#jttw oc; zhao

[tamaruaart]

Fun fact:

While I was working on Zhaoyan's character I thought of the idea of her being a "Witch of elixir, harvest, nature and healing". She had an autumn theme and this idea stuck for a while.

But eventually I decided to change it

Anyways, here's what this little "phase" of her character looked like

I might reuse this design for something in the future because I actually really like it

But yeah that's it lol. Yall don't want to see what her oldest design looked like

(ignore the hands bestie)

[xiyouyanyi]

Welcome!

@ryin-silverfish here, also known as "That person who talks a lot about FSYY and fox spirits".

This is my little LMK AU sideblog, which started off as a bunch of disjointed background notes for my fanfics, but developed into its own gigantic thing over time.

I've said elsewhere that, despite LMK (and many other JTTW adjacent works) lifting certain tidbits wholesale from FSYY——like Nezha's backstory or the Golden Dragon Shears, neither the show nor the fanworks really go into the implications of a FSYY/JTTW combined universe.

(For one, Zhao Gongming's three sisters, the Sanxiao, showing up to kick Jin and Yin's butts for stealing and breaking their treasure would be very satisfying, and also hella badass.)

Well, be the change you want, they said. 

So here it is: Journey of the Gods, aka "LMK, but FSYY is also canon and an extremely influential historical event".

Inspired by @digitaldoeslmk 's By the Book AU.

What even is FSYY?

"Ancient China's bloodiest bureaucracy recruitment program, kickstarted by a king who simped too hard for the creator goddess of humanity and the fox girl she sent to end his dynasty."

"I'll write my own God-Demon novel, with blackjacks and fox hookers and no Buddhist allegories!" ——Xu Zhonglin/Lu Xixing/Li Yunxiang

Okay, jokes aside: Investiture of the Gods(Fengshen Yanyi) is the other big "God-Demon Novel" of the Ming dynasty, written after JTTW. It's about the toppling of the Shang dynasty and its tyrannical King Zhou by King Wu of Zhou——but with more Daoism, immortals and demons helping out both sides, and ten billion magical formations and treasures. 

At the end of the story, almost everyone who died in battle were deified and became the 365 gods of the Celestial Bureaucracy, thus "Investiture of the Gods". 

Here is a link to the only full English translation of FSYY, by Gui Zhizhong.

Here is my overview of FSYY's grand overarching conflict, a.k.a. "Why are all the Daoist immortals fighting?" 

Compared to JTTW, it's a lot more formulaic and suffers from a massive character count inflation problem, but also extremely influential in Chinese folk religion, to the point of some modern temples, like Qingyang Palace, basically worshiping characters from the novel! Like, the western equivalent would be a church worshiping Dante and Beatrice from the Divine Comedy.

(Similarly, it is to orthodox Daoism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian theology, and should not be treated as actual religious scriptures.)

Okay, FSYY happened in the LMK universe. So What?

Well, first, it will really do wonders to fill up that eerily empty Celestial Realm we see in the Spider Queen special, and the Celestial Bureaucracy will no longer consist of a grand total of five people.

Secondly, it can solve some major show-not-tell problems and actually give legitimacy to the grievances of the LMK Brotherhood + Havoc in Heaven, as well as fleshing out the Celestial Realm.

Third, so many cool magical treasures.

Fourth, LBD gets an origin story, with a twist.

Fifth, I delight in quality angst and horror, and FSYY had some seriously messed-up stuff and implications.

Sixth, Celestial Bureaucracy office politics.

Seventh, Nezha kicking asses and winning fights like he should.

Eighth, crazy Xianxia shit, as you’d expect from the great-granddaddy of modern Xianxia genre.

Ninth, infodumps about Chinese mythos and history trivias.

Tenth, Underworld lore.

...As you can probably tell, this is mostly just me nerding out and writing walls of texts. I'm not a very good artist and can't do Lego style, but will probably doodle some symbol/character designs for funsies.

I also derive most of my enjoyment from writing fix-its and worldbuilding, not shipping characters. Like, I love exploring individual characters through relationships, but just ain't a fan of romance.

There will be a lot of OCs, but unless otherwise specified, all of them will be based on actual characters from FSYY and JTTW, with a few folk gods sprinkled in for funsies.

With that taken care of: good luck and happy reading!

