#chinese lions

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Macaque spent the whole season Big-Damn-Hero-ing and was NOT happy about it xD

[artilite]

chúc mừng năm mới !!! happy new year !!!

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Slow motion demonstration without costume of Chinese Lion Dance by actors from dance drama Awakening Lion at Guangdong Song and Dance Theatre

[tainted-sweet-meats]

some experimental sketchy commissions for some clients

[daily-dragon-drawing]

#42 - 老獅 (lǎo shī / old tiger) - A kind and gentle teacher who doubles as a school bus! 🚌 🧙‍♂️🔮

[digitaldoeslmk]

they are so ready for the New Years!!

[digitalagepulao]

god I love lion dancers getting up to Antics (tm)

[cactuswastaken]

Live footage of me Gaming *ehem*

It's never going to get old, I am sorry 😔

Hehe well anywayssss on the occasion of the boy's release here is some fanart!

[ryin-silverfish]

I really like Azure Lion as a character. Yeah, you can stop following me now. /j

But no, seriously, I like how LMK has adapted this particular character, given him way more potential complexity than his novel counterpart——not that it's a high bar, the LCR trio of JTTW are just demon warlords living in a literal human slaughterhouse.

Which is why I deeply dislike the take that "Oh, Azure manipulated SWK into fighting the JE! He's just using him like a pawn!" Like, wow, way to completely butcher two characters' personality and agency in one go.

Such takes reduce SWK to some innocent kid, when he is at most an impulsive, daring teenager who haven't met a single real obstacle so far——he robbed the dragon kings blind, and they couldn't do a thing! He struck his name and all his monkeys' names off the Book of Life and Death! What couldn't he do?

And Azure's failing isn't him telling a toddler: "You know what? Driving your tricycle into oncoming traffic will be real fun, trust me kiddo." It's letting his friend go way over the speed limit and not telling him that he should maybe, y'know, slow down, bc he'd seen his epic driving skills, SWK's the bestest driver he ever met, surely nothing would happen!

(And also, no one in that car is sober, except Macaque.)

What I'm getting at here is, even without Azure, SWK is not gonna be content with sitting on his mountain, eating peaches forever. Hell, he sure doesn't in the novel, where his demon king brothers are little more than namedropped NPCs.

He is always gonna want more, chase after greater destinies, drown out that existential ennui and fear of death at the back of his mind with bigger and bigger power-ups and the laughters of his companions.

He told himself he would be content after getting this one thing he wanted. That he could stop at any time. But alas, like any ADHDer, he will not stop at this one exciting thing, and sooner or later, the boredom sets in, and he gets ideas and impulsively leaps into making them reality.

That is the Mind Monkey at his worst: being a whirlwind of chaos, while unknowingly enslaved to his own chaotic mind.

(In the book, this is Wu Cheng'en's reminder to the reader that, even though you shouldn't keep your heart constantly under lock and keys, Neo-Confucian style, the other extreme——letting it go completely wild, disregarding all external rules and consequences, can be equally disastrous.)

And when that car was driven through the Celestial Palace's front door, off a bridge, and straight into a ditch, it was him in the driver's seat, steering the wheels the whole time.

Everyone else in that car failed terribly as friends when they didn't voice any objections, or try to get him off the driver's seat, or realize that cheering and egging him on is an awful idea, however genuine their blind trust was.

Like, they are certainly not helping, and made the situation much, much worse. If you let your buddy drive while under influence and hand him more beers in the car, even if you are also drunk out of your mind and aren't actively trying to get him into a traffic accident, you are a shitty, irresponsible friend.

But the thing is? SWK is still responsible for the consequences of his decisions. He could have stopped, by his own volition, and no one was holding a gun to his head and forcing him to drive. He, too, wanted this.

That, to me, makes a much more interesting narrative than "Poor innocent baby SWK was puppeted into becoming the Great Sage in Heaven by shady blue cat, how awful!"

