#marichromatic

[tossawary]

I'm re-reading PINTWILF and was suddenly wondering: considering how dense Shen Yuan is on SVSSS, how long do you think it will take him to realize Binghe has like, feelings, feelings for him?

I think he'll have to have it spelled out bluntly for him. But not necessarily because he's completely oblivious to the fact that he and Binghe are close and affectionate with each other in a "more than friends" way? I think by the end, even when he's still gently, jokingly encouraging Binghe to flirt with women, he'll have suspicions. Or... maybe... "he'll have hopes" is the better word?

See, one of the things I personally really like about MXTX's works is that while the protagonists are a little (or a lot) romantically oblivious sometimes, they're all capable of being very clever and observant, and I get a really strong vibe that their obliviousness is actually partly denial/disbelief that they would actually be allowed to have this thing (this person) that they come to really, really want. They often can't bring themselves to look at the idea directly. They know but also can't even bring themselves to think about it, because the rejection would hurt them too deeply, and rejection feels inevitable, by the world if not by the person they love, so they might as well blind themselves to the possibility of happiness.

It's a remarkably queer element that I vibe with on a personal level. It's also just one interpretation of things. Which is why, for example in MDZS fics, we get the spectrum of Genuinely Completely Oblivious Wei Wuxian to a Wei Wuxian who is so, so in love with Lan Wangji for so long but can't fully believe LWJ would ever like him back and, more importantly, doesn't want to "ruin" LWJ with everything that he is. (I am personally partial to interpretations which lean more towards the latter. I like obliviousness just fine, I like mixes of both, but the angst of love being known deep-down, but feeling unspeakable, being unthinkable, is delicious to me. The pining is so good.)

Now, Shen Yuan is a very different character to Wei Wuxian, just as SY is a very different character to Airplane. My personal interpretation is that each of the MXTX protagonists perform this "defensive obliviousness" in very different ways, to very different degrees, and for very different reasons. (I mean, for some of them, we're dealing with "loving me back would ruin your life and I love you too much to let you do that" and others are dealing with "if I reveal my love/lust to this person and they're not open to it, they might kill me for it".)

I actually went into SVSSS (SPOILERS) feeling really wary of the teacher-student angle, but my impression of their time together as teacher and student was that Shen Yuan's feelings for Luo Binghe were genuinely platonic. And while I make jokes about Shen Yuan being oblivious to LBH's feelings for him, he had a lot of really good reasons for thinking that Luo Binghe wanted to kill him at first upon their reunion. I think any romantic/sexual feelings only started to develop for SY upon their reunion and only became fully realized even later. My personal interpretation of Shen Yuan is that he's asexual (he reads as sooo ace to me), probably gay but possibly bi-romantic, sex-neutral or sex-favorable. (Though I also think that, in SVSSS, even married to Binghe, he still probably personally identifies mostly as "straight with an exception".)

I'm losing the thread of where I'm going with this because I'm desperately trying not to write like five different meta essays here.

In PINTWILF (SPOILERS), Shen Yuan is already in a different situation to SVSSS. Shang Qinghua is SY's mentor-figure and openly queer, openly in a relationship with a demon, and SQH has at least told SY that marrying all those wives in PIDW didn't make LBH happy. I can't remember if SQH ever directly hinted to SY that LBH might be into men, but the other family members aren't exactly 100% discrete or subtle about their teasing. Shen Yuan has a lot more space to get comfortable with his own queerness and LBH's queerness, though he has a lot of internalized homophobia to get through (and misogyny, my goodness, sometimes in SVSSS I really wanted to bop him on the head for his behavior around women even if he's simultaneously mocking the sexist tropes).

But there's still Shen Yuan's self-confidence and self-image to contend against. Even when he's not mentally slotted himself into the role of "teacher" and "betrayer", he's still had the time to mentally slot himself into the role of "older friend" and "confidant". Shen Yuan seems to view himself as a kind of boring person and he likes it that way, so while he would be happy to have Binghe as a partner, he likes him so very much, he can't quite shake the feeling that Binghe could do better and so it's best not to read too much into it. He's honestly happy enough just being friends (or so he tells himself) and doesn't want to "make it weird" unless Binghe takes the first step.

