#shenlai

[sarah-yyy]

what is war of faith about? is it worth a watch apart from just wang yibo(being gay?)? and where should i watch it?

you were all expecting me to do this so okay let's see how many others i can drag down this shenlai (i think this is the ship name we've settled on?? i have seen many 沈来之笔 tags on ao3 so i'm assuming that's what the chinese fandom has settled on) hole.

what: republican era communist spy drama (finance bros edition) // completed // 38 eps, roughly 40 mins each where: iqiyi (standard disclaimer that i don’t watch with subs so i don’t speak to the quality of eng subs) why: *chanting* yibo yibo yibo yibo yib- wang yang?? xiansheng???? i'll preface by saying i don't watch many republican era shows - it's really just not my thing, like even zhu yilong couldn't make me watch one and that's saying a lot, but i did finish and quite enjoy this one!! extremely strong cast on this show, and the story moved fast enough and had enough action in it that it kept my attention.

meet my boy wei ruolai:

ruolai is from a v humble family, worked hard to put himself through night school but is having trouble stepping foot into the finance world because he has no money, no connections, no diploma (the school is holding off on issuing him one because he's from a communist-stronghold province 😪). he's working several jobs to make ends meet in shanghai when he decides to interview for a job at the central bank.

he aces his entrance test! ofc he does! ruolai is a bit of a whiz with numbers, and is very very very determined to get the job - the place could be on goddamn fire for all he cares, he'll finish his goddamn test and get this goddamn job even if it kills him.

his performance gains him the attention of shen tunan:

xiansheng!! 😍💖💕

chief of the central bank, The Guy™ of the finance and banking industry in shanghai. extremely attractive in a suit. 100% dilf certified.

xiansheng takes a shine on ruolai, but ends up not being able to hire ruolai despite his excellence because, again, ruolai is from a communist-stronghold province, and they don't want to take any chances with him possibly having communist ties.

does that set ruolai back?? no. my boy sneaks into a party that shen tunan is holding at his mansion, and convinces shen tunan to hire him by essentially picking apart shen tunan's ~secret strategies~ that he's uncovered just by following the finance news and making smart deductions 🥺💚

shen tunan caves and personally hires ruolai as his PA, and begins mentoring him and teaching him the ways of the banking industry.

the show is mostly about ruolai's growth in the central bank and the shift of his political beliefs, centred around the kmt and communist party's conflict in that era. the premise of the show is fairly simple - most republican era dramas move in the same direction. this one was well-written, had a solid cast, and beautifully shot.

the development of stn and wrl's relationship in this show was good! it's v shippable, if that's something that is important to you. ngl, i did stay through till the end because these two were so interesting.

we have proud teacher shen tunan who is so so proud of his boy and takes ruolai suit-shopping and tells him how special he is :

starry-eyed disciple wei ruolai who would literally do anything for shen tunan:

he really does mean it when he says that. he gets tortured and thrown in goddamn jail for shen tunan, and he just bears it all and doesn't let himself react in any manner that could harm shen tunan.

i started this strictly for yibo, and had no expectations that i would enjoy it, but guys...........wang yang is 🥵🔥 in this as shen tunan, and this ship just.......sails itself. what else was i supposed to do except go three hundred different levels of ahhhhhhhhh over them.

ANYWAY. strong rec. like at least 8.5/10. even if you're just in it for yibo (who is EXCELLENT in this, the whump scenes are incredible), or if you just want to ship shenlai, the payoff is strong in this.

[zhansww]

In December 1936, I was assigned to go back to Shanghai under a different identity to meet comrade Guyan, an undercover party member. Over there, we will work together to create a new financial legend.

[shentunans]

[fallcolorspringrapid]

War of Faith, ep 34.

after everything that has happened since ep 10...

...they are still looking at each other like that.

(and i am rapidly becoming obsessed with wang yang, who put his everything into shen tunan and made some Acting Choices while at it. this man is a treasure.)

