#i had to edit this post for conciseness an embarrassing amount. the tags too.
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I hate to ask but who is hua Chang
Hua Cheng is the deuterantagonist of the Chinese web novel Heaven Official's Blessing! It's a historical fantasy novel about gods and ghosts and cultivators (xianxia) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It's also a gay romance (danmei). The main themes are destiny, love, and what it means to be a good person. It has a comic version (manhua) and one-soon-to-be-two seasons of animation (donghua).
He's an 800+ year old ghost who has a sentient sword made from his own dismembered eye, runs a city, turns his enemies into blood rain, creates silver wraith butterflies and has been devotedly worshiping/pining after his god, Xie Lian, his entire life. This book is the longest hyperfixation I have ever had. So I think it's pretty good (understatement of the century).
I can and have written essay length rants about him but here is a paragraph i wrote a while back about my favorite things about him, to sum up:
His gender probably. The way he looked fate in the eyes and said āfuck you, old manā and built a highly successful life of his own. How he is so fucked up but still hyper-competent. How all his strength comes from love. How his devotion changed as he grew up but never wavered. The way he is kind but not nice. His infodump swag.
#and thousands of words of fic!#eurghhhhhghghg hes so. the character fucking ever.#me reading tgcf for the first time and seeing an edgy gay-longing complex character with a neat visual design : Oh No#his full title is Crimson Rain Sought Flower because once when he was making it rain blood (as you do) he sheltered a flower.#also he has multiple forms. for most of the beginning of the story he appears as a teenager with both eyes#this is as brief an explanation as i can give you. i am showing SO much restraint.#i had to edit this post for conciseness an embarrassing amount. the tags too.#is the multiple social media accounts themed after him and constant drawing giving away that i like him#important note: i do not kin him and i do not simp for him#i am a xie lian and wei wuxian kin. if this tells you something about my mental health no it doesnt im just a silly guy#tgcf#not art#hua cheng
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Content Creator Interview #2
In this weekās interview, fandom friends @lilsherlockian1975 and @mrsmcrieff talk about whether they found Sherlock hot or not at first sight, how publicly sharing their work changed their writing, and the hardest thing about writing smutfic (pun fully intended).
And for those who donāt know, today is Lillianās Birthday, so mādear, Many Happy Returns!!!!
Hey, so Lilsherlockian1975 and myself, MrsMCrieff, have decided to interview each other for Aineās challenge. Weāre going to try to answer each otherās questions but there is always the danger of us going massively off piste. Our conversations in the past have been eclectic and very wide-ranging not to mention M rated.
Ā Anyway, I thought we could start by saying how we came into the fandom and more than that writing in the fandom. Lil, do you want to start?
Lil: All right, my sister on another continent, hereās how it went: As Iāve explained about finding The Full House on Pinterest, letās explore what came before that moment, then just after... I was working third shift at a hotel (I had to as Mr Lil and I didnāt really have any childcare options at the time, so we just worked opposite shifts). The hotel was in a very small town - we were never busy, some nights we sold maybe 2 rooms - I usually spent my time watching Netflix. After making my way through Doctor Who, Star Trek Next Gen, Voyager then (God help me) DS9, Farscape and Firefly, Iād finally run out of anything to watch. Youād be surprised how quickly you can burn through a series binge watching for 8 hours at a time (and getting paid for it!).
Ā Thenā¦ then I found Sherlock. Well, that changed thingsā¦ a bit.
Ā āGood Lord, who is the Cumberstud chap and why wonāt he have all the sex with me!?ā was my first thought, my second was, āMaybe I have a chance with the dishy DI?ā and third? āOhā¦ what fresh hell is this āMycroftā? Yummy!ā Then finally, āAhh, did the casting director somehow read my diary? Creepy butā¦ all right.ā To my defense, it was late and I usually worked on very little sleep. Also, Iām a kinky bitch.
Ā Iād never been involved in a āfandom properā, I suppose. Thatās not to say that I wasnāt a fangirl. I am and always have been. I was hugely into the Kevin Smith movies, going as far as visiting the Quick Stop and RST Video in Lenardo, NJ, respectively, as well as The Secret Stash, in Red Bank. I was a comic book geek in my youth, Marvel mostly, but some DC as well.
