#what better (late) april fools prank than to post a real actual drawing for the first time in uhhhhh

[heavy-lobster]

Been playing a lot of Rise lately so I drew a Rathalos

[ghost--houses]

Untamed Spring Fest 2020 Day 8: Spring

Posting daily a month late because I’m a slow writer!

read this one on AO3

read all currently finished prompts on AO3

Spring (WangXian, continuation of Day 1: April Fools, ~2k words)

When Wei Wuxian planned his revenge prank on Lan Zhan, it went something like this:

Rig up an elaborate paper man prank on the door leading out of the Jingshi.

After dinner, find some excuse to go outside and get Lan Zhan to follow.

Paper men fall all over Lan Zhan’s head, messing up his hair and generally causing problems.

Lan Zhan becomes angry.

Wei Wuxian will immediately say that he lost control of the paper men, and that there shouldn’t be that many, all of which is all a lie and Lan Zhan will know this and become even more angry.

Wei Wuxian will be then dragged into the Jingshi (maybe by his hair? That sounds fun) in order to be Punished.

He will continue to insist on his (relative) innocence and complain about the severity of the Punishment until Lan Zhan becomes even angier.

Repeat step 7 as needed.

When Wei Wuxian has been Dealt With to the complete satisfaction of both parties, he will check in with Lan Zhan to make sure he is actually over the paper men incident and that they didn’t do any real damage and then they will go to sleep even more in love than before.

It was a great plan and the end result was exactly what he wanted. But two things went differently. First, in step 6, he was actually thrown over Lan Zhan’s shoulder and carried into the Jingshi, which was an improvement. The second was that instead of Wei Wuxian leading Lan Zhan out of the Jingshi as in step 2, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi had arrived to bring some documents so instead Lan Zhan triggered the trap when he walked out to greet them. And Wei Wuxian had not anticipated the righteous fury they would have on behalf of their beloved Hanguang-jun (before, of course, running away in horror when they realized this was going to be a sex thing).

The retribution begins the next morning. Wei Wuxian takes one of his usual walks into the back hills to find a place far from the sensitive ears of Lan Qiren to play Chenqing (the sacrifices one must make for marriage!). He steps out onto a rock jutting out onto the river and he’s not even two notes into his warm-up when he is completely drenched in river water from head to toe.

It takes a couple moments of sputtering and shaking for him to even comprehend what’s happened. He pushes the wet hair plastered to his face off to the side and looks around for an explanation. The water has cleared the rock of dust and dirt and revealed a talisman right under his feet. It’s very clever -- it’s rigged only to respond to his particular instrument and is clearly Jingyi’s work. Wei Wuxian’s just wondering how they knew he would use this rock when he sees a small white corner flapping in the breeze nearby. And then another. And another.

It’s an entire network. It would have taken them hours. He’s so proud he could cry.

But for now, there’s work to do.

First, dry clothes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make it back home without running into his assailants. Even worse, Lan Zhan is with them. Ah, well, he can work with this.

“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan says, frowning. Behind him, Jingyi is barely concealing his glee. Sizhui’s face is so innocent that any suspicions Wei Wuxian had that Jingyi acted alone are wiped clean.

“I’m fine, I’m fine! I fell in the river. Lots of loose rocks out there, you know, will need to be more careful.” He turns his reassuring smile into an exaggerated pout. “I am a little shaken up, though, maybe my husband can give me some comfort.” And then he starts to go in for a hug. Lan Zhan steps back.

“You will catch a cold if you do not change immediately.”

“Yes, yes, fine.” Wei Wuxian turns to go but when he passes the juniors, he adds, “Looking a little tired today, boys, I pray that there are no disturbances in your sleep tonight.”

He smiles to himself as he walks away. Now to plan the actual prank.

The next day, Wei Wuxian is conveniently guest lecturing one of the juniors' classes, going over exorcism techniques. He is barely sitting upright when he begins, and by half-way through, he's basically laying on his side, gesturing with his flute as he calls on various disciples to answer questions. It is here, at what appears to be his least-threatening, that he springs his trap.