[the-monkey-ruler]

Chapter 2 Journey to the West (2017) 二话西游

Director: Chen Li Ping Starring: Wang Xiaoxi / Kong Xiaoming Genre: Comedy / Fantasy Country/Region of Production: Mainland China Language: Mandarin Chinese Date: 2017-10-31 (Mainland China) Duration: 63 minutes Type: Retelling

Summary:

When Tang Monk and his disciples passed through Babu Mountain, they encountered the Almighty Demon, who cast spells. In order to save his master, Wukong was childized by the Almighty Demon. In order for Wukong to recover his mana and break the witchcraft, Wuneng volunteered to come to Heaven for help. After Wuneng went to the Heavenly Court, he visited all kinds of gods to no avail, and then went down to the world. Tang Seng, Wuneng, and Wujing brought the young Wukong to Babu Village and met Sai Xishi. Sai Xishi's younger sister, Wan Zhu, tried many means to get close to Tang Seng but failed. She wrote a letter and handed it to Tang Seng, revealing a shocking secret. Tang Seng watched it, suddenly realized, and then told Wuneng, who realized the method to break Wukong's childized form, and broke the magic. In the Shenlai Inn, the four masters and apprentices worked together to eliminate all kinds of monsters, during which many warm and funny stories happened. After Wukong recovered his true form, he successfully eliminated the Almighty Demon, and was unanimously praised by the villagers of Babu Village. Amid the reluctance and farewell of the villagers, the four masters and apprentices continued westward.

Source: https://movie.douban.com/subject/27186623/

Link: https://www.iq.com/album/%E4%BA%8C%E8%AF%9D%E8%A5%BF%E6%B8%B8-2017-19rre0imr8?lang=zh_cn

[fishwink]

ok, right,war of faith, . spoilery stuff under the cut

whilst i am endlessly grateful that they are both alive, and i guessed as soon as stn specifically requested his signature [which any assistant worth his salt must have been instructed to forge many times over] must be on the custom note that they were working together, and that tunan had seen the communist light etc

but, they're back in shanghai, back working in finance, and they're not even wearing clark kent glasses. and tunan is like here i am under a different name that sounds very like my actual one again, just with floppier hair. whilst roulai has a proper financial person's hair and a snappier suit, and i just. anyway. what. i would know. i'm just saying.

is it the hair? is that why no one who has known them for years and worked with them will know who they are? I mean it's a few years, and probably people think they are dead, but still. a different hair style is not enough. I know it's also about making them look older, but seriously it's only a few years not a decade.

what happened to cishu? does she believe he is dead. perhaps she is also back with a new floppy hairstyle.

the sino japanese war/ww2 is looming. which since they've been merrily selling tungsten for weapons to the nazis might be something that's finally mentioned. and the chinese civil war with the coming to power of the communists in 1949. and cishu and yu are in london too just waiting for the blitz. there's an oncoming storm still to face.

anyway, i hear the sound of many keyboards working on the fanfic. I think there's only six ish shenlai [of which i think i have read and bookmarked two so far] fic on AO3 at the moment. have at it guys. :)

[lanonima]

The History of Silverwood

So the roots of Silverwood stretch all the way back to 2002/2003-ish (me being 11 or 12 at the time) and the story, being made organically, had gone through a number of incredible changes over the years which are still hilarious to me so Buckle Up for a hell of a ride and some never-before revealed Silverwood backstory! This is very long but also mostly art-heavy so you can scroll through and just look at silly art through the years if you want.

2002-2003. Fresh off reading The Riddle of the Wren (by Charles de Lint) I came up with a story heavily inspired by it. The story featured a villain by the name of Ithian who was hunting the main character Sanne (who was like an angel or a fairy or something idk) via dreams. Differences being that Sanne came to Earth (I guess?) as a child and was adopted and her new brother was helping her fight Ithian and also they never left their own world. It wasn’t very exciting and I promptly forgot about it (excepting that ideas about magic and space and world-hopping from this book have continued to influence me to this day and are especially noticeable in Stringworlds, but that’s another story).

2004. My friends and I mostly being active on The Lion King Fanart Archive, and this also being the very brief period of time where I was interested in Harry Potter, we started a Harry Potter...thing. Not really an RP but. Anyway my character was an original named Hawkswind (I think I took this sort of naming idea from Mercedes Lackey but I’m not clear on the details) and she was a red wolf who was later turned into a purple lion by magic shenanigans. Two pictures courtesy of @devinsdesigns hopefully she doesn’t mind me putting them up.

2005 (probably). Hawkswind got resused in an actual Harry Potter RP, but this time as a human who’s real name was Rene and she was a French werewolf and also in hiding and probably a bunch of other embarrassing shit I’ve admitted to before but no longer remember truthfully (something about being an immortal princess? sounds about right but who the fuck knows). I don’t have any pictures of her like this but she looked like me.

Between 2005 and 2006. For the first time ever I will admit. Yes, Anthem’s original name was Ansem due to Kingdom Hearts. No, I had not played Kingdom Hearts at this time. But I did read a lot of KH fanfiction for some reason and there was one in particular that grabbed me and I used parts of it for the Original Silverwood Plotline which mostly featured Hawkswind as a chosen one who had failed to save the world and was now being held captive.

