#almost feels like author just saw an ugly human 10 miles south of the mountain and was like lmao imma shout him out one time in my book

[peevishpants]

your outfitober art is amazing! the outfits youve made for all of them are so fun and well designed and thoughtful, i wish my wardrobe was that well put together. your art in general is beautiful, too, i love the way you handle colors and your art style is just gorgeous!

and speaking as someone whos chinese but isnt. really ingrained into the culture (or at least. not into mainland stuff i guess? idk) im staring politely at your more recent outfitobers lol, which ngl id love to see in a scifi movie?? (also the white rabbit candy ones—those designs are really fun, and i remember my family used to sell those in our store when i was a kid, so theyre honestly nostalgic for me)

i also love the ocean and reef dweller ones—love the way you incorporate the irl inspiration into their designs and how creative and fashionable they are (actually this counts for all of them lmaoo i think i can safely say i love all your outfitober designs <3)

sorry this was pretty long! you dont have to answer lol

woowahhhh weewoh thank you so much!! so cool that your parents used to sell white rabbit candy, I wonder if they experienced the White Rabbit Scandal of the 2000s, from Chinese milk product contaminations!

I also happen to be someone who is Chinese but isn't particularly immersed into the mainland culture - I'm diaspora born in Canada, so a lot of the folklore and culture elements in my designs come from a more reverent or academic lens - my actual Chinese comprehension skills are rather shabby so a lot of primary Chinese sources aren't accessible to me. I've recently been getting more into Chinese culture thanks to the glow-up of Chinese Animation industry, and started reading up on old chinese folklore, though my sources are usually translations or analysis/commentary written by white people (or other asians, in english) - there's no way I'm reading Shan Hai Jing in Chinese those tomes are inscrutable EVEN in english (and like half of it is just geographical records)

Actually let me talk about the headache that is shan hai jing because I did try to read an English version a while ago. It's a big ass collaborative google doc from 2200 years ago that's sort of become an almanac or encyclopedia of Things and Society and Myths in Ancient Asia. There are 18 volumes and no they are not neatly separated by subject, they are instead sorted by region. There's no convenient list of all the mythical beasts mentioned in it. The juicy mythological and cultural bits are directly EMULSIFIED with the boring government surveyor information like "there is xyz mountain and on it, xyz plants. also here lies the xyz beast with human face and a tail like a snake. eating it will make you never be jealous again. 10 miles east of xyz is the mountain abc. the mountain is not climbable. there are strange beasts here with horns. 12 miles east-" FOR HUNDREDS OF PAGES. I wish I could go back in time and interrogate the authors. Like sir did you see a deer? Are you describing a deer? Do you think deer have human faces? Are you making this shit up?

Also I love getting these messages btw I can feel your sincerity and it honestly makes my day!! (And also it is a great soapbox for me to just gripe about a tangentially related thing LOL)