I sincerely hope my friends won't find out that I am using their names for characters sometimes.
Good thing I write anonymously.
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Keni
Peter Solarz
hello vonnie
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Cosimo Galluzzi
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cherry valley forever
Mike Driver
we're not kids anymore.
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@minimoons-world
I sincerely hope my friends won't find out that I am using their names for characters sometimes.
Good thing I write anonymously.
DEAREST FATHER — FRANZ KAFKA
jiang cheng is having simultaneous affairs with qin su and jin guangyao; both of them know about it and it actually makes things better because qin su assumes that jgy is gay and that's why he's not having sex with her, and jgy feels less bad knowing that his wife is getting it on with someone. jc is freaking out because he doesn't want to ruin their marriage and meanwhile they're both like "wow this is the best thing to happen to us in forever"
On Writing Artists
✧ creating beauty out of a mess and calling it therapy.
✧ jumping between “I’m a genius” and “I should quit forever” in 3 minutes flat.
✧ surviving on self-doubt, and validation.
✧ turning heartbreak into projects because at least pain pays rent.
✧ messy studios that look like the inside of their brain, cluttered but alive.
✧ being unable to separate creation from confession.
✧ overanalyzing color palettes like it’s philosophy.
✧ crying over a project you haven’t even started.
✧ getting defensive when someone calls your work “cute.”
✧ that godlike moment when something finally looks right.
✧ people assuming art is easy when it’s literally your emotional blood on canvas.
✧ burning out, starting again, repeating endlessly.
✧ realizing your art is saying things you’re too scared to say out loud.
✧ giving away pieces of yourself and pretending it’s “just a painting.”
✧ never really finishing anything, just abandoning it lovingly.
guys. please
both of these simultaneously
Therapy is expensive, but there are free non-chatgpt resources out there
Free worksheets, treatment guides, and videos for mental health professionals. Topics include CBT, anger management, self-esteem, relaxation
Finch - Your New Self Care Best Friend
You feel like shit. That sucks. You Feel Like Shit is a game designed to help you help yourself through your shitty times and practice self
Introduction to the Analog Brain - Skip the intro and go to the tool - Sometimes (lots of times) (all the time), I have the urge to do
I've used all of these and can vouch for them. Stay safe, love u guys 💖
am i writing? yes.
is it anything that’ll make it into the actual novel? absolutely not.
same
I was thinking today about the babyhood of WWX and JC, and it hit me that... Well, JC is an adult now.
And it's not like we don't know now, but we kinda see JC through WWX's eyes most of the time and it takes a moment to remember this is not a teary-eyed baby that followed his shixiong if bothered long enough, or a tired young master who tried to lead a sect but still looked towards WWX for direction and validation.
This is a man nearing his middle age, who spent the last 13/16 years being a leader of a region and a parent to a kid. This JC wants answers from WWX and is not going to follow his lead anymore.
Like, how much of WWX's fear of JC is the fear of meeting the version of his little shidi that isn't him anymore? Wei Wuxian keeps insisting in his pov that JC was always this or that, that he knows him the best, that he knows what JC will do here and there... And it has pretty much nothing to do with the current reality of Sect Leader Jiang? He doesn't fall for WWX 's theatrics, he doesn't let WWX redirect him like he used to, he doesn't react like he's expected to (for example, during the sect conference).
Yeah, he's still angry and has no patience for bullshit, and a poisonous tongue - but he's different now. Even the person he's protecting now isn't WWX anymore, it's Jin Ling.
Meanwhile, Wei Wuxian didn't really have a chance to change and mature, he just spent his "death" in stasis and came back to a world where the closest person he had left was different. How easy was it for him to blame JC for the disconnect between them?
How easy was it for him to think "You've changed. You used to love me unquestionably, and now you don't. Why did you have to change?"
...and how similar it is to what Jiang Cheng had to feel during Wei Wuxian's Burial Mounds arc?
Writing Reference: Colour Vitamins
11 key ‘colour vitamins’ related to a range of positive (+) and negative (–) attributes.