[moodcafe]

barbiecore moodboard: order for @marichromatic | want one?

[marichromatic]

I was inspired by @tossawary ´s story, Servant to a Different King so I had to do a small drawing of the Northern Snow Desert. There's nothing as romantic as watching the sunset through the dunes 💖✨

Also if you have Pixiv please give me a like over there:

[girlmv]

maria fernanda for @marichromatic

[lee-luca]

"Fox Fafa + Ferret Dianxia?" prompt via @marichromatic

[klyukvav]

Giveaway art for  @marichromatic ✨

[petr1kov]

re: your last ddlc reblog; idk if you've ever seen it, but gekkan shojo nozaki kun did that exact same plot point as a bit: (@scallioncreamcheesebagel on here) /686804908009291776/marichromatic-the-moonlight-witch-this-is-still

i've never watched the show but i do think i've seen it before because i remember something like that! it's crazy to think about how that's basically monika's role in the story tbh

[guqin-and-flute]

@marichromatic said: Let Lan XiChen go fucking feral 2020

Maaan, I think about that sometimes, tho, for real--he’s widely acknowledged as one of the strongest/most powerful cultivators of his generation.

Give me righteously furious Xichen with burning eyes and his face hard, jaw tight as he fights on. Give me cold, protective Xichen standing between someone he loves and defending them, voice soft but strong, words cutting and direct. Let him be pushed beyond the point of reason and take it, for once. Let him drop the diplomacy for just one moment and remind people like Jin Zixun why they don’t play games with him in public--it’s not because it’s not polite, it’s not just because there will be political repercussions. It’s because it’s a bad fucking idea.

He is a man, not a distant ideal--with feelings and a temper and a limit that, if you manage to reach that astronomically high, is a threshold so, so thin you don’t even recognize you’ve crossed it. I want incandescent with rage Xichen. I want someone trying to hurt Wangji or A-Yuan or trying to wipe out the Lan’s again and here comes Zewu-jun with the deliberate, inexorable stalk of rage, the stride of a good man pushed too far--or maybe he is simply all of a sudden there, every movement economical, precise and cold and deadly, and they are deader than dead and it takes a moment for anyone to do anything because he’s just radiating menace, lips pressed thin, eyes dark.

And he probably closes his eyes, tries to tuck it away and shrink back down again behind manners and humility and everything he thinks he should be instead--those good things, those soft, safe things-- but he will have reminded everyone that there is a difference between nice and kind and that is that kindness is conditional and comes from a place of knowing what is yours and when to stop giving it.

[veliseraptor]

I know there are a bunch of fancanons about this but I wanna see your take on ♒ with Jiang Cheng

♒ - cooking/food headcanon: I feel like I’m in a good position for this one as I know absolutely nothing about these fancanons you mention! so I’m coming at this blank, which I feel like is a good way to come at it.

I have this idea, with no canon basis but it just Feels Right to me, that at least as a kid Jiang Cheng was a very picky eater. like, painfully picky. and it was not ideal, and it was not something that was really catered to for the most part, but Jiang Cheng was very particular about the kinds of foods he wanted and kind of aggressive about the ones he didn’t and maybe, maybe this was a little bit of a way of asserting a control or kind of choice he didn’t feel like he otherwise had but also he was just kind of like that.

and as many kids do he sort of grew out of it, if kind of by force of people making him Eat It Anyway I Don’t Care if You Hate It, but he remains sort of...selective, and every so often especially if he’s in a mood or had a bad day or whatever it really pops up and he gets very “no!!! I don’t want this!!!!” about almost every possible food option there is, and gets mad at both himself (because this feels very childish) and also others around him (because now he is hangry). 

the one person, of course, who could always get him to eat anything was Jiang Yanli, who even with things Jiang Cheng would be like “no I don’t want it >:(” just had the gift of coaxing him into it better than anyone else.  probably party because she would be very proud of him. also she’s just much nicer and less browbeat-y about it. 

he does tend to be a Yunmeng food boy. other region’s cuisines are fine, he supposes, but Yunmeng has the best of everything, and it’s always going to taste like comfort and like home.