“Ah!” He starts, as if suddenly remembering something. “Sizhui, you were there when I performed Empathy in Yi City, why don’t you tell us about that?”

“Of course.” He says, starting to stand up. “In Yi City, Wei-qianbei -- “

“Oh, come up here,” Wei Wuxian waves him over. “I already know what happened, you’re telling your classmates.”

There’s a tiny hesitation from Sizhui -- Wei Wuxian watches him calculate the probability of a prank versus Wei Wuxian’s unconventional teaching styles and settles on the latter. He moves up to the front of the class.

Wei Wuxian lets him get through a brief explanation of the parties involved in the tragedy of Yi City before interrupting him again. “Ah, wait, Jingyi, you were there, too, you should come up and add your observations as well.”

Jingyi, who had checked out a few minutes ago, presumably on the assumption that since he was there, he didn’t need to listen to this (which is absolutely what Wei Wuxian would have done in his case, too), looks up guilty. “I... uh… Sizhui can probably tell it better than I can.”

“No, no, no, come up!” Wei Wuxian waves at him, lazily. “You’d be surprised what insights can be found from a different perspective.” He adds, genuinely, hoping they remember that one when they’re mad at him in a few minutes.

Jingyi joins Sizhui and Sizhui continues his story, and Jingyi, predictably, begins to interject whenever he thinks Sizhui is not adding the proper sensational embellishments. When all eyes are on the two juniors in front of him, Wei Wuxian secretly draws his talisman and watches a little blue line coalesce on both of their wrists. He smiles, and returns to teaching, adding notes and asking for clarifications.

When they’ve finished their story, he dismisses the class. “We’ve done enough, go enjoy the spring day,” he says. The other disciples begin to bow and disperse, so the room is almost empty by the time Jingyi and Sizhui attempt to go to gather their notes on the opposite sides of the room and find that they cannot.

“Ah.” Wei Wuxian says, slowly getting to his feet, over the sounds of Jingyi falling to his ass and Sizhui telling him to stop struggling and just come closer. “Well, this is a bind, isn’t it?”

“You!” Jingyi shouts.

“How do we… ?” Sizhui starts, looking down at his wrist.

“You’re smart boys,” Wei Wuxian says, flicking a finger across his nose and heading for the door. “You’ll figure it out.”

They’ve figured it out by dinner, because Sizhui comes to dinner with his fathers alone.

“Wei-qianbei” He says, when it can be safely said that meal time is over. “I think we should agree not to let our… contest disturb any of our family time.”

Wei Wuxian smiles, feeling the unmistakable warmth of parental pride, both from his thoughtfulness as well as the clear indication that he’s in this to win it. “Yes. And we’ll keep Lan Zhan out of it.” Sizhui nods and smiles and when he leaves for the night, he says, a little too sweetly, “Sleep well, Wei-qianbei.”

In the morning, Wei Wuxian wakes up at six(!) to the sound of fireworks. He jolts out of bed and looks outside, expecting a party, but there's nothing in the sky. There's no smell of smoke, either. In fact, the moment he steps out of the Jingshi to get a better look, the sound stops. It is localized.

He could just go sleep somewhere else... maybe a roof? Except that might be exactly what they're expecting. Groaning, he dresses adequately enough and starts to hunt down whatever's making this noise.

It takes him an hour, but he finds a charm attached to the outside that's not supposed to be there. He recognizes the design -- it transfers noise over long distances. He could just break it -- or better yet, attach it to one of the juniors’ robes -- but he’s struck with inspiration and with a few additional arrays and other modifications, he now has it transmitting in both directions.

"Hey, I found your charm! Nice try, but I'm going back to bed."

"Wei-gongzi?" Comes the voice on the other side.

"...Wen Ning?"

"Hello."

"How... how did they rope you into this?"

"Ahhh... well... it sounded like you were having fun and I thought..."

"Betrayed! By my own general!"