RED
+ up-beat, confident, assertive, exciting – aggressive, domineering, bossy, threatening
PINK
+ feminine, gentle, accessible, non-threatening – pathetic, unimportant, safe, under-confident
BLUE
+ peaceful, trustworthy, constant, orderly – ‘holier than thou’, tiresome, predictable, conservative
BROWN
+ earthy, homely, gregarious – safe, boring, unsophisticated
YELLOW
+ cheerful, hopeful, active, uninhibited – impulsive, tiresome, whirlwind, volatile
GREEN
+ self-reliant, tenacious, nurturing, dependable – boring, stubborn, riskaverse, predictable
ORANGE
+ vital, funny, enthusiastic, sociable, uninhibited – superficial, common, faddist, giddy
VIOLET
+ imaginative, sensitive, intuitive, unusual, unselfish – weird, impractical, immature, superior
GREY
+ respectable, neutral, balanced – non-committal, deceptive, uncertain, safe
BLACK
+ formal, sophisticated, mysterious, strong – mournful, aloof, negative, lifeless
WHITE
+ pure, clean, fresh, futuristic – clinical, ‘colourless’, cold, neutral
The symbolic or psychological associations of colours have a long history.
In the 12th century, a colour sequence for the liturgical year in the Roman Catholic Church was outlined by Pope Innocent III, and continues to be used today. Examples:
Red vestments are used at Pentecost or for the feasts of martyrs, the colour representing tongues of fire and the shedding of blood;
black vestments are the colour of mourning;
violet vestments represent the mitigation of black, in Advent and Lent; and
green is the ‘neutral’ colour, used ‘in ordinary time’, when there is no special period or feast-day being celebrated.
These and certain other colours (notably white, blue, gold, and rose) are also often used symbolically in many medieval religious paintings.
In modern times:
The psychological associations of colours, and thus the connotations of colour vocabulary, continue to be exploited in a wide range of contexts, such as in the description of paint shades, advertising language, and techniques of self-imaging.
The Color Me Beautiful system is a good example within the last category.
This consultancy was founded by Carole Jackson in the USA in 1974, and now has branches in many parts of the world. Its aim is to help women discover their natural beauty through colour, using the metaphor of the four seasons.
In much the same way as each season presents a distinct array of colours, a person’s colouring is said to be in harmony with one of these palettes, and advice is given about how to enhance these natural colours, and about how to choose additional colours (of make-up and clothing) (M. Spillane, 1991).
Source ⚜ More: On Colours ⚜ Colour Symbolisms ⚜ "Magical Uses" of Colours Writing Notes & References ⚜ On Symbolism
Loved your meta about XiCheng! You put into words something I've never been able to exactly get at about why I'm so neutral about that ship (pretty as the fanart is.)
I'm so curious about your Nie Huaisang comment too! What are your thoughts on SangCheng - either mid- or post-canon?
stacking these two together lmao. thank you! <3
sorry for the delay, i answered it in full and then tumblr ate it and i was sad.
okay, brutal honesty! i don't hate this one as much as xicheng, and it's less because at least nhs and jc had a friendship to fall back on than because we do not, when you come down to it, know shit about nie huaisang.
we have a handful of facts of which we can be reasonably certain, a handful more of which we are not certain at all, and a bunch of hypotheticals. he is a very flexible character.
even the things we seem to know are potentially negotiable: for example, did he really flunk Lan Finishing School twice, or did he deliberately underperform to get sent back, to avoid his brother's pressure to conform to the expectations of the Nie clan? are we sure we know? etc.
therefore, you can fashion a nie huaisang who is entirely plausible as a romantic partner for jiang cheng, in a range of styles depending on the needs of the narrative.
someone who does a good job of this will thus get a romantic story that is both canon-compatible and compelling.
now, 1. it still won't be my cup of tea, but more importantly 2. it is often not done very well, but just more tepid pair-the-spares and 3. very common not to recognize that jiang cheng, in contrast to nhs, is a character with a lot of fixed points.
his difficulty changing as a person or acting like anyone but himself (and often being bad at even that, due to Inner Conflict) is a load-bearing aspect of the story. if you are fielding a jiang cheng who is undergoing Growth you gotta engage with how hard that is for him.
most of the time, i think, this is going to be an intense pain-of-change experience right up until the transition is complete, at which point he will snap onto his new skeleton and be inflexible in a new conformation, although ideally less so. there's room for interpretation here, but not at all ambiguous is that he struggles.
the other problem i have with this ship is that, as in xicheng, we are putting together two male sect leaders in a homophobic society. that's fraught.
they are both highly visible political figures who can't afford to spend too much time around each other, and they have very different approaches and priorities when it comes to managing their images, but they are both very image-conscious.
this is less of an issue with nhs than with lxc, one of the many reasons i like it better, because he is comfortable with things like 'lying,' and being sect leader is a significantly smaller facet of his personality. there's a solid chunk of time where he is not sect leader yet and is not acknowledging he ever could be.
why is nie mingjue not married with kids, btw.