[tam-and-her-bullcraps]

~ Introduction/Masterpost ~

Hello- My name is Tam but I also go by Rua! I'm an artist and I also enjoy writing. I'm a big ol' fantasy and basically anything mythical or creative lover- This blog is literally just the wish version of my main blog @tamaruaart

Yeah that's all lol don't expect good posts just reblogs/srbs, doodles, rambles or writing thingies.

Current hyperfixations:

-Greek Mythology (Hades, EPIC: The Musical, Paris: The Musical, The Odyssey and Iliad in general and just Greek myth in general!)

-Lego Monkie Kid (Jin and Yin mean the world to me- I'm also very interested in OSP's JTTW series.)

-The Prince of Egypt (One of my favorite movies man)

-The Great Comet of 1812 (I would die for Sonya and Pierre-)

-Wolfwalkers (It's so underrated please watch wolfwalkers)

-Hamilton ( 🎶 ~ No one else was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened ~ 🎶)

-Blood Meridian (The kid ,,, I just wanna take him to a carnival and give him hot chocolate >:'( Fuck you judge. All my homies hate the judge.)

-Dante's Inferno (I think it's really interesting, I'm planning on listening to the audiobook soon!)

-Cookie Run Kingdom (Star Coral Cookie, Sherbet Cookie and HollyBerry Cookie my beloveds...)

Other Stuff:

I don't have many rules besides don't bring up topics/irl issues non relevant to what I post- Also no homophobia, transphobia, sexism (That includes sexism against men and trans men too) and racism.

Of course dark humor is allowed just don't go too far-

You can go to my main blog to see more rules but in short just don't be a dick. I speak both English and Croatian (ĐE STE HRVATI MOJI!? WOOOO) and I'm a demigirl (She/They), Asexual and bicurious.

THIS IS A SAFE SPACE! WE SUPPORT OUR QUEER BRETHREN!

Also I'm a minor so no weridoes please thanks-

Favorite Ships (I know this is random but let me have this-):

ODYPENODYPENODYPENODYPENODYPENODYPENODYPEN

Also CTIMENE AND EURYLOCHUS CTIMENE AND EURYLOCHUS CTIMENE AND EURYLOCHUS

and and and ANDROMACHE HECTOR ANDROMACHE HECTOR

AND AND AND AND PATROCHILLES PATROCHILLESSSSS PATROCHILLES

ALSO NAUSIKAA AND TELEMACHUS ARE CUTE I LOVE THEM

Also EPIC!Perimedes x EPIC!Elpenor are kinda cute ,,, Just saying ,,, cough

AND and AND AND AND MENELAUS AND HELEN MENELAUS AND HELEN MENELAUS AND HELEN (Paris, ily, but fuck off)

FELLOW TELEGONUS AND TELEGONY HATERS RAISE YOUR HANDS 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️

Bro tried to be a Neoptolemus tragic ass character so bad and fumbled.

And you're telling me Penelope marries this kid?? NOT ON MY WATCH BESTIE- Also Kirke and Telemachus? Falling in love? No <3

I won't be posting much of my Lego Monkie OCs here. But if you'd like to see them you can check out my main blog :D

They consist of a Celestial Witch named Zhaoyan "Zhao" (My favorite child), an Anxious Flower Spirit named Quanshui/Quánshuǐ and a rather carefree Jade Messenger and Moon Spirit named Yueliang "Yue"~ If you'd like to know more about these sillies I frequently post about them on my main blog!

And yeah, that's all- Feel free to stick by if you want to! :D Live Laugh Hermes <3

(I love every iteration of this man istg it's a problem)

[tamaruaart]

GIMME ME THAT SWEET SWEET ZHAO LORE (please) 💕

Kay' so I already gave yall' her backstory but I might as well explain something about her character.

So in her backstory there are three major parts:

-Her family (The Lihuang Clan)

-Lánhūa

-and Jttw

Now I didn't mention this in my other post but Lánhūa wasn't immortal, even though Zhao was.... I said Zhao and Wukong met when Wukong was 346 years under that mountain and as we all know he was under there for 500 years total. So wouldn't you guess 164 years later when he goes to visit his girl buddie and well... I think you all know what happened 😔

Losing her family who she loved but knew didn't love her back was already so much, and now she lost Lánhūa as well.

