#the blue lotus

[enchantedbook]

'The Blue Lotus' by Herge, 1936

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

hi! loving your art. I was watching your awesome stories/gifs and I was wondering: how did Chang develop his feelings for Tintin? Did he discover them before or after him? How did he react and why? (English is not my first language so if you see a grammatical mistake, I'm sorry. Also, sorry if so many questions made you feel like you were in a philosophy exam)

Thank you so much! As a contrast to the rest of the Marlinspike team I'm writing Chang as someone who makes friends and develops crushes pretty easily!

I imagine he's had a crush on Tintin for some time, possibly from when they first met. He's been at the mercy of his circumstances for most of his life until that point - Tintin basically makes him feel capable of doing stuff.

He's pretty heartbroken after the Blue Lotus. Tintin doesn't contact him for years. Chang is struggling to adjust to his new family and is failing at school, having missed out on a good education for a few years prior. Until Tibet he feels pretty hopeless, he will never live up to the time when he took down a drug ring.

His near death experience in Tibet shakes him out of this rut. He starts to travel and take up hobbies like dance and photography. Didi trains him in some basic martial arts. Tintin makes an effort to actually stay in touch this time. Chang has some abandonment issues as he's frequently lost people throughout his life, so he's someone who's willing to give people second chances, even if they've hurt him badly. Chang thinks he's well over his crush on Tintin when he comes around to Belgium for his studies, but falls for him again very quickly!

Unlike Tintin, Chang is a lot more comfortable with who he is. He's used to being the odd one out and has generally low expectations for himself, so just goes with the flow.

Below I talk a little with how I'm going about writing him and the historical context surrounding this, cw for mentions of racism (sinophobia) and queerphobia:

I'm writing Chang as bi, I thought it would be interesting to explore as Asian men were perceived differently in the 30s compared to today. While Asian men in the West are currently heavily desexualised in the early 20th century they were stereotyped as predatory and deviant. In London a lot of Chinese immigrants were male dockworkers, so when they married white women there was a lot of fearmongering about predatory and disloyal Chinese men.

A lot of depictions of Asian men in Western media reflected these stereotypes (and often used queercoding to push the idea of Asian men being animalistic seducers - General Henry Chang in Shanghai Express (1932) was written to be bisexual while posing as a threat to the white leads). Some examples off the top of my head include Hishuru Tori from The Cheat (1915) and The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Novels frequently depicted Chinese drug lords with borderline supernatural powers in manipulation.

On the other hand I've noticed how fans frequently depict Chang as someone who's submissive, demure and soft, which ignores how ridiculously brave and proactive he is in canon (stealing documents from police officers, charging into a man immediately after getting shot at by a machine gun, I could go on!). It's a common example of Fandom Racism (not accusing anyone specifically, it's just a trend I've noticed.)

When writing Chang I'm kinda reckoning with two different eras. From a contemporary angle I'm writing him as a love interest, which as an Asian guy I rarely see in media today. I also gotta consider his own time and context, how he would navigate being a queer Chinese guy, and how that would affect his relationship with others and himself.

[mycherrycola]

was up until 2am self-medicating with the comfort show of all time. I love them so much :(((

[tomoleary]

Hergé, Tintin et le Lotus Bleu (1936)

[cuscuta-tw]

admirable friendship

[endlessthoughtsofafangirl]

As long as the two of us can make music together, nothing else matters.

[tintinfarsi]

دی‌دی

دی‌دی پسر آقای وانگ جن گی در داستان گل آبی است. او وظیفه‌ی مراقبت از تن‌تن در مقابل قاچاق‌چیان مواد مخدر در شانگهای را دارد. دی‌دی دوبار جان تن‌تن را نجات می‌دهد. اما توسط عوامل میتسوهیراتو با سم راژاژا دیوانه می‌شود. تن‌تن به پدر دی‌دی قول می‌دهد پادزهر این سم وحشتناک را پیدا کند. سرانجام پروفسور فان سه-ینگ متخصص در درمان بیماری جنون، پادزهر راژاژا را ساخت و دی‌دی را نجات داد

[demaparbat-hp]

Fire Half-Child

[uroko]

夏の花畑, Summer Flower Field

[blueiskewl]

Lotiform Chalice Third Intermediate Period Ca. 945–664 B.C. From Middle Egypt, Tuna el-Gebel region; From Egypt.

The fragrant blossom of the blue lotus is a common motif in all forms of Egyptian art. Because it opened its petals to the sun each morning, the flower became a symbol of creation and rebirth. During the Third Intermediate Period, faience chalices derived from the shape of the blossom and other faience delicacies were decorated with relief scenes evoking a constellation of myths having to do with the birth of the king as child of the sun god out of the watery marsh environment, and thus the renewal of the world out of the flooded land anticipated with the beginning of the Inundation at the Egyptian New Year.

[lotus-pear]

what is childe doing in bungou gay dogs😟

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

modern au fits! basically wanted to translate some of tintin’s most iconic looks.

From left to right, top to bottom:

- His basic day-to-day - just a crew neck sweater, white t-shirt, cargo joggers and a pair of leather trainers. The big baggy trousers Tintin famously wears are plus fours - breeches that extend four inches below the knee (hence the name!). They were introduced in the 20s and gained popularity as sportswear in the 30s as they allowed a greater range of movement. I gave Tintin cargo joggers for that sporty feel while still keeping him feeling preppy, and pockets are always useful! Snowy wears a collar now.

- A take on the Yellow Shirt and Grey Sweater Vest Look from the earlier comics, a long sleeve baseball t-shirt with the corresponding colours! isnt menswear exciting

- Thought an all blue tracksuit and plimsolls with a baseball cap and glasses to hide his face would be fun as I guess dressing in traditional Chinese clothing wouldn’t make much sense as a disguise in modern day China. Chang would wear yellow crocs.

- The spacesuit! When Herge wrote Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon the moon landing didn’t happen yet - it was a piece of speculative science fiction. He modelled his suits very closely to actual speculative spacesuits from scientific sources. In a similar spirit I based this design off the MIT Bio-Suit, an experimental spacesuit that uses elasticity to maintain pressure on the human body rather than gas pressurisation which is used currently. The idea is to reduce bulk, which should make mobility easier. We’re probably still a long way from using spacesuits like this but hey! 

- basically looked up what modern mountaineering equipment looks like today. I imagine the bright colours help with spotting climbers out in the snow - there’s a part of Mt Everest called Rainbow Valley - it’s so-called because the colourful coats of various dead climbers dot the landscape, frozen in place because it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies. Sherpas often risk their lives for poor pay to the benefit of wealthy tourists wanting a bit of Everest glory - Herge made efforts to point this out in Tintin in Tibet through the character of Tharkey. Sadly things haven’t seemed to have changed much in that regard.

- A bomber jacket with a fur lined hood and snow boots. I absolutely loved his outfit in The Shooting Star, and Snowy’s little bib and pink ribbon! style icons honestly

[ao3-anonymous]

Fastest Growing Fandoms on AO3 This Week (03/18/2024)

Every week I pull data on how many fics are in each fandom and compare to the previous week, then calculate the percentage increase to determine fastest growing fandoms.  Since this naturally skews towards smaller fandoms, I have included the same data filtered to Over 1k, 5k, & 10k fics.

Overall:

Over 1,000 Fics:

Over 5,000 Fics:

Over 10,000 Fics:

Source: AO3 Fandom Dashboard

[atsukunaritai]

li lianhua and di feisheng finding out about each other's entrapment

[greentea-honeyeyed]

Blue Lotus

[endlessthoughtsofafangirl]

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"