2006. By late 2006 I had renamed Anthem and the plot had really taken off. Hawkswind was still French, Anthem was British, she was still an unsuccessful chosen one who had basically been brainwashed into joining her former nemesis. She was a heartless, but by this point I was already calling them Harketein. 

Although Hawkswind was a lesbian (her girlfriend was Aidian) she and Anthem had several children and the story had shifted from the parents to the children, about one of whom there was a prophecy. (Keir and Kaite were the main children in question). Predictably for someone who loves mythology, Anthem’s response to this was to try and murder the children and so the struggle between him and Hawkswind shifted to a domestic one. Pics from this period.

(This is the first picture of Anthem I ever drew so you can see he’s pretty much remained the same from the get-go).

Also around this point Sonya and Aya were first introduced. They were vampires who were friends of Hawkswind.

2007. In early 2007 a short side-story about Keir and a magic mirror led to the creation of the Shenlai, and specifically the shenlai anaora, useless shadow servants who have haunted Anthem’s mansion ever since. They used to look like this.

Also around this point in time this story (then called Saga) met Purgatory, the LARP that @hakbot and I did every day after school like the nerds we are. It was all about gods and thus Hawkswind (now called Hawkie for short) became queen of hell and goddess of evil. Anthem was also in hell and kept breaking out so her main purpose was hunting him down and dragging him back. It also led to pictures like this.

This is where Tris was introduced! The queen of demons came into the story as an eternally cursed child already, and eventually other characters like her assistant Bird (a soul with no memories who therefore could not be placed) and demons like Bermuda were created to fill her court.

By late 2007 Hawkswind was already in love with Anthem, though she also hated him, and since he was capable of magically controlling her who knows how accurate that was.

Between 2006 and 2007 I was in a group story with some other writers and she was my character (obviously) and in late 2007 they officially killed Anthem off. It lasted a little while, but not super long because what would I do without him?

Art from this period also shows the first appearance of her scar, initially from Anthem ripping her heart out to turn her into a Harketein.

The story changes again to a game of chase with Hawkie fleeing from world to world and Anthem chasing her down. The kids are still present, but not as important. It’s around this time that I remember the original story of Ithian and Sanne, which had certain similarities. Sanne is scrapped, and Ithian enters the story as a rival for Anthem. By this point he wasn’t necessarily evil but he was certainly a deviant of a sort. Cross-dressing and also a very unhealthy one-sided obsession with his sister. One of those things has lasted to this day, the other has not (hint: it’s the incest).

Eventually Aidian was murdered and scrapped. I made Ithian Hawkie’s twin brother and lightened her hair slightly to match his. Wings also came into the picture, with varying levels of metaphorical depending on the day.

Ithian regains some of his dream-abilities and also he lives in the void between worlds where he was cast (coming back to Riddle of the Wren again). He pulled Hawkie in with him and it corrupts her. Aidian is actually Not Dead but she does sort of lose it when Hawkie turns evil because while they aren’t dating anymore, she still had feelings for her.

Another story change has Harketein as being allergic to iron, and one of the ways Hawkie protects herself from Anthem is by locking herself in iron shackles which is...a bad idea. In late 2007 she is gaining a lot of scars most, but not all, of which disappear in later versions.

In very late 2007 I take the story off of Earth, which it had been leaving for some time, and first start to design them different outfits with varying levels of...uh...interest. Anthem always wears a suit though because literally what else would he wear?

For the first time I’m calling her Ithea (yes, reverse engineered from Ithian because I’m a lazy piece of shit). For the first time she uses what would later become her pole-axe, and I gave her straight-up black hair.

2008. Sonya and Aya make a reappearance, though their personalities are shifting, with Sonya becoming ever more hopeless, though Aya has yet to obtain her status as Alpha Bitch. Aidian also makes another showing, this time as a dragon.

Around this time Ithea gains her pointed ears and aggressive, fight-happy personality. By mid-2008 she had her pole-axe well in hand, and I had names for the countries they were in - Tsime and Cylli, which have continued to exist in one form or another since then.

By August of this year, many things have become canon! Ithea’s “always smiling but will kill you” aesthetic happens. The first time her black-silver-and purple color scheme pops up, though it’s not set in stone yet. New costume design. The word Drezhein makes an appearance, and that’s what she is, and her shapeshifted form is wolf-like. Probably around this time Anthem became a Harkitein if he wasn’t already. Also her height is 5′5″ which it has been ever since. Her magic bracelets come in at this point too, as well as an unspecified illness making a return from an earlier version.