In book JTTW her family and Lánhūa were her two losses and Tripitaka & the pilgrims were the people who stuck. Now I wanted there to be specifically two loses and the recovery, these three stages are meant to symbolize "the rain, the storm and the Sun"

The rain symbolizes her leaving her family, because rain isn't such a big deal, you know? You can always chose to get under your umbrella or something like that. Why? So you don't get wet. Just like Zhao left her family because she didn't want to be mistreated anymore

The storm symbolizes Lánhūa's death. When there's a storm you can't really stay outside, you just get wet, cold and dirty. It might ruin your mood because even if you do try to get home you'll get wet as all hell. And when I say storm I mean big boy storm, like the type of storm in which you can barely get out of your house. It's pure strife but in weather form. This symbolizes how when Lánhūa died Zhao's whole life was just strife, not strife with someone else, but strife with herself. She often blames herself for not doing more to help Lánhua live a long and healthy life.

The Sun symbolizes well.. Sun Wukong. After the storm comes the Sun and warms you up, in my personal experience good weather also lightens up my mood a lil' bit. Tripitaka and the pilgrims were Zhao's Sun. They didn't come and go they came and stayed. Throughout the book Zhao is very anxious to form a deeper friendship with tripitaka and the pilgrims, because she doesn't want to befriend people who she knows will leave her again. But at the end of the book when she finally realizes these people won't leave her she becomes warmer.

(After Lánhūa died Zhao because a much colder and less social person. The book is basically her character arc of becoming warmer and happier after finally finding real emotional bonds :'> )

However like I said in LMK Lánhūa is cut. So instead her rain is still her family, her storm are Tripitaka and the pilgrims and her Sun are MK and MK's group.

Considering LMK takes place hundreds of years after JTTW i think it's safe to say Sanzang, Pigsy, Sandy and Ao Lie have all passed.

So instead of losing Lánhūa she lost Tripitaka's group. And instead of finally finding people who will stay being Tripitaka's group those people are MK and MK's group.

Now you might be asking me "But Rua, Monkey is also immortal? Why don't Monkey King and Zhao stay together? They have similar problems?" Well my dears, they had a bit of a rough start when they first see each other again at the start of LMK season two (which is when Zhao gets introduced), but throughout LMK they're having a character arc of becoming friends again, and not like they hate each other (because I didn't want their relationship to just be a rip-off of Macaque and Monkey), but they're generally awkward and quiet towards one another.

So ye-

Thank you for asking and thank you for comin to my Ted talk :) (again)

[tamaruaart]

Mama's girl

I found this doodle of Zhao and her mom I did a few days ago. I thought it was cute so I decided to post it

[tamaruaart]

I'm doing a thing (CLOSED!!)

So, by now you've probably seen my chibi drawings

(some examples if you haven't):

and these ARE very fun to do

So I've decided that with the base I drew for these lil goobers you can ask me to draw your OC and I'll do it for free :D (the reason I'm not making this cost is bcz these drawing take me like half an hour and I do it to experiment with my chibi style)

You can ask me threw my in-box or the comments of this post and I'll draw your oc! I can do things like Transparent PNG stickers and pfp's (you can ask for a specific image such as a country flag, meme, color, pride flag etc...)

However, If you'd like this to be private you can always message me! I except messages from everyone :D (except porn bots, you can go fuck yourself)

Also there are two rules to this:

1. You have to give me a REFERNCE for your OC, or more specifically a refence of your OC's face. And the reference has to be in color (unless you'd like the chibi to be black and white ofc)

2. If you're going to use it as a pfp you have to credit me

And ye, that's basically it! Feel free to use the base if you'd like to as well (just credit plz)! :D

(I can also make a picrew if enough ppl are interested, and when I figure out how lol)

[tamaruaart]

An introduction to my LMK characters :D

So I want to give you all an actual introduction to my LMK/JTTW babies-

So this will be that :) (Note: These are their lmk designs, I might post their jttw book designs some other time)

Zhaoyan "Zhao" Whang'e🍑

Zhaoyan is a Peach Maiden with the gift of healing that was passed down to the girls in her family. Zhao is very calm and motherly, she mostly just takes care of the plants and fruits from the Celestial Realm. However when she's not in the Celestial Realm, she's in Megapolis keeping MK company, MK and Zhao have a very Aunty-Nephew relationship.