[kurowrites]

marichromatic

Oh, darling, the writer has been reported so much that no more reports are allowed. This has already gone way past that

That’s exactly what I feared, but note that I didn’t say they should be reported. Because they aren’t actually violating AO3 policy. They aren’t breaking the rules, they’re breaking the general social contract of being active on a fan site. Which is why... reporting is 1. useless and 2. only helps in making this person more unwilling to comply.

Orz

[delicourse]

Are you going to do the sailor moon redraw? Asking for a friend (^～^;)ゞ (it's me, I'm friend)

imma be real, i have no clue on what the sailor moon redraw is hfkhfkdjf

[tossawary]

Just a random thought but I think I can absolutely see Shang Qinghua wearing exactly the same thing as his hallmasters just in case some idiot tries to go the xianxia Karen equivalent of "I wanna talk to your manager" only for him to go "I AM the manager, bitch"

Oh, yeah, I'm sure he can dress up when the occasion calls for it, but most of the time, I imagine that Shang Qinghua is indistinguishable from the average cultivator on An Ding Peak. It's more practical for moving around, both in the physical sense and in the "no one thinks I'm anything but Just Some Guy, which makes it easier to sneak around on my own business" sense.

Unfortunately, it is JUST Shang Qinghua's luck that if he tried the "I AM the manager" technique, people would probably just straight-up not believe him half of the time. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it just doesn't. He has one of those faces.

I think his go-to technique would actually be lying. Just going, "Oh, right away! I'm SO SORRY! If you want to see the manager, follow these directions! This lowly person (me) is WAY TOO UNIMPORTANT to help you with your super important problems!" and making this person someone else's problem. And then the other unfortunate An Ding cultivator is like, "I'm sorry, who sent you to me? Who told you to come here? Describe them, please? (I want to know who dumped this shit in my lap.) ...Madam, that was the An Ding Peak Lord."

[sastielcreationschallenge]

After taking out a coven of witches, Cas returns to the Bunker. With Dean hunting with Jody and the girls, he’s not initially surprised at the quiet that greets him as he arrives. But when a quick check of Sam’s bedroom and the library fail to turn him up, Cas’ search grows more frantic, until a terrified squeaking noise rips him out of his worried frenzy. Under a table, a small guinea pig is cowering, long fur shaking and small upset squeaks escaping its throat. As it turns out, the last of the witches cursed Sam with her dying breath and although it’s not too bad as far as curses in general are concerned, Cas doesn’t think it is something they should play around with either. With Dean still busy with the hunt - and Cas not wanting to needlessly alarm him now that it’s clear Sam’s not in any real danger -  they decide to figure out the curse themselves. As it turns out the solution is remarkably easy. All it takes are some angel feathers, herbs they keep in the Bunker’s storage and a couple of days. But while finding a solution isn’t that hard, breaking the curse will ultimately be harder than expected as Sam and Cas have to face unspoken feelings in their quest to return Sam to his human body. And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, the growing pains that go along with suddenly turning from a 6 foot 5 human into a 6 inch guinea pig, having to get used to this new and frankly terrifying perspective, a not completely new diet and a messed up sleep rhythm are sure to keep them on their toes until the spell finally wears off.

🎅 Merry Christmas @marichromatic​​ 🎁

[marichromatic]

After procrastinating for months with this piece, I finally finished my version of Bingqiu, Witch Hat Atelier style. And there's also a timelapse now! I remembered to do it! At the middle of the process but WHO CARES? 😂😂😂

Here's the link to the timelapse

[casquecest]

marichromatic replied to your post: Dare I register to run the New England Green River...

I mean, if you think you’ll be ready for the physical challenge of a marathon then why not? Go for it

I’ve completed four marathons, which I ran within a year.  I’m registered to run Chicago and New York in the fall, but that’s it, so only having two on the calendar makes me feel like I’m slacking (especially since Chicago will be over eleven months since I ran my last marathon) =D.

I was hoping to run more halfs and 5- and 10Ks in training for Chicago, but with COVID, many events have been cancelled over the next few months.  The NEGRM is one of the first I’ve seen that’s still on (for now) that’s relatively local, which makes it all the more appealing, in addition to it being run through a beautiful part of Vermont and Massachusetts.

And the reviews I’ve read about it make it seem like a really tight, sweet, community event =).

[bisexualdemondean]

Talking about Cas and kittens, what kind of pet would you want?