you know what i've never seen? when people are doing the popular 'canon setting but gay marriage is normalized' AU? never seen jiang cheng and nie huaisang having to get divorced because da-ge died. i think that's one of the more interesting things you could do with them within the range of common shipfic content.
has anyone seen that? i feel like if you put in some concubines for reproductive purposes, to explain how you can have normalized gay marriage in period china without massive transformation of most aspects of society, you could do this AU completely in-character.
but, back on topic, that's the thing! that trips me up so much when people skip over it! wangxian are quite deliberately constructed around this, with lwj being a second son explicitly going through a whole character arc of choosing selfishness over his duty to his family, and wei wuxian having in practice no generational obligations.
jiang cheng could be gay as the day is long (improbable), and he would still not consider a man as a serious, let alone exclusive, long-term partner, because being sect heir and then sect leader is a massive part of his personality.
jiang cheng only exists as a vessel for his inheritance. that is why his parents created him. why they saved him alive, while going to their deaths.
i think they loved him, as well as each of them could, but they never wanted him. except to fill the position of the heir. and he knows this, down to his bones.
that's why he had nothing to live for without his cultivation; without the ability to perpetuate Jiang Sect.
not having children of his body is not a realistic option for jiang cheng. having his own kids is not something he wants to do, for a lot of reasons only some of which are distinct to the reader, but he has to. eventually.
the fact that he hasn't yet can be framed internally as a 'later' thing and a 'once Jin Ling is grown' thing, he still has time, he isn't yet forty. but he is incapable of making the decision not to marry and father an heir, as his father was obliged to before him.
(actually it's possible that for a bit there he was hoping jin guangyao would cut a deal where jiang cheng could adopt jin ling into the jiang, clearing the way for rusong to take the jin. he's jiang blood, after all, so it'd be close enough. and then he wouldn't have to confront various personal issues, limbo right under.)
the seismic transformation of jiang cheng's entire character that would have to be involved in letting go of this obligation and choosing a non-reproductive pair bond, and reforming the Jiang away from the clan-centric model pioneered by Wen Mao, would probably be psychologically healing. if he made it through.
but it would require at least a whole additional novel of content to get him through that believably. he's not just going to do that one day. even if he was gayer than lan wangji, he couldn't just decide to go with that. gotta build up to it.
so if you don't want to dedicate some 70k to the character arc, or massively change his context and thus his character, you're restricted to canon setting sangcheng on a strictly messing-around basis. casual liaison. depressed hookups at discussion conferences conducted in the utmost secrecy.
romantic feelings could arise, but would be repressed and ignored--which means nhs might pick up that jiang cheng was attached to him and not acknowledge it whether it was reciprocated or not, while jiang cheng would never let it enter his consciousness that nie huaisang might Like him, and would avoid contemplating the reverse.
like a more deliberate and tormented (i.e. normal) version of wwx's block about lwj.
the more romantic they felt about each other the more fucked up things would get, honestly, because this is necessarily a relationship that is 1) no-strings 2) temporary and 3) secret. so attachment increases avoidance.
you do something along those lines, and slather on either some heaping angst around nhs being a lying liar who doesn't trust jiang cheng with the truth about his brother's death, or a dynamic plot around him doing so and the two of them joining forces as a sort of secret counterweight to the jin-lan alliance, with lots of character growth for jiang cheng and some processing of his issues about wwx? you could build something really solid. story-wise, and in terms of character.
so yeah it's not a pairing with no potential, there are definitely exploitable angles. but i feel like it quite often gets written with the same lack of investment in the narrative, setting, and characterization as xicheng, so i don't regard it fondly.
if you like jiang cheng enough to make him one of your leads, why not put him in the situation and let him react to it on his terms? i do not understand.
We who remain: then and now.
Part 1: Jiang Cheng / Sandu Shengshou Part 2: Nie Huaisang / Director Nie Part 3: Meng Yao / Jin Guangyao; Lan Xichen / Zewu-Jun Part 4: Wangxian Part 5: Wen Ning / Ghost General
so, there's no good way to really breach this topic. however, I am going to throw this stone and hope for the best.
Jiang Cheng rebuilt his sect with his own hands. Which means that he had to personally recruit cultivators and convince them that fighting for the Yunmeng Jiang Sect against the Qishan Wen Sect was worth it. This requires an incredible level of social skills and most importantly—skills to understand people so that he can get his message across. Simultaneously, all this requires him to have some form of friendship with his disciples, which means that Jiang Cheng has....friends besides Wei Wuxian! We read the story from WWX's POV so obviously JC's most prominent relationship in the text will be with him! And that's true, they grew up together and WWX's decisions caused heavy problems for the both of them! You cannot disregard their relationship! However, that does not mean that at the end of the novel Jiang Cheng is "friendless" with a threatening personality that scalds anyone who dares to come close. There's no punishment for Jiang Cheng at the end—only understanding of the choices of the other person, and finally a chance to move on from the questions that have been haunting him for years.