"I'm sorry, Gongzi!"

"It's alright, I can't stay mad at you, Wen Ning. Can you kill the fireworks, though? I can't fly, so I'd have to use Little Apple to try and track you down."

"Oh, yes, I will."

"Thank you."

Later that day, Wei Wuxian sneaks chili oil into all the dishes of Jingyi and Sizhui’s midday meal. Then the next day, Jingyi attempts to reuse his flute-triggered talisman to cover Wei Wuxian with colored dust while he’s playing with Sizhui as guqin accompaniment. It works, but he must have missed a character in the array because Sizhui’s playing triggers it as well, so Wei Wuxian and Sizhui have a brief truce in order to work together to move Jingyi's bed out to a rock in the middle river in the dead of night, with Jingyi still asleep in it.

That evening, anticipating Sizhui and Jingyi’s inevitable reconciliation, Wei Wuxian sits in the Jingshi, brainstorming his next move when Lan Zhan comes and sits down across from him at his desk.

"...hmm?" Wei Wuxian says after a moment, slowly looking up. "Lan Zhan, what's wrong?"

"Your games with the juniors are becoming disruptive."

"Games! Lan Zhan, this is war! What do you expect me to do, surrender?"

"The other disciples are distracted. And my uncle..."

Wei Wuxian winces. He really had been careful to keep the old man out of this but it was probably impossible for him to be completely ignorant. "Do you... are you asking me to stop?"

"The Cloud Recesses is not the proper place for this."

"Ah, fine, er gege! Tomorrow, I will go to the juniors and surrender, I will expose my soft underbelly for their vicious claws. But you will have to take responsibility for making me feel better, ok?"

Lan Zhan nods. "It is better for the Cloud Recesses to be quiet again."

"Yes, you're right." Wei Wuxian puts his paper and inkstick aside.

"Other clans are better suited for this sort of behavior."

"Yes, yes, Lan Zhan, I get it, I -- " He stops and narrows his eyes. "Lan Zhan..."

"Sizhui and Jingyi are joining Sect Leader Jin and Ouyang Zizhen for a night hunt in a few days."

"Ah... ah!" Wei Wuxian scrambles to get out his paper again.

"Sect Leader Jiang will be chaperoning."

He frowns. "Lan Zhan, you're teasing me, you got my hopes up." But there's a particular quirk to Lan Zhan's lips that makes Wei Wuxian think he hasn't misread this unsubtle line of hints. Oh, of course. Lan Zhan has a different target in mind. His eyes dart meaningfully to Wei Wuxian's inkblock. "Sect Leader Jiang will travel through Yunping City on his way to Lanling, leaving tomorrow at sunrise..."

An hour later, Wei Wuxian has a full timeline and map, about twenty ideas and is putting off the rest of his planning until after he's shown Lan Zhan how deeply, truly grateful he is for his help.

[lesbian-octoling]

Hey guys, Xeno drama ((you know, about the banner and hate and whatnot)) below the cut if you don’t wanna see it!!! 

@mrkamabo--co Hello! I don’t know if you’re ever going to see this, but. It’s here.

First of all, yes, it’s me! lesbian-octoling, rhi-draws-things, whatever you wanna call me. I’m making this because I’ve heard through a friend of mine that I trust that you are a relatively good person, and while I don’t agree with everything you’ve done, I figured i might as well try to clear things up between us.

First off-

I’m sorry.

This is a 100% genuine, formal apology. I am sorry your medical issues are acting up, I understand completely. I had and almost identical use (albeit with chemical imbalances making me throw up, instead of breathing/heart issues, but both caused by stress), so I get it.

I’m not here to stress you further. In fact, I’m here to try and resolve the issue. I don’t want you to feel the way you do, and I don’t want to start more drama. I should know, i’ve been receiving nasty shit for a while. If you don’t want to read this- that’s okay! Don’t stress yourself, dude.

I just feel like this is important, because we never actually talked- and lack of communication often leads to violence.