Ā After reading The Full House, I desperately needed MORE Sherlock and luckily enough, there was more to be found.
Ā At first I was just reading, then I wrote and posted a couple of (horrible) fics and met this fellow writer named MrsMCrieff (I might have had a little āwriting crushā on you, Mrs!). We chatted on FF.net and struck up a friendship.
Ā So, for me, writing came before fandom. Mrs was doing some betaing for me, but I didnāt ask for help often; I hated bothering her all the time for the multitude of stories I was turning out. At some point around here, I got an elusive invite to AO3 from sherlockian87, bless her soul, because I kept trying to join and couldnāt get a blessed invitation. Also around this time, I had written a prompt and got a PM from MizJoely asking if she could fix some of my mistakes (she was very sweet about it, even though I totally flipped - half fangirling, half losing my shit because āCrap, I screwed up so bad, here was The MizJoely asking if she could edit out my mistakes!ā) but she wasnāt being critical at all, of course, just helpful as I soon found out. Shortly after, now having formed a friendship with MIz, she suggested that I start a Tumblr blog. And thatās how it all started.
Yes, sorryā¦ I, um, tend to be a tad loquacious. Writing out my answers doesnāt help one little bit.
Ā Okay, Mrs, right back atcha!
Ā Mrs: OK, shall I try to be more concise? Iāll probably fail as Iām terrible as writing short fics they always seem to end up spread over multiple chapters.
Ā Iām another one who had always been a fangirl, Doctor Who, Buffy, Twilight, vampire Diaries (yeah, I love my vampires) but Iād also been a Sherlock Holmes fan. Iād read all the books in my teens, watched the Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett adaptations and even stayed at the Sherlock Holmes hotel on Baker St so when a new series was advertised it was an easy sale.
Ā I was late to the cumberobsession though. I have to admit watching the first two series as they came out and I remember thinking I like them but itās a shame Sherlock isnāt that hot. I know, I know, Iām embarrassed even as I write that.
Ā It all changed after watching season 3 and I blame the Sherlolly kiss 100%. I watched the series, DELETED the records!! And then realised I was spending a lot of time thinking about Sherlock and Benedict...that turned into looking him up online and from there it was a short step to reading Sherlolly fics on fanfic (I was already reading fics for other shipping obsessions). Anyway, it didnāt take long before Sherlolly took over all my other ships and Benedict was my number one hottie.
Ā As for writing, I hadnāt written anything fiction based since school and school was a long time ago...almost thirty years. But one day I was looking for a specific fic, I wanted to read about Sherlock and Molly having to share body heat and I just couldnāt find anything that satisfied me. Iām not sure why but in that moment I decided to write it myself and in half an hour Iād written Frozen...my first ever fic. It took another couple of hours to pluck up the courage to post it and I clearly remember feeling a bit sick and my hand shaking as I pressed the final button to post.
Ā Thankfully, I almost immediately started to receive positive reviews and feedback and it wasnāt long before I started to write more...the rest as they say is history. Lil got in touch soon after and it was fun chatting to another writer just starting out. We soon found we were not dissimilar in age and both had two sons and the friendship started there.
Ā Weāve been through quite a lot over the last few years Lil and written some fab stories. Wouldnāt you agree?
Ā (I should let on that we are now faffing about trying to find the original list of questions...we are trying to be professional).
Ā Ok Lil, so Iāve looked at Aineās questions and they look really hard. Any preferences on which ones you want to answer :).
Ā Lil: I think a great follow up to that first one is this: How did posting your first story change your process of writing? So Iām shooting it back to you, Mrs, and you can send me that one or select a new one for me. Tag, youāre it!
Ā Mrs: I can tell you quite simply how it changed my process of writing...given that it was my first piece of writing in 30 years I was starting from scratch when it came to any process. One thing that I started with thatās held true for me ever since is that my stories are fully mapped out and written before I even start posting the first chapter. I will edit and make refinements but the bones of the story are there.
Ā I know lots of people post a chapter and then write the next chapter but that would put me under too much pressure. The downside is that if someone gives me a prompt they could be waiting months before they see it posted. The upside is if Iāve started posting a fic you will get the end of it as itās already been written.
Ā There have only been two exceptions to this method: Sherlock Holmes, Vampire which I worked on over a year or so posting four chapters every so often as I wrote them...it was stressful. And the other is Never Have I Ever which was/is more of a collection of one shots woven together into a fic.
