#haven't felt this artistically driven in so long

[asteroiide]

i want you now. i want you all over me.

[arktaisch]

Bring on the mutant clones!

So apparently, the way to get a good, 'proper' wuxia drama these days that isn't yet another Jin Yong or Gu Long adaptation is to make a well-constructed fanfiction-style re-imagination of a JY or GL classic. That way it can be simultaneously fresh and familiar. And if the writing, acting, action sequences, etc. are good, it's so much fun and I love it. These past few years, I really enjoyed watching "Word of Honor" and "Mysterious Lotus Casebook", both of which are clear cases of this. (Note: I haven't read the books for WoH or MLC, so this is based on the dramas only.)

"Word of Honor" is obviously heavily inspired by Jin Yong's "Smiling Proud Wanderer" (Xiao Ao Jiang Hu), except redone as a BL/danmei. It even keeps the various orthodox sects from XAJH (the Five Mountains Sword Schools Alliance! plus the Shaolin, Wudang, Beggars, etc.) as part of the setting, features a hunt for a MacGuffin (key to some ultimate power or other), and is full of that flavor of treachery and scheming for power reminiscent of XAJH. It's been a while since I watched WOH, so I've forgotten most of the details, but I remember getting a strong XAJH vibe from it.

"Mysterious Lotus Casebook", which I just finished watching and loved even more than "Word of Honor", has more of the feel of Gu Long's "Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword" (Xiaoli Feidao series, book 1). Come on, the protagonists even have the same surname: Lotus Li (Xiangyi/Lianhua) vs Flying Dagger Li (Xunhuan)!

Both of them can pass as scholarly types (though Gu Long's Mr. "Number Three in the Exams" Li more so) and went from a high status position to retiring from the jianghu for ten years. Both are clever, tricky types who live by their wits.

Both of them pushed their female love interests (and deceived them) onto their 'friend' who actually hated/plotted against them. The protagonist comes off better (as in, I don't want to punch him in the face quite as much) in MLC than in "Sentimental Swordsman" --- he doesn't treat her as his property to be traded away. And in theory the female character had more agency in MLC, though I felt let down by the actor here. I think she was supposed to be more driven by guilt (because she broke up with the male lead right before his supposed death) rather than sadly pining after and still in love with him. It would have worked better if she came off as being genuinely in love with the other character, but on screen it feels like she was just worn down and never liked him that much. So as a 'fix-it' to that aspect of "Sentimental Swordsman"… maybe. In theory.

They both get the "enemy is someone you thought you had good relations with" trope (admittedly a common one in wuxia)…

…While their real friend is called "A-Fei" and is a top-notch swordsman. And both A-Fei's are plagued by a professional seductress (who uses drugs and poisons) who clings to/falls in love with them!

They both meet their number one fans. Dagger Li actually marries his in the end, but in MLC that only happens in the eyes of the real life fans (the subtext is definitely there, though I prefer to read it as platonic bromance). The whole thing is funnier in MLC, with Fang Duobing starting out as a naive doofus who claims to everyone he's a disciple of (supposedly dead) Li Xiangyi, including to the man himself and to A-Fei who knows the truth. Then he feels so betrayed when he finds out the truth, and that was all done really well in the show. Another similarity: the girl in "Sentimental Swordsman" has a kick-ass granddad, while Fang Duobing has his mom (another great character), the leader of Tianji Hall (I love a good mechanism specialist).

There's an actual book in-world that lists the top-ranked martial artists! The MLC one seems to be updated regularly, even. That was also a thing in "Sentimental Swordsman", with characters constantly citing the book at each other, and some were completely obsessed. It's kind of a running joke in both.

Solving all the mysteries (and the tomb raiding!) was reminiscent of Chu Liuxiang, another Gu Long protagonist (my childhood favorite). And for non-wuxia influences, Li Lianhua reminded me of Howl from "Howl's Moving Castle" with the lying and slithering out of situations, not to mention the cool-looking mobile home!

So yeah, instead of trying to get a fresh take on adapting a book that's already been adapted like twenty times and offending the purists if you make too many weird changes, file off the serial numbers and take a few steps to the side for a more interesting and coherent re-mix! And set it in a fictional dynasty so you can use fake historical figures and kingdoms to suit your plot without worrying about slandering real people (while I love Jin Yong's use of actual history, even he ended up changing some characters in later revisions because of that) or how much the characters are allowed to affect things on a bigger scale. Plus you can update and improve on the things that were annoying or outdated in the "classics". You're free to change the meaning of the tale to suit yourself without any need to distort the intentions of the original writer.

That's not to say it's impossible to come up with completely new wuxia stories, but building new variations on old stories is worthwhile, too. And beneath any surface similarities, each version has its own story to tell. That said, ninety percent of everything is crap… so besides these two shows I liked, there were a bunch of ones I didn't, whether an adaptation of an old wuxia classic or something newer. (Some of those may improve in later episodes, but I guess I'll never know…)

Long live the mutant clones!