By the end of this year, the domestic situation is set in stone, as is the history of Harkitein being created to fight Drezhein (a failed experiment in the end). The illegality of making Harkitein, as well as Anthem murdering the wizard who created him, are evident. The anaora are still around and some of them have names (they’re still useless though).

Shortly after this, some of them gain human forms due to messing with Anthem’s magic and they just annoy the shit out of him all the time. Anthem’s role of “sort of evil but mostly just long-suffering” is here to stay.

2009. The children reappear, and also another very important character is created: Cranberries! Here is Kaite, Ro, and Cranberries in their designs at this time.

And here’s a really terrible family portrait.

At this point in time Keir is still a girl. I’m not entirely sure when Keir went from being a girl to being a boy but that did happen at some point. Oh well.

Sonya and Aya get a redesign and appropriate fantasy names. By this point new personalities for them are set in stone. Sonya is Ithea’s friend while Aya is Anthem’s, and their relationship is...less than stellar. They’re not vampires anymore but Vekain, another magical race in this world who have their own political shit going on (but we ignore it because Sonya is exiled anyway).

Important to mention but closing in on the year Kaite became the butch lesbian we all know and love, and certain aspects of her, Cyan, and Gavin’s future career in organized crime become assured.

The anaora are still around and becoming more catlike.

And at the very close of the year, Tris and Bird officially make a new appearance! Away from Purgatory, Tris is a cursed child empress and instead of being demons her people are the Daemir. Bird is still a memory-less stranger who washed up on the beach and quickly proved invaluable. With her came her husband Bermuda.

2010. The most important picture I’ve ever drawn is created.

Additional information is created about the gods and the history of the world and the creation of its various peoples.

Around this time the long-lasting political turmoil of what Ithea, Anthem, and Ithian did becomes more fully explored. The great-grandchildren are created and the story becomes intensely political in nature.

2011-2014. Around this time I took a long break. I had written the story down for NaNoWriMo and mostly considered it finished. I still played with the story a bit, but I was trying hard to focus on publishable things and so I didn’t really mess with it much except for dumb posts on Tumblr. Some art from that time.

2015-Present. By 2015 the story was officially called Silverwood and I was back in my obsession with it, which I’ve never left. Exciting things happened, mostly in the realm of costume and character design.

Inside and outside of tumblr shitposts I have continued to deepen the story in the cast, the world-building and design, the politics, and the personal relationships between the characters. Will it ever be done? Probably not. But at least I enjoy it. Thanks for reading, take some more art!

[sl-walker]

Blue

“It’s a fern, right?”

“Right.  But not just your common fern; this one is the Shenlay Forest Fern, native only to zone three-besh-nine.  While not endangered, it is protected, so one needs a special study permit -- which I may have acquired -- in order to take any sporelings.”

Maul was perched on one of his favorite spots that was not a rock or treelimb -- despite all jokes about how Bail might as well be a tree, given how tall he was -- which happened to be Bail’s chest.  Bail, in the meantime, was being introduced to the newest plant to join the Organa family, which was a yet-small fern with deep blue fronds.

“Where have you been keeping it?” Bail asked, reaching up to stroke one of the longer fronds, feathery against his fingertips.  When the edges of it lit up a brighter blue in response, he huffed a breath of surprise.

Maul grinned back at him. “In my suite, of course.  Given that I’m always here, it seemed the perfect place to let it grow in muted light.”

“It’s beautiful.”  It was, too; Bail’s favorite color was blue, though he had acquired quite a love of red, black and gold in the past couple of years for obvious reasons. “Do they take well to pots?”

“Large enough ones.  But if not, there’s a spot in the garden that I’ve already tested for suitability where it would thrive with careful care, under the wild grapes on the southern wall.”

Bail smiled at that, just admiring the fern for a moment before carefully taking it and stretching his arm to set it on the nightstand. “I love it.”

Once the plant was out of the way, Maul leaned down and gave Bail a lingering kiss, the kind that hinted to a pleasant evening ahead.  “I love you.  Happy birthday, Bail.”

[sensoryexplosions-blog]

The Soundscape of Shanghai. By Zhang Hui, Gao Qi, Chen Xi, Long Hui, Beatrice Di Caro, Zhou Pinglang, Wang Yun, and Yang Shenlai

[zhansww]

敬若[沈]明 (jing ruo shen ming) to hold somebody in the same regard as one would a God

[zhansww]

I can’t even imagine how you endured it.     I thought... that even if they kill me, I can’t hold you back. You’re meant for great things.

[zhansww]

[zhansww]

3 times Ruolai and Tunan had to part ways + 1 time they reunited for good

[zhansww]

[zhansww]

[zhansww]

The Untamed finale | War of Faith finale