THANK YOU! This! Ok, so look. I was trained as an archaeologist.
That means I look at ruins. A lot of ancient ruins, in all sorts of places. One of the MOST common reasons a place becomes a ruin? War. In war, there is pillaging. It is part of the whole, "utter destruction of our enemy" thing. Now, many times, those places and communities do not survive or rebuild. But! Some of them do! And the ones that do have some things in common. They have a charismatic leader, who is smart, savvy about money, trade, and making connections, and who the people LIKE. Because if the people HATE you, you don't stay in power. Nobles revolt, peasants revolt, crops fail, etc. Point is, a bad leader dies. One way or another. Sometimes, even if they are a GOOD leader, they still die (see Cleopatra. By all accounts, she was a darn good leader. She was just up against Rome, and a Roman leader who HATED her. It was a bad situation.).
Now, let's translate this to a completely fictional story, which really isn't completely fleshed out. It's mostly told through hearsay, conjecture, and pretty terrible observation. So, what can we gather from this mess? Well, Lotus Pier is crushed by the Wen. Now, what that actually means sort of varies depending on what version of the story you are looking at, be it live action, donghua, or web novel. One has the whole sect burned down, needing to be completely rebuilt, buildings and disciples, books, treasury, all of it. One, from what I can tell, has the buildings standing with damage, but everything most probably looted, all the people and disciples killed, and the area probably defiled. And one, also from what I can tell, has everything pretty much ok, with just the need for new disciples. Y'all can please correct me if this is wrong!! So, from the get go, we can say the sect is financially broke. The Wen probably looted and took all the money, gold, precious things, and everything not nailed down and either melted it down, carried it off to Nightless City, sold it, or destroyed it. If JC got anything back, he would have had to probably steal it back or go through the halls and treasury of Nightless City and do some looting of his own during the Sunshot Campaign. Which is, quite honestly, what I would have done. Just grabbed as many disciples as I could and told them to take everything they could. Strip it bare. Doors, wood, precious stone, metal, books, weapons, herbs, medicine, fabric, food, horses, chickens, load it up, haul it back to Yunmeng. Look, do you REALLY think the Wen stopped at looting Lotus Pier? I don't. They looted all of Yunmeng. You conquer a land, you do so COMPLETELY.
JC had to be smart. In three months, he gathers enough people to train, to make a small fighting force. A small, TRAINED, fighting force. While ON THE RUN. Do you have any idea how hard that is? How much discipline that takes? Take that whole Mulan I'll Make a Man Out of You training montage and speed it up times like 3 or so. Now do it on the run. Yeah. That. His disciples are probably the desperate and the last ones standing. The ones left of whatever sects or villages the Wen rolled over. The ones who want nothing more than revenge. JC speaks their language. But, he has to KEEP speaking it. He has to keep offering them something to keep them interested, to keep them with him.
This is why he CAN'T protect WWX when he steals the Wen from the Jin camp. His whole sect is made up of people who were destroyed by the Wen. And it's just rebuilding. He has very little political capitol. Yes, his parents had lots of political capitol. They are VERY DEAD. The powerful sect they commanded? Destroyed. The monetary capitol they had? Gone. He is literally starting from less than NOTHING. He has a MEMORY. He is leveraging that up the wazoo. He is bluffing his ass off. And he has a sister to protect that is effectively held in another sect. Yes, she has the protection of the sect's matriarch. And the heir, for what that's worth (not much). But the sect leader is a crocodile. Not a snake. He is a PREDATOR. And JC KNOWS it. He knows that whole sect is DANGEROUS to his sister. That they can destroy his little sad sect. Moreover, they can incite OTHER sects to destroy his sect without ever getting their swords dirty.
Yunmeng is a trading hub. Look, it is on a confluence of rivers flowing into a lake system. That is probably the reason the Wen wanted it. It is the fastest, easiest way to get goods anywhere. Water is the lifeblood of civilization. Always has been. You control the waterways, you control trade, you control the money and the people. This is HOW JC builds his sect back up in 13 years. Trade. What, you thought it was LUCK? Nah, bro. Like I said, a good leader has to be SMART.
