How did you get so good at writing??? Did you take classes? I feel like you should get paid all the money for this! (I subscribe to your website!)
after i dropped out of high school i found a torrent of like 5GB of OCRd romance novels and i read like 3 romance novels a day for a while
read enough romance novels and you will realize that they live or die entirely on technical skill. if you are new to romance novels then even bad ones can dazzle you with novelty but by the time you are on your 30th historical fake engagement between a bluestocking and a rakish duke you can grade them and you know when they've failed. when two books have what should be the same main characters hitting the same plot beats, but one of those books is delightful and the other fucking sucks, you learn some things. some books are bad and still delightful. other books are good but they just don't hit. you start to see the seams in the bad ones. 'oh, this is a weird out of character moment because she wanted to have the kabedon moment and didn't know how to get there'. 'she didn't want the ust to end but couldn't think of a better reason than this deus ex cockblock.' that kind of thing.
you could probably do this with other genres but i like romance because the plot is two people fall in love. that's it. everything else is set dressing. if you can figure out how to make that work you can carry it over into whatever other genre you feel like. mysteries would give you a different skillset around plotting that i don't have.
i said it in my original tags but i want to talk out of my ass and say that one place that a lot of current romantasy falls short for me is that it ends up being written by people who mostly read other romantasy without going back to the original genres of romance and fantasy. it's like a 'learn the rules before you can break them' kind of thing. you have all these magical macguffins to hit the tropes but can you make me believe that these characters have chemistry without that? is there chemistry, or did you tell me they're fated mates and now i'm supposed to assume this fight is sexy? does the fantasy aspect exist for anything aside from the magical macguffins? i'm not going to throw stones from inside my house made of worldbuilding designed to make all my fetishes happen, but the really fun part is when the lore spins out of control and you end up really going in depth on linguistic anthropology things that aren't relevant to the makeouts.
and the other thing is that you can't really sub in fanfic for this. plenty of fanfic takes characters from other genres and plops them into romance, but it's not the same. a good romance novel says, "here are two characters. you may know their archetypes, but you don't know them. you are going to get to know them, and you are going to love them, and you are going to want them to love each other, and when they love each other you are going to be happy for them". i love a rakish duke. when a man who's never had to do his own laundry is slutty as fuck that's my shit. but you still have to make me like him. you can take that archetype and make a guy who fucking sucks. most fanfic will not impart to you any knowledge about how to make a reader like a guy from scratch. you already know that guy. that's the whole point. fanfic with as much character building as an original work is the exception, not the rule.
the whole reason i get catty about fics that just make a different guy is that... you've made a different guy. i don't know who this guy is and i don't like him, and you haven't bothered trying to make me like him, because you slapped another guy's nametag on him like a cheat code. it's cool if you did make me like this new guy, but why is he wearing that other guy's nametag if no other aspect of him is present?
read the genres you want to write, obviously, but there's a reason the shitty comphet romantic subplot is a cliche. it's because romance is its own skillset, and if you try to fit romance in your thriller when you only read thrillers it's probably going to be the weakest part. if you want an ensemble cast then chemistry between characters is important regardless of whether they're going to fuck about it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
My entry for Radiant New Year! A canon divergence au set in a world where the punishment of the Ouyang clan was just different enough to completely change the fates of all the principal characters...
(not in this fic though. in this fic we have awkward teenage flirting and Esen being an idiot)
Xianxia stories (like The Untamed) tend to be "jiakong" because immortals don't actually exist. To put Xianxia stories into actual history, the writer would have to make a lot of changes to what actually happened in history, which can get messy, so most writers choose to "jiakong" the time period just to make things easier.
Wuxia stories (like Word of Honor) can be "jiakong" or set in a particular dynasty. In the case of Word of Honor, it's "jiakong".
Because of that, the Hanfu designs for both shows are a mixed batch. I don't think the costume designers had any dynasty in mind when designing these clothes and instead just went with a basic "look" of Hanfu (long sleeves, long robes) and worked from there.
(If I get any of the characters' names wrong, please forgive me, it's been a while since I saw these shows OTL)
For example, in the pic below this style of flipped out collar worn by A-Xu doesn't fit with any Hanfu styles I'm aware of. The only flipped-out collar I know of is sometimes when wearing quju robes (pic 2,3) of the Qin/Han Dynasties, and he's definitely not wearing a quju.
Also the long slits in the bottom of the robes they're wearing, some Hanfu styles from the Tang Dynasty and onward do have slits but they were one on either side, and possibly one at the back, more commonly seen with round-collared robes (though not always).
Here Wen Kexing has on a quling (turtle-neck collared) undershirt which is seen in Han/Weijin Dynasties, but then the white robe has a flipped out collar. A-Xu's entire outfit is...lol, I think he's purposely wearing his collar loose like that to portray that he didn't really care about his appearance but technically no collar should be so low as that light-blue robe he's wearing. I don't think that robe actually has a defined collar, the fabric is just loosely gathered but there's no collar "cuff".
In this pic, Wen Kexing has a round collared robe which is seen in Tang, Song, Ming, but then the sleeve is like a half-shoulder vest rather than full sleeve, and that's also not seen in any Hanfu styles.
...Or is that one robe? Is the sleeve connected to that shoulder piece? Because it looks like the robe he has underneath is red (from the collar). I can't tell, but either way, that shoulder design is not a style found in any Hanfu of a particular dynasty.