Oh, and since I'm feeling particularly salty today, I'll also ask some last questions: is SWK so weak-willed and devoid of self-agency to you that he couldn't even OWE his most famous title, the Great Sage in Heaven, 100%, without being manipulated into it?

Is SWK so immature and unintelligent to you that he is incapable of being a genuine idealist or rebel, that he cannot agree, out of the depth of his heart, that the Celestial Realm sucks balls and needs better management?

TL;DR: Havoc! Era Azure Lion isn't some cult leader brainwashing this kid into becoming his figurehead. He's the dumbass who's too busy staring at his teenage crush to care about the blaring police sirens.

Also, I had a bit of an epiphany after writing this: why am I so annoyed by people reading Azure's idealization of SWK as him intentionally manipulating and love-bombing him? Because it is a very western and modern reading.

For someone with traditional Confucian beliefs, it is perfectly normal——it is what you are supposed to feel, as a liege who has found your just and virtuous lord.

If Romance of the Three Kingdoms existed back then, he would probably describe himself as the Guan Yu to SWK's Liu Bei, however wonky the analogy was.

(Gosh, now I want a "Four Classics read each other" crossover.)

I'm not saying it is healthy or wise. But under this context, putting your lord on a pedestral was normalized, and even encouraged, as the virtue of a righteous gentleman. It was the sort of ideals romanticized culture-wide. NOT having such beliefs would probably make you look weird.

And since the Celestial Realm in the novel is a parody of Confucian hierarchy in a Daoist trenchcoat, it was really no surprise that an idealistic ex-celestial soldier would hold the same beliefs.

To torture the analogy further, the problem is that he was trying to be the Guan Yu to SWK's Liu Bei, when the Brotherhood had more in common with the Bandits of the Marsh, down to their giant downer ending.

[that-spider-witch]

I'm not complaining mind you, I'm loving it!

[yesloulou]

Friday | 2024 Chinese Grand Prix 🏮🐉

[shinonart]

I recently illustrated a memo game "Endangered Animal Babies" for Treecer. This memo game contains 72 unique illustrations and 36 endangered animal species. Each pair consists of the parent and the baby animal and all the illustrations were done in watercolor.

I'm really grateful for this opportunity and very happy with the outcome of the game! The game is sold by WWF Finland and Treecer at the moment.

SET 1 | SET 2 | SET 3 | SET 4 | SET 5 | SET 6 | SET 7

[satanicmacchiato]

a cool look at how stunts in acrobatic lion dance work underneath the lion & in context!

the world of competitive lion dance is no joke, with some teams training year round for the purpose of competing. additionally, competition-grade poles follow standards set by international regulations, which detail how far apart the poles should be, their height, the diameter of the footpads, and more.

dancers are judged on the overall shape of the lion, emotional expression, accurate portrayal of their submitted storylines, etc. each team starts out with a base score of 10, and judges evaluate which points to deduct from there over the course of the routine.

[fenneykindlefire]

This Is PBS Kids!

[alex-fictus]

Shop update!!! 10 new designs available in my store!

Majungasaurus (sticker / wallpaper)

Altispinax/Becklespinax (sticker / wallpaper)

Ornithomimus (sticker / wallpaper)

Gastonia (sticker / wallpaper)

Blue Whale (sticker + here / wallpaper) (yes they're alive, I also have a living fossils and endangered group I'm adding once I have enough of them :) )

Chinese Paddlefish (sticker / wallpaper)

Japanese Sea Lion (sticker / wallpaper)

Caribbean Monk Seal (sticker / wallpaper)

(Combo wallpaper of the above)

Imperial Woodpecker (sticker / wallpaper)

Turnspit Dog (sticker / wallpaper)

I've also got a cluster of Trilobites incoming, so keep your eye out for em!

[morethansalad]

Spicy Cumin Lion's Mane Mushrooms (Vegan)