Ā How about you Lil? How did it change for you?
Ā Lil: So, Iād been writing little stories and whatnot for years and years but, having no idea that there was such a thing as ff.net or AO3, I had no place to put them. Writing was always a very, very distant dream of mine. I have loads of notebooks filled with stories, story ideas and my own personal ramblings (unfortunately, my Tumblr followers now have to read the āramblings businessā). I stopped for many years after my roommate/best friend since childhood found some of my writing in college that Iād carefully hidden under my bed. I came home to find her in my room, sat on the floor, on the phone with our Art History professor (whom she was sleeping with), as she read him my story and laughed hysterically at its awfulness.
Ā I was devastated and vowed never to write again.
Ā But that changed, of course. Those first maybe ten stories were just me letting my mind go and getting out what I wanted to say (aided by liberal amounts of wine). Since then, however, my āprocessā has changed drastically. I donāt always write an outline (never for one shots, which I write often) but I generally do for long fics. If not, itās easy for me to get lost and miss critical points. My writing has become more about ālayeringā for lack of a better word.
Ā I found after those first few posted fics, that in going back and re-reading them I wanted to make changes. I didnāt re-edit them (because Iām lazy), but it made me realize that my writing required more time and proofing before posting; that first draft is just the start for me - a thin layer of primer paint on a canvas, if you will. I then read over it and add more details and more and more until I get the desired effect. Again, much like oil painting, I have to build things up, layer by layer. This works for me; I have no idea if itās a proper method of writing. So, posting my first fic(s) helped me learn that I shouldnāt be so trigger happy about posting if the story wasnāt ready.
Ā Okay, Mrs, this one is geared specifically towards you. I donāt think anyone would argue with me about your supernatural ability to write ācase ficsā, so let me ask: Which do you prefer writing, case fics or fluffy smut-filled romps? And why?
Ā Mrs: Oh God, ask me something easy why donāt you. Both, I like writing both. I love the depth of a case fic, the idea, the research, plotting it out and working out the characters and detail but itās so time consuming and I often write a bit, leave it, come back to it etc. etc. so a detailed case fic can take six months.
Ā Fluff on the other hand is less satisfying but quicker (my minds already in the gutter with an analogy).
Ā Woohoo I kept is fairly short for once. So, hereās one thatās good for you. Iām endlessly envious of how easily you make friends and how you know so many people in the fandom whereas Iām the introverted hermit. Which other authors are you friends with, and how have they help you become a better writer?
Ā Lil: Goodness! You make me sound like a social butterfly (Mr Lil calls me that all the time!). I like people, plain and simple. Other than you, I am close to MizJoely and Darnedchild, thatās no secret, so Iāll talk about them first (you included, because youāve made me a better writer, Iām sure of it - have actual proof!)
Ā I cannot count the ways Miz has helped me improve my writing. She figuratively took me by the ear and said āokay, you donāt suck but do you even know what a comma is used for?ā No, not those actual words, she was much kinder about it, but I got the hidden meaning and I needed it, trust me. She also challenges me and is not afraid to be honest with me when Iāve written something that isnāt good or perhaps doesnāt fit. I know Iāve improved since she started betaing for me, like a 1000%. And Childā¦ When I volunteered to beta for the Big Bang Challenge, I had no idea what I was getting into, but manā¦ sheād written and enormous fic. Good, amazing really, but it was longer than anything Iād ever worked on before. It scared the shit out of me but I really think it was exactly what I needed. Betaing someone elseās work can really make you see your own mistakes from a new perspective. I feel like I jumped ahead after working on the BBC with Child. As for you, MrsMCrieff, just the other day I had The Best complimentā¦ someone actually thought I was British! Yes, that happened. I can only attribute that little feat to you, my friend. Youāve taught me when to add a āuā, when not to zed and about many different terms like pavement, taps, hob, loo, trousers (we really donāt say that here!). Not to mention the fact that most European men arenāt circumcised. Who knew?! Itās pretty common in the US.