This couple's wedding outfit is influenced by a mix of Song and Ming Dynasty. She's wearing green, usually seen in Song Dynasty, but her collar is a criss-crossed collar which would be Ming (Song would be like pic 3 where the woman is wearing a low-collared top rather than a high-collared robe). She's missing the "xiapei (éåø)" which is that strip of fabric draped on the shoulders (pic 4), but it looks like the costume designer put a strip of red along the collar to give an illusion of wearing xiapei.
For the groom, rather than the official round-collar robe he's wearing a cross-collared robe, and his red is more of a blue-ish tint. Usually wedding robes, if red, are a bright red (literally called "China red" in China, xDD).
For this pic below, it's a 1-piece robe with collar piece going across the chest, then straight down from the waist. It could be a Tang or Song style Hanfu, but the sleeves, the belt, and the overall fit of the clothing isn't quite right.
The Untamed made a lot of their clothes really form-fitting against the actors, that's actually not a good fit for Hanfu in general. You want a nice loose fit, even if the clothing is "form-fitting" it's not meant to stick to your frame. Because of this, the clothing in the Untamed always appear a size or two too small (Word of Honor did a better job of sizing their clothes). If they were wearing today's clothing then it's no problem, but for Hanfu it's too tight >_<
Then again, that's probably just the style they were going for so ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
This black jacket/vest definitely was just created for a "cool" aesthetic. Xianxia/Wuxia shows love doing this broad shoulder vest garment, in actual Hanfu there ARE garments that look similar but these shows really run with it.
Here, Jinguang Yao (it's Yao, right?) is wearing a round-collared robe which was popular in Tang, Song, and Ming. The outer jacket and the material (it looks like brocade rather than soft silk) makes me lean towards Ming Dynasty for this outfit.
It also has an emblem piece on the chest which makes me think of the Mandarin Square robe during the Ming Dynasty (work attire for court officials) except:
1) Mandarin squares are embroidered separately then sewn onto the robe, this looks like it was weaved into the fabric
2) Mandarin Square robes in Ming Dynast were red
3) This emblem is round instead of square
So I would say they took inspiration from the Mandarin Square robe but changed aspects to make it fit into the show better (I think the show kept most characters in lighter colours to contrast with Wei Wuxian's darker, bold colours).
There's also things like the buildings, props, etc. to consider if we were to really dig into dynasties. And the hair styles, that half-up half-down thing is purely for aesthetics because in history they wouldn't wear their hair like that (especially considering their background).
For women, pre-marriage you can leave some hair down, but tied in the back, not loose. After marriage it all gets tied up.
Leaving hair loose would basically get you labeled as rude, disrespectful, uncouth, uneducated, crazy, you get the idea.
But in shows like this it's a nice aesthetic when they're doing martial arts moves and the hair is flying around, so these days it tends to be the go-to hairstyle for xianxia/wuxia shows.
I hope that was helpful :D
None of this is to say these costumes aren't beautiful, just not history textbook Hanfu ^^;;;;
Basically, any time you see a wuxia or xianxia and the publicity doesn't trumpet a specific dynasty all over the place, just figure you're watching a Chinese version of Reign. If you have a certain uneasiness (let alone recoil in horror) over Reign's bizarro mashup of costumes, then you've got a sense of how some of the wuxia and xianxia costumes may look to their home audience.
That said, I suspect the idea of 'jiakong' works the same way 'fantasy' does for US audiences. Think Game of Thrones, Penny Dreadful, Lord of the Rings, Damsel, and most Hollywood versions of King Arthur or Robin Hood. (Like Braveheart and Rob Roy, a foreign culture's history might as well be a fantasy world, if you're from Hollywood.) Each generally has a inspiration point in time or place, after which the costumer takes liberties as needed for the story, the character, or the actors' requirements (cue the 'not wearing a corset' drama).
Basically, in the US, if they're speaking in unfamiliar accents and/or there's a dragon somewhere in the story, all bets are off in terms of costume authenticity. In China, if they can fly, throw people around by waving their hands, or are gods, same goes.
That said, the more I learn about actual traditional Chinese historical clothing, the more I find myself playing a game of Name That Era with costume details. Including, like for Reign, which era that prom dress would've been popular.
12 frames of animation I made using knitting! I spent a long time on this and Iām so pleased with the results, really looking forward to trying more āyarnimationā in the future. Process video out now too! š
I just dipped into Appendix F for an unrelated reason, and I think itās funny that out of everything Sauron ever did ā a master craftsman and teacher, a commander and conqueror, a deceiver and seducer, who achieved so much and, even in defeat, usually came verrrry close and tended just to reappear later all the stronger ā one thing he utterly failed at was making Black Speech the common language of all his servants. He made grammar and vocab and syntax, and then the orcs could never figure out how to use his system. They ended up with such a hodge podge of fragmented, bastardized versions of the language that they were often incomprehensible to each other and had to fall back on Westron, the language of their enemies, to be understood even within Mordor.
It feels extremely JRR to me that he would let his Big Bad Villain kill and maim and enslave and despoil the environment, but he simply couldnāt allow Sauron to succeed atā¦linguistics.
I understand why Xiao Chiyeās family, relatives, and aides were all worried about who he might fall in love with because wdym he got framed for a regicide attempt and he finds it HOT? He wants to KISS THE MAN WHO FRAMED HIM?? This was canonically the moment when he ACTUALLY FALLS IN LOVE with Shen Zechuan!?!
titsay
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