[rhube]

Been reflecting a lot lately on how when I'm really forced to my limits the need to do something large and creative and satisfying overwhelms me. Completely.

It comes out in the fanfic (started writing the week Trump got elected and haven't come up for air since). But also in more obviously unhinged things.

Some if you know that the first leave of absence I took from my PhD I built a loom and started weaving a rug.

A part of me was aware that what I was doing was ridiculous, but I did it anyway.

The rug was for the stone cold floor in the Worst Flat.

It was that cold that I wanted a Rug for the Kitchen. In the winter I slept with two duvets, a blanket, a giant fleecy nightgown, and two hot water bottles and it was Still Too Cold - both because I couldn't afford to heat the place and because the heating didn't work properly.

I could have bought a rug for cheaper than the Rug eventually cost me in wool, but it felt good to buy four pieces of wood and a bunch of nails, build my own square loom and teach myself to weave.

I had been doing just the PhD, in terrible conditions, for too long.

So I took three months off, built a loom, wove a rug, and wrote my essays on Stephen King's The Dark Tower and the Midernists. And I felt better. A bit. I would still be in the Worst Flat for a while yet, and it was going to get worse.

This year I've been sick as a dog, hanging on to my job by a thread and stretching the willingness of my employer to continue to employ me. I'm sick, sick, sick and my anxiety is overpowering and I'm making a nearly-life-sized sculpture of a butt.

This has taking dozens of hours of work - probably more than 100 by now. We use the phrase 'labour of love' but that's so fucking sanitised. Doing something like this, or building a loom, or writing 800,000+ words of fiction you can't sell is something more than love. It's *driven*.

People talk about creativity as an added extra. Something writers and artists and actors 'get' to do (because we know we all want to do it - we know it's valuable) but it's not really a choice.

If you force me to not be creative for long enough it bursts out at the seems. I do something that is absolutely not worth it in terms of the effort and finished result.

The rug is *terrible*.

The fanfic is good, but how many novels could I have completed of original fiction had I devoted myself in the same way?

The Butt Sculpture is pretty good, but there's enough wrong with it that you can tell it's my first attempt at doing something like that. And I'm going to have to hide it from some of my guests. It's huge and fragile and it's taken months and what was I thinking?

I wasn't thinking. I had to do it. Had I the money and time to work free of pressure I might have produced many more far more sensible pieces of art.

Creative people can't put the creativity *down* and when we try, or we are forced to by circumstance, it comes for us.

Or it does for me, anyway.

Because when I can't do it it's fucking *damaging*.

And imperfect though it is, when I look at Butt Sculpture and how GOOD it is, for a first attempt, I feel grief for all the art I could have produced in a kinder world that enabled me to live in a creative way, day-to-day.

I'm a pretty good writer. I'm a pretty good amateur artist. (I am a pretty terrible weaver.) I could have been so much more. And it hurts, the space that's left by all the undone works.

[livingasaghost]

haven't written one of these in a long time but it feels like i should

i'm trying not to be too optimistic because we have a long road ahead of us but i opened up my manuscript last week for the first time in like....a year? it's been quietly sitting on my hard drive while i've worked through a million different crises the last few years and even though i haven't done more than reread it, i felt the Itch. a lot of that comes down to tour starting and feeling inspired by taylor once again (thank god for that woman) but it's something.

i found another indie author on instagram today that kind of gave me that feeling i felt when i found olivie blake (hi olive <3) a few years ago — that sometimes it's okay to just be an indie author and traditional publishing doesn't have to be the be all end all. and like yeah, i'd love to get picked up by traditional publishing and a cool agent, but so much of my fear about editing is That. that i'm not good enough, that i AM good enough and then i have to keep writing after this book is done, that there will be more work in this that just another edit.

i was so driven for most of 2020 and 2021 and then my entire life got ripped apart and remixed and only now two years later do i finally feel like i'm stepping back into myself. i started therapy again and in preparation for that i was reflecting on all the shit that's happened in the last two years and there was a comment i made to myself about how meeting EJ gave me the space to become my own person again post-lockdown and for a long time i thought that meant a New me that wasn't at all like the old me...i thought that i was giving up the old pieces of myself because they no longer fit or they hurt too much or i didn't know how to be who i used to be...but in the last month or so i really feel like i'm returning to the old me (taylor fan, reader, writer, TV binger, artist) while also honoring the new me (climber, cook, emotionally stable lol). i can't explain it but the old light that died in me at the coffeeshop is coming back stronger now.