Though she might seem social considering she's very good with kids and doesn't seem to have trouble with appealing to people, Zhao is very quiet and actively tries not to make many friends. This is mostly because of her past problems with her relationship towards her family and friends. With her leaving her family because of their mistreatment towards her, and the death of some people that were very close to her, who's death she still hasn't fully recovered from. But don't you worry, MK and Mei are working on helping her past these issues with the help of the gang™ >:)

Quanshuǐ Wǔ🌺

Quanshuǐ is a very warm and sweet person! She's talkative and loves animals. Though she is very sweet she's incredibly clumsy, often messing things up. In her past this lead her to be very critiqued by her fellow Flora Maidens, they would nag her day and night about how she just messes everything up. Because of this Quanshuǐ developed HUGE self worth issues and anxiety.... Or at least until she met Zhao

Zhaoyan was the sister Quanshuǐ never had, instead of tending to flowers who won't judge her all day, she was hanging around the many Gardens of peaches in the celestial realm. Eventually Quanshuǐ took a crack at people again by trying to befriend the other Peach Maidens as well, which she succeeded in doing!

The Peach Maiden's are sorta like her aunties now. She still has a bit of anxiety but for once instead of being around people who make her feel worthless over every single mistake, she's around people who love and appreciate her for who she really is :'))

(The sparrow named Huā is Quanshuǐ's best buddie. Quanshuǐ found Huā injured in the forest one day while she was tending to a rose bush. She took Huā to Zhao so she could heal her, and Zhao told Quanshuǐ she could take care of the sparrow because Zhao isn't the best with any other animals that aren't cats lol)

Yueliang "Yue"🌙

(off topic but why my man be standin' there like: 🧍‍♂️)

Yueliang or Yue as they call him, is an immortal Moon Spirit. He was born from a magical orchid that only grows on the Moon and after Chang'e- the goddess of the Moon found him she decided to take Yue in. Even these days he visits Chang'e very very often. Because that is his mama :>

Yue is a very silly and a "talk before you think" kinda' guy. He's very, very, very charismatic, respectless and chaotic. Nowadays he acts as a Jade Messenger because of his incredible speed. He delivers messages from the Jade Emperor to the other deities, sometimes he even delivers fake rude messages just to cause drama. He gets punished every time but he's just like "Yk what? T'was worth it. >:)".

Not to mention that Zhao and Quanshuǐ are his number 1 prank victims. He once turned all the Immortality Peaches invisible and the Peach Maidens & Quanshuǐ were just freaking the heck out, and he was just spying on them being like: Hehe look at them go :D

And ye, that's everyone for now! If I do make more LMK OCs I will edit this post. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you'll enjoy these little fella's as much as I do! :)

[tamaruaart]

Crappy Zhao doodles :D

some of these are kinda angsty ngl

Mengtao belongs to the lovely @doppel-doodles :>

[tamaruaart]

What was zhao's character designing process like?

Hello! Thanks for asking, I'll try to keep this as simple as humanly possible-

-the beginning stages of Zhao's character

(Ignore the bad quality of the pictures, I was lazy-)

I've actually had Zhao for quite a few years now, but I think these drawings I made like 9 months ago are the oldest ones that I could find. As you can probably see, in the begging she was a primarily jttw OC, I remember being super into OSP (which I still am), so when I started watching their jttw series I immediately got to making an OC because I really liked the world and all.

There's not much to say about the design honestly. But I will say why the hair changed, back then, her hair was very tiger-y but why has it changed so much if she's still a tiger? Well it's because back then I actually really liked the hair, but as time went on I thought it was way too much. However I really got attached to the whole "Cursed for disobeying your family so that you can never forget about them when you look at your own face.", so I decided to keep the orange hair just remove the details.

However a lot of the drawings you will see still have the stripes, but you'll see how they became more and more simple over time.

(note: All of the drawings you will see of her old design are pretty old so my art skills have improved-)

When I just started watching lmk I already knew I wanted to change up her character a bit. So I did a mini re-design. Again not much to say about her design except that I wanted it to look very demon-y (because she actually used to be a tiger demoness)

However I felt she was too "soft", so I changed up her character a bit to be more cold and "mature", because I wanted her to have a bigger contrast in personality with Sun Wukong. I'll get into that later :>

And as you can see I was still experimenting with certain designs but in the end I ended up with the last one for a while.