Ā But thatās just a few. I cannot count the number of fandom friends who have helped me and all the ways that theyāve done so. That doesnāt mean I wonāt tryā¦
Ā Thereās likingthistoomuch who always listens to my ideas and encouraged me to post my first Harry Potter fic. OhAine has been a true friend from the very beginning, always insightful and supportive. Mellovesall who is just too sweet for words and always helps with edits, no matter whatās going on in her life. Kendrapendragon who let me bounce ideas for my Mirror Has Two Faces AU off of her for like a whole day! the-sapphiresky who has helped me with this historical AU that may or may not ever see the light of day. Allthebellsinvenice who answered about a dozen questions (over two years!) for Dig Down Deep when Iād panic about some D/s situation Iād written myself into. o0katiekins0o who backs me up when Iām in the middle of a sensitive subject. I can always depend on her to help me when Iām afraid Iām crossing a line. Broomclosetkink, Lord help me! Sheās pinch hit for me when Iāve written a fic for Miz or if I just need a good laugh. Sheās the best. Sweetsā¦ itās very hard to talk about sweet-sweet-escape. I still cannot even bring myself read her stories or the ones I wrote for her without breaking down, but no one was more supportive or kind to me than Sweets. I miss her so much.
Ā Then thereās all the love and support I received from everyone during The Fic That Shall Not Be Named debacle. Thatās when I knew how much this fandom (well, this ship, really) had my back! I will never forget how much love and support I received. Bless you all!
Ā Iām forgetting people and I hate that. But I really do love all my fandom friends as if I see them and hang out with them every day. I mean that.
Ā Okay, Mrs, hereās one for you (Iām going back to the list for this one because I like it and I think itās interesting): Whatās the most difficult thing about writing characters of the opposite sex?
Ā Mrs: See, see I said you knew loads of people!
Ā As for your question thatās easy to answer...knowing what it feels like when they get aroused and orgasm. Iām more than happy being female but it would be kind of interesting just to be a guy for one day. It would improve my writing no end.
Ā On a wider note when it comes to writing characters I donāt think any of us made it easy on ourselves when we decided to try to write being a high functioning sociopathic genius. I think I can speak for most of us when I say heās not the easiest person to try to write authentically. I just wish I had half his knowledge then I wouldnāt feel like such an idiot when Iām writing him.
Ā I gave my youngest son the option of any number between 1 and 40. He chose 7 so does writing energise or exhaust you?
Ā Lil: It absolutely energises me! I do get frustrated trying to find time to write, but actually writing does amazing things for my mental and physical self. I find that Iām much more productive around the house when Iām in the middle of a writing jag. Iāll sit and write for a while, then get up and pound out some chores (usually more quickly as to get back to my computer). Somehow, this works for me. Frankly, itās probably got to do with my ADHD. Iām the kind of person who needs to do multiple things at once. Iām the same at work; I cannot just stand behind the registrar for 8 hours. I practically beg my managers for extra work, which theyāre happy to give me.
Ā I have an original question for you, love: How does a bad review affect you?
Ā Mrs: Iāll be honest I donāt react well to a bad review but it does depend on whether I think itās valid or not. You probably know each and every time Iāve had one because I will probably have sent you a screen shot and asked your opinion. Thankfully they have been few and far between, occasionally they have made me think...especially if Iām being accused of using a tired old trope and Iāve made the effort to up my game in future fics but often they are just being nasty for the sake of it.
Ā Writing is such a personal thing though, we give a piece of ourselves in each and every fic so itās hard to not take criticism very personally.
Ā Same question to you Lil.
Ā Lil: Oh, Iām a giant baby about a bad review and have been known to take it very personally. At first I broodā¦ like really hard, thinking on the entire thing much longer than necessary. I suppose it depends on the nature and tone, for the most part though. If itās attacking and spiteful, Iāll attack right back but if itās coming from a āgoodishā place, I do try to look at my writing a bit more objectively (I donāt always succeed). Anonymous bad reviews get to me the most. The fact that I cannot reply drives me up the wall!
Ā Okay, weāre wrapping this up (else we could go on forever!) Thanks so much and a big thanks to Aine for organizing this as well!
Ā Mrs & Lil
Next Week:
Posting on Friday 01 March itās @ohaineĀ ās turn (eek!) to interview @ashockinglackofsatin
#content creator interviews#lilsherlockian1975#mrsmcrieff#sherlolly#sherlock#mentions of lemony goodness
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