and now that i'm (hopefully) moving (!!!!!!!) into my own place (AFJHSDK) i think i'm another step closer to that version of myself i've been chasing. which is to say, i'm having grace with myself and remembering all the old things i used to love doing and i feel like very very soon i will be in a safe space where i can finally explore who i'm meant to be. and while i'm terrified of living alone (for the financial reasons obviously) i also have to remember all the benefits of that terrifying prospect. that i'll have the space to be myself. and that peace will lead me to so many wonderful places i don't even know yet.

i'm still not sure when the writing will return to me...in rereading my manuscript i feel like i spend half the time going "NO NOTES!" and the other half going "this is the most cringe, most terrible writing i've ever seen fix all of it please!" it's intimidating and i'm no longer confident in myself like i once was, but now that i feel like i have no deadline and i'm sinking into the idea of a self-published book i'm a little more at peace with it. like i feel like when i do get back to it and start sitting in coffeeshops on the weekends, i will have the space to fully explore this story one more time and put the new pieces of myself inside it.

it's weird because another reason i was so scared of this story is that when i was last editing it i was deep in the trenches of 2021. i intertwined so many people and experiences from that season of my life into the manuscript and it almost feels like i'm just reading about ghosts now. but it's also the ghosts of lockdown and the ghosts of my early twenties and the ghosts of rep tour and the ghosts of all the people i hoped i'd be by now. it's a book about a 21 year old but somehow at 27 this story is more relatable to me than it has ever been before. i am writing my own story that doesn't have a happy ending yet and i think since i don't have the answers it feels like i can't explore that on the page. if i can't offer hope or the promise of a happy ending then does that story deserve to be told? (yes)

i thought i had given up on books and then something changed (as it always does) and i found my way back. i always do. and i always find my way back to writing too. it's just so hard to see life as a string of seasons and cycles when it feels like every second is the start and the end. there is space to grow and change and come back and return and revisit and leave things behind. there is enough time. and sometimes your time is best spent falling back in love with your life. i've spent the past few weekends feeling a little useless - sitting around, resting, not doing much of anything - and even though i can't keep doing that forever, i has forced me to get back in touch with what i want and who i am. sitting in my room with all my books and my cameras and my cool decor centers me, it gives me a reason to keep on living.

i truly don't know where i'm going this year. i have some ideas, some hopes and dreams, but i have resigned myself to "fixing" my every day. to focus on where i am, to make my day to day better and spend less time traveling. and while that would've scared me a few years ago before a global pandemic, i think now it's like a promise to myself. a promise that i am worth investing in and that i can get better and that even if i don't get better, right now is good enough. i had so many dreams for this time of my life that didn't come true and for a while i grieving them pretty hard. and then i set myself free from those dreams and i thought i'd never see them again...but that's not true at all is it? the things that love us, the things that we love never truly leave us after all, they always come back.

also i finally had a vision for the WIP book cover and even though it might change if i ever hit that point...it gave me a little push that sounded like "keep going" <3

[ladyofsnark]

Hi I saw a while ago that u said that u were asexual so I was hoping u could help me out a little. I used to be into guys like I was attracted to them and the idea of sex and whatever appealed to me. However recently not only have I realized that I really don't want to have sex but also i haven't been physically attracted to someone in a very long time. Even ppl that I see that I'm like they are good looking, I don't ever feel attracted to them. (1)

Hey. I’m only going to reply to this part because the other part isn’t anonymous and I’m erring on the side of caution.

There’s nothing wrong with you. I want to get that out there, because there’s that thread of worry in your notes. Like you think you’re less than normal or something. But we live in a world that uses sex to sell everything from music to baby clothes. You’re not the one with the problem.

Asexual/aromantic people sit on something of a spectrum. Some of them are absolutely celibate, some enjoy having partners occasionally for intimacy’s sake, some masturbate, others have never felt the need, etc. etc.

Asexual and sexually-active people alike can feel what’s called sex-repulsed or sex-aversion. Sex and facets of it just makes them squeamish.

I’m like you. Kissing totally grosses me out. I found this out with my first boyfriend and he sort of helped me cement my very first realizations (those I had when I was in fourth grade) that I was asexual. Sorry, bro.

But also like you, I can look at men and women alike and think “wow, that person is absolutely gorgeous”. This isn’t a thought that’s driven by a sexual desire or even a physical attraction. My eyes are just telling my brain “see pretty thing, thing is pretty, thing is person, person is pretty”.

This is simply called “aesthetic attraction” and I was calling it my artist’s eye long before I knew the words.

I used to really, really enjoy flirting. I liked checking out guys and doing the smile look away, look back thing until they were a clumsy mess. I had a lot of fun with it.

And then I completely and utterly, totally lost interest. I don’t know if maturity just hits that fast or what, but I could swear a lot of this was written by me to me.

“Am I asexual? What’s happening to me?? I used to be rlly into the opposite sex and now I just don’t care”

Only you can answer that first bit. Not wanting to jump immediately into the most physical bits of a relationship could just be a sign of maturity as far as I’m concerned.

But I want you to know that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you either way.