have heard of him but Lucifer just treats him like a nobody? who knows)(why would Lucifer listen to radio anyways when he can't even pay attention to a conversation it'd just be white noise)

But yeah I just was expecting someone who oozed either charisma or presence and instead I got a depressed dad who's dissociating so bad he can barely function and be present in his life. The only thing it seems he CAN do is make rubber ducks cuz his daughter really liked it that one time

Idk Lucifer is tragic to me. Whatever the full details of what heavan did to him absolutely broke him and he can't deal with it. He's aware of it, and he doesn't know how to fix it, so he tries to over compensate and sorta makes an ass out of himself but no one says or does anything cuz this guy is supposed to be THE king of hell

Suddenly it's making a lot more sense why he just rolls over and lets heaven do what it wants and even told Charlie to go in his place the start of the show. He's not in any headspace to hold a basic conversation let alone negotiate! He didn't even know who Alastor was, he's been so out of touch

idk I like him, he seems sweet, I hope Charlie brings some light back into his life. He really needs to get out of that rubber duck room

[cuttle-creatures]

Continued my indulgent concept work spree, this time focusing the momentum on updating some concepts from one of my projects (Wind Through the Grass).

[erebus0dora]

something something a chat i am in discussing the loneliness of Armand who needs someone to define him and see him, so

"...it was ghastly and awful and loathsome, and beautiful all at the same time."

and yeah i kinda just want to give ppl hugs with anything i do and talk to them in hushed tones, so there you go

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Who is this sassy lost child?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[somnimagus]

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

[eversangela]

protective tim 🗣️

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[asgardian--angels]

there's meta to be had about just how much of viktor's arc is about loneliness and the blatant visuals they use in his evolution about metamorphosis, butterflies, cocoons, in utero, etc, as he molts from a soft, vulnerable larva who keeps getting hurt in his bids for love and acceptance, into a hardened final form complete with an exoskeleton acting as both physical and emotional armor. a shield keeping his emotions in and the pain of loneliness and rejection out, until it's cracked and his humanity is forcefully exposed. like. sorry if it's just the entomologist in me but this was blatantly obvious the very first time i watched the show and I've been continually surprised that no one's really pointed this out. as a certified lonely person it struck such a deep cord with me, when he accepted his fate, his path ahead, to be one he'd have to walk alone, finally putting up that last seemingly impenetrable wall around his soft parts (but keeping the blanket, this signal that he never asked for this, and that he's not unreachable). So much of his s2 arc centered around not just his desire to right his wrongs and help the world, but to connect with others and not feel alone, both of which got twisted by the hexcore. His attempt to create a hivemind where no one would ever suffer loneliness or rejection or loss, and he would feel their souls with him as well (even though that was an illusion in the end, he truly believed it). The whole 'I now speak with all their voices' but he's just floating in an empty space. And for the consequence of the glorious evolution to be eternal solitude, it just drives home how that's the worst possible fate imaginable for Viktor.

[frownyalfred]

Was Bruce Wayne “always a bit of an insomniac” or was he simply predestined to be attuned to Gotham’s night cycle? Relieved at its sunsets. Energized by the blanket of darkness over his city, from a young age. Feeling the tug of ache in his heart when the sun rises, knowing his time to return home is swiftly approaching.

[mamawasatesttube]

i keep thinking to myself, god we have got to put tim drake in a time loop. but also time loops just feel so perfectly like speedster bullshit, yknow? therefore lemme just smash these thoughts together like particles at cern aaannddd--

let's put tim in a time loop that bart accidentally caused. a tim loop, if you will :) specifically, tim loop where kon dies at the end and bart just kind of subconsciously went nope! and "if anyone can fix it it's tim right?" bc bart has. a normal amount of faith in his friends but also a normal amount of feelings about himself being useless to save kon bc he couldn't in infinite crisis.

and bam suddenly tim is having the worst tuesday of his life like 20 times in a row. yippee! it's bart-powered but he doesn't even know. he did it on accident. bart in the loop doesn't know what's going on. it just resets every time the ending is something bart can't accept (kon dies again). tim tries to sacrifice himself to save kon once but somehow that doesn't break the loop either (bart refuses to accept that). how long can tim go through a time loop before he goes completely bonkers bananas insane? only tim(e) will tell.

and, worse: how many times can tim watch kon die? how many times can he beg kon to value his own life, to get it through his head that being a hero doesn't mean he needs to die for the world, that there must be another way? how many times can he watch kon sacrifice himself to save others and know that if he stops kon, those people might die?

how fucked up would he be if he ever actually found out just how suicidal kon has been his entire life?

extra fun: cassie takes one look at him every time and instantly clocks that he's feeling like shit, but every time she forgets why, because the loop resets. tim is being perceived but it never lasts. this will drive him crazy so fast. he's gonna start acting out and snapping at her for being concerned because what's the POINT of talking about his feelings if everything resets ANYWAY. this will definitely not come back to bite him in the end or anything, right?

(kon-el dead wife giggling in the sunshine and playing under the sheets montage plays over and over for both tim and bart. this probably means nothing.)

[chalkrub]

pwyw com from last month ! these are closed now but i will open again at the end of feb maybe

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

With the end of season two comes a second redraw!

[Nov 2022] [June 2023] [June 2024]