Having an art block lately so haven't done much 😖😭

Good night 😴😴❤️🙈

I’ve been working on a set of very depressing artworks for the past 1,5 months, so I took a smol break and sketched comforting Hualian 🥲🙏

Nadine Abdel-Taif, 10, whose home in Palestine was destroyed by Israeli bombing

Hualian + textposts bc it’s three am and I don’t wanna do my math homework

** Permission to post it was granted by the artist Do not repost/edit the art without permission Please, support the artist on their pages too **

Artist : RONPU (pixiv / twitter / weibo / IG)

Source

One-Word Ficlet Prompt: Binoculars

for @beekindish

Fun fact! Writing first on paper means I have no real way of tracking how long these ficlets get. I suppose there are some benefits to writing while test proctoring...

-

Xie Lian had an eye for beautiful things. He couldn’t do much more than eye them, but he still appreciated the beauty of the world. And this... this may have been the most beautiful of all.

“-you see, gege?”

Hua Cheng’s vibrant voice roused Xie Lian from his daze. Blinking, he refocused on that breathtakingly handsome, grinning face, and realized that the man had raised a hand between them, holding a freshly-emerged butterfly up for Xie Lian to see.

“Ah!” Xie Lian said, examining the fascinating meld of beauty and fragility, the shriveled yet eye-catching wings of a being still reintroducing itself to the world. “It’s beautiful, San Lang.”

He was being genuine, but Hua Cheng had clearly noticed his distraction, for with a soft smile, he said, “it’s alright if gege is bored. I told you this wasn’t so exciting.”

‘This’ being a special visit to the butterfly house that Hua Cheng sponsored- a philanthropic investment from younger days, when Hua Cheng sought the good PR that came with ‘solidarity amongst beings who cast off old bodies in anticipation of new ones.’ A full-day excursion to a massive network of rooms, equipped with anything a butterfly-watcher might need: water, sturdy boots, fruit slices, binoculars, you name it. Hua Cheng had restored endangered species with his resources, and now he was watching Xie Lian with understanding that hurt his heart to see. He’d been thrilled Hua Cheng wanted to share this experience with him- he couldn’t bear the thought of him thinking anything else.

“No!” Xie Lian hurriedly said. “No, no, San Lang, it’s interesting, I promise! It’s fascinating! I just...” He bit his lip for a moment. “...I’ve never seen you so excited before,” he admitted, a little shyly. “I’m really happy you’re sharing this with me.”

He was. There were many beautiful things in this world. But the smile on Hua Cheng’s face as he shared one of his passions with him was Xie Lian’s favorite.

Hua Cheng, unprepared for such sentiment, blinked. Then, he coughed.

“Well, of course I’m happy,” he said, turning to gently prompt the butterfly on his hand to crawl onto a nearby leaf. “I’m with gege, after all. Shall we keep going?”

Xie Lian smiled and nodded. But when Hua Cheng stood to direct them further in, his eyes dropped to the large, strong hand that had just held a nascent butterfly so carefully.

Despite himself, Xie Lian’s fingers twitched. But by the time Hua Cheng had turned to look back at him, he’d already clasped his hands together, a cheap substitute of what he really wanted.

The second half of season 2

One flower, one sword!

yknow what i think needs to be talked about more...?

the fact that BOTH xie lian and hua cheng attempted suicide at one or more points in their lives...

HONG ER, in indescribable agony and anger at his kingdom... he INTENTIONALLY threw himself from the wall during the parade to try and end his life

he wanted his death to be seen, he wanted his tiny insignificant bug-sized existence to splatter across the sacred streets of the capital bc he was sad and angry that he was simply too weak, too small, too godsdamned insignificant to do anything about...

then...

XIE LIAN... at the height of his grief, losing his dream, his godhood, his friends, his sanity, his parents, HIS EVERYTHING... he hung himself with a silk-bandage noose wrapped so tightly around that it broke his fucking neck... and then he still hung there... in agony...

however...

hong er's life was spared bc he was caught... the crown prince of his kingdom took him from his worst moment and symbolically said "you matter" to a child who felt worthless... the person who arguably meant the most to xianle looked at HIM, a dirty piece of shit, and showed him that someone didn't want him to die

but xie lian, at the lowest point in his life, had given the fuck up... and yet the universe said "im not fucking done with you, this will continue and there's nothing you can do to stop it"... his life wasn't spared like an answer to a cry for help, it was spared like forever taking away the option of sleep from the prolonged, endless, torture of his life until being simply driven mad from the pain

xie lian was given NO hope

he only ever gave it himself

hua cheng wants xie lian to see the hope he was given because he knows how it feels to have given up, but then someone, xie lian, was there... that is the truest form of love hua cheng knows

and, simply bc he was the one who caught him, xie lian knows hua cheng has the capacity to understand (even if hc himself may not explicity know about xl's attempt)

like... if you've ever been suicidal its not a state of mind you can explain to someone else and have them get it if they havent themselves once been there

basically, i love hualian and they are so perfect for each other and the sexiest and most intimate thing someone can do is lay their guts on the floor for another to see and then have them look back and go "i understand... im sorry... and im here with you in it, through it, and after..."

ok im fucking done gnight friends love you all 😘

alternative storyboard for the season one opening sequence. taken from the official donghua artbook.

i decided to make a slideshow-like gif with the thumbnails

Full art of TGCF Audio drama season 2!!!

TGCF Audio Drama season 2 covers. It is coming back on May 26th. Watch the preview here.

(facedown on the ground) x...xie lian...

On of the best moments in TGCF is when Xian Lian is lying stabbed in the road in Lang-Er Bay, seriously thinking about committing genocide, and the merchant bumps into him, drops his rice, cusses and yells at him, and then a bit later comes back and apologizes for being angry and gives Xian Lian his bamboo hat. The reason it is the best is that we expect one moment of kindness. This is what happens in a book like this. We know that Xie Lian has to have an epiphany about humanity to draw him back from the brink of utter and complete darkness. We know he has to have a catalyst that makes it so he does not commit genocide and decides to save everyone instead. This is how these stories go. But in these stories, that moment is usually given to us by an innocent child. Or it's given to us by someone who is just a purer soul than all the rest. In the set-up for this scene, you fully expect the one who will give Xie Lian the will to save humanity will be the water merchant who has been wanting to help Xie Lian the whole time he was lying in the road with a sword through him. That water merchant has been shown to be more compassionate than the rest and has been held back by his wife, who fears the God of Misfortune.

And yet, in TGCF, that moment is not given to us by a pure, innocent child. It is not given to us by one person who just happens to be kinder than most. It's not. It's not. It's given to us by just your every day guy having a shitty day who is just as cruel and nasty to Xian Lian as everyone else, but who takes a moment to calm down and sees this pathetic loser in the rain and is like "hey, I lost my temper, sorry, don't be a pathetic loser, here's my hat, stopped getting rained on and looking so sad, go home."

It's not this pure shining moment about the inherent goodness of humanity. It's this pure shining moment about people doing shitty things and people doing kind things and how that's all mixed up within us and we're always both. It's that that gives Xie Lian the will to survive and sacrifice everything to save all humanity. It's not because there is good alongside the bad but because we're always both, and Xie Lian knows that he is both, and he thinks that's worth saving. He thinks it's worth being obliterated for.

When he's not obliterated for it, he lives for it instead.