But here's the thing. We see MDZS through WWX's perspective. His, and everyone who supports his viewpoint. So what serves to prove his points. Which needs to cast someone in a bad light. JC becomes that foil. LWJ, who really has no clue what it takes to run a sect, to protect people politically, to deal with people who want to tear you down, who only sees things in black and white, and who has always had a prejudice against not only JC, but Yunmeng Jiang itself since the Cloud Recesses Study Arc, serves to support that. The entire Lan clan, in fact, serves to do that. They also serve to show the hypocrisy of the entire cultivation world. 4,000 rules, and they only follow them when it suits them? And punish only those who they really want to? Yeah. But that's a WHOLE nother rant. The point is, that all the nasty rumors? Some of them were probably very useful for JC.
What do I mean by that? Ok. So you have a very fragile sect. Lots of newbies. Not a lot of financial, political, or social capitol. If a stronger sect wants to squash you, all you really have to stop them is the memory of when your sect was powerful. And that is being RAPIDLY eroded by your 1st disciple running around acting INSANE. You are constantly having to apologize for him, because you have NO FUCKING CLUE what the HELL he is doing. Why? BECAUSE HE WON'T TALK TO YOU!! HE'S ALWAYS DRUNK! He's never there! Where is he? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!? NOT YOU! You look incompetent! You go to your sister, the only person who your crazed 1st disciple brother will listen to. She says to just give him time. Won't ask him what's going on. Won't help. Won't come back to your sect, because she is working on getting married, and you are doing your best to support that (while your brother hates it). So, you are fucked. And the other three major sects are allied, and allied AGAINST you. Are you losing disciples? That is never actually said. What about rebuilding Lotus Pier? Rebuilding Yunmeng? Is there famine? How's trade? Are people moving back? Are crops getting into the ground? Honestly, how JC didn't drop dead of a heart attack, or stress ulcer I don't know. But somehow, he rustled up enough to get his sister married, and managed to somehow start to grow his sect. And then the whole world blew up in his face. And he lost the rest of his family, except for one little baby. And you have to wonder, how much did the Jin make him pay to stay in Jin Ling's life? And is this where the terrifying reputation begins? Because somehow Yunmeng Jiang gets the unfuckwithable reputation. If there is any sect leader you don't offend, it's Sandu Shengshou, and if there is any sect you don't offend, it's Yunmeng Jiang. That is one hell of a reputation.
So, to recap. JC is not a horrible sect leader. He's a smart, savvy, successful sect leader. I would hazard to say he's a much better sect leader than his father ever hoped to be. But no one wants to admit that. Because the story is from the point of view of WWX, and we all know how that goes. Not that I don't like WWX. But, the story is written from one point of view. Looking at other povs is interesting. And fun. 😀
I want to die! No, seriously.
There's this red rose preserved in resin that I have to promote. And I told it looks like the rose from the beauty and the beast. And now the beast does not have to worry about running out of time. what I want to communicate is that it's such a romantic thing to own and the it's so meaningful and all.
The irony is killing me. The rose in beauty and the beast is what made the prince go from arrogant asshole to lovable person.
If you somehow make the rose not shed it's petals why would the beast want to be human again.
It's like I am promoting toxic assholes and unhealthy relationships. Ughh.
Hope noone notice it.
Guys, tell me do you name your characters when writing the outline or later?
I name my characters when
the idea just form in my mind
just before i write the outline
during the outline writing
just after outline is finished
in the first draft
Letting someone read your draft is scarier than public nudity. At least if you’re naked, people are only judging your body. When you share your writing, they’re judging your soul, your thoughts, your sense of humor, your ability to spell “definitely.” It’s intimate in the worst possible way.
Every time you open social media, another writer is announcing a finished draft, a book deal, or a glowing review. Meanwhile, you’re still stuck on chapter six, trying to figure out why your protagonist keeps staring at walls. You’re happy for them. Really. But also, you hate them a little bit.
how to write: a scientifically-proven, evidence-based step-by-step guide
step 1: get a plot idea, preferably by staring at the ceiling while thinking of new ways to haunt your characters
step 2: tell yourself you’re going to write. again and again
step 3: forget about step 2 and scroll on tumblr instead
step 4: return to step 2 and this time get ready to unleash the chaos (handy tip: make sure to warm up by pacing around the room and muttering “why am i doing this”)
step 5: scream into the void because the story isn’t coming out of your head like it should and the dialogue makes no sense and you can’t find a good enough synonym for “walk” and now you’re exhausted and angry at your characters for not behaving—