Then something awoke in me and I was finally like: This hair is mad complicated let's simplify this sucker-

So some (a lot of) experimenting:

(as you can see I've got a very inconsistent style)

And with that I eventually got this kinda design:

As you can see, this is was the start of a ✨new era✨

(you can still see these drawings up on my blog if you scroll down enough-)

And this design stuck for a while until I made a certain drawing for a certain @/camhues 👀

At this time I have started reading Circe and was very inspired by her character :0

She changed from being cold to more motherly. She's still mature but more clever, compassionate and caring. (yet still pathetic in my eyes). One of my friends here on tumblr @/doppel-doodles explained her PERFECTLY- "A fierce tigress in the body of a gentle mother cat" (like who gave them the right-), this explains her character very well because despite being very peaceful she's still a strong sorceress-

Now, Zhao is still kinda quiet and reserved considering her unhealthy past. But that ties a bit more into her connection with Wukong, which I'll get into in a bit.

I wanted Zhao to seem more "out of place", back then she just seemed like a basic bish girlboss OC and like someone who would make a good background character-

I also decided to give her a full name (because my dumb ahh realized Zhao is a Chinese SURNAME-) so I decided on Zhaoyan, also funfact Zhao's father used to call her "Zhaodi" because that name means "requesting a brother" (Because sexism yaaayyyyyy-)

My Zhao design is also heavily inspired by @/gigizetz Circe design, and her hair is very much inspired by Rapunzel from tangled-

And so yeah, then we got to her current design

While I can't really give anymore specific references, I can tell you a bit on how I settled on this design :D

Note: I wanted her to have a more exotic, tropical and ancient vibe if that makes sense. She is a spiritual maiden, sometimes even described as a sorceress, and considering the role I settled on giving her in the story it makes sense she would seem like "something new" or something out of the blue if you will. Even though she's a Peach Maiden, she doesn't exactly look like one, which I honestly think is really exiting to work with-

There's still some lore I haven't spilled yet that would say more about her design, but I hope to reveal that in the future!

Now, all the lore of her current character ties to one specific thing, aka her most important role in lmk- her connection to Monkey. Now as I mentioned, Zhao and Wukong were made to be opposites, or well to seem like opposites (one is chaotic and one is calm). Also the mear fact that the Chinese monkey zodiac and Chinese tiger zodiac are specifically referred to as not being able to get along so well.

But in reality they're quite similar, both get over looked because of their unthreatening personalities despite being really damn powerful. Both kinda stand out in physical appearance too compared to the other characters, and look alike in a way (same ginger hair and golden eyes). And not to mention they both push others away from them because of their pasts despite caring a lot.

A fun part about writing Zhao's character is she also serves as a way to find out more about Sun Wukong and jttw as a whole while still being her own character.

So yeah, that's basically it! Sorry for this being so fricking long I like rambling about my girl- (no I do not have a favorite lmk OC wdym?)

Fell free to ask more questions they're always fun as hell to answer!! :D

[tamaruaart]

Possessed Zhao

(lbd out here doing God's work 🙏)

Also yes, the white tiger is Xuěhuā (Zhao's fluffy white tiger boi).... Because Lady Bone demon 100% killed him for it-

[tamaruaart]

Wowowoeowowoeoeowoowoowwooeowowoowweoeoewweeweeoeoewwe

Zhao art dump I guess?

A redraw of an older drawing actually

Tw: blood and semi-nudity

Why is her hair black? Because this is her as a youngen :D

Can we get an explanation for wtf is happening? No <3

[tamaruaart]

I'm actually really proud of this ngl-

I made them into stimkers:

For any of you wondering-

Yes these are actually transparent PNGs so you can download them and use them as actual stickers if you want to :> (just please credit me for the art and OCs if you're going to use them for something public)

[tamaruaart]

Zhao and Daiyu✨

I saw this meme on Twitter and knew I had to draw Zhao and @camhues' OC Daiyu. Their dynamic would honestly be iconic lol.

Also I WAS going to lineart and color this but uhhh, my pen broke and I'm not in the mood to even try and finish this with my finger so until my next pen arrives in a month enjoy crappy doddles. <3

(Note: Zhao's outfit is a lil' different here because I'm currently experimenting, so ye)

Also pfp version woo:

[tamaruaart]

I would like to see genderbent Zhao pretty please :>

who does this twink think he is

[tamaruaart]

I hate this old witty woman so much (affectionate)

[tamaruaart]

Sorry if its not good tho 😅

AFBANOFGAFZBABGAA

ahem

This so gorgeous!! The captured Zhao SPOT ON

And the lighting and everything?? The colors??? The vibe/mood??? Perfect, amazing ✨chef's kiss✨

You're literally so skilled! And your other art is so amazing as well like? Teach me your ways 🛐