But there are a few thing I wanted to address- first and foremost, the ‘xeno free zone’ banner, and the tags.

#‘you’re a coward cuz u wanna draw them with t^ddy’#i don’t do that in the first place lmao#and if you’re going to say:#'its actually scientifically accurate!’#nope it really isn’t #why?#why would squids/octopi evolve to have digigrades/muzzles/claws on their hands?#why would they look like goats with their eyes and muzzles?#they would have flat fish face!#have squid/octo hat heads!#like the third stage in their canon evolution!#exaggerate that if you want scientifically accurate squidlings/octolings/inklings!#otherwise.. yall just makin them into furries tbh#note: i have a surplus of fursonas#k peace

Ah, I hope you don’t mind me going off a bit, but I did want to say things!!!

Muzzles: Inkling beaks, IRL, are very long! they just look flat because.. well, squids are long! But if you put that into something shaped like a human head, they need a bit more room to stretch out.

Claws: they’re not actually claws, they’re hooks! Just like real deep-sea squids have hooks made of chitin that can retract back into their tentacles, which is why i made them like that. As you can see when they go back into heir squid forms, their arms and legs ARE just evolved tentacles!

Here’s a cool example of the hooks, as compared to some of my squid hands:

‘goat noses’: This is because… it’s not a nose! A real squid breathes through it’s siphon, which is one, large hole. That’s why their nose is like that- it’s not two nostrils, it’s one hole, but flattened down so it’s not just a big ol’ hole in their face. If it was, things might get into it, like dirt or bugs or.. i dunno.

Digigrades: admittedly, this is just because it’s fun, and theres no reason they shouldn’t. Any other similarities to cats is just… coincidental, really, as cats and squids have a lot of similarities (liking the sun, chasing lights, etc).

Eyes: Actually, this was a mistake. When i FIRST started getting into splatoon i was like ‘wait squids have horizontal pupils right’ and only found out later that no.. that’s octopi! But oh well, it was a bit late, eh? live and learn.

I’m not saying its fully scientifically accurate- hell, course it’s not! But its more biologically accurate than having them being made of ink. Mostly, I just think it’s fun, cus I’m a budding biologist and I think it’s cool to explore these concepts.

Ok! Thats all I gotta say. I just wanted a chance to explain myself, s’all! As for the banner itself… while it may have been joking in nature, I do think it was a bit rude. Kinda like swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest, yeah..? Like you said- “but yknow tumblr be tumblr, and i honestly expected This™”… you gotta watch out what you say sometimes. You could’ve made it more obvious that you were joking- putting ‘XENO FREE ZONE’ with bit red X’s and ‘feel free to reblog :)’ just has.. a very mean tone to it, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, regardless of your intentions. It really didn’t sound like a joke, to a lot of people, including me.

Though, maybe, we’re all just a bit wary- I’ve been receiving asks telling me to- quite literally- kill myself, multiple times, over this. I also know several friends who have gotten the same messages (a few of which don't even draw xeno, but simply because they are my friends). I think me (and other xeno artists, though I cannot speak for them) have a right to be wary, when we’re so used to being bashed. A lot of people are scared, and it doesn’t make what some people said right, I’m just… telling you why that massive backlash happened.

And by ‘massive backlash’…. if I’m being honest- and I don’t mean to make it sound trivial- a lot of the responses to those posts weren’t truly mean. Some people sent a clown meme, a lot of people responded with ‘why are you hating us, were just having fun’. A few were pretty mean, yes, but I could count them on one hand. These were light hearted in nature, and nothing like some of the truly nasty things that could’ve been said. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve received in my inbox…

I think a lot of this could’ve been avoided if your post right after had simply been an apology. Instead of playing the victim card, simply say ‘ah, that last post was a joke- i sincerely apologize, and I might’ve worded it poorly’. That’s it. And it could have been avoided if you said, in the tags ‘this is a joke post don't take it seriously’. But instead, you went on the criticize xeno aspects. Not saying you’re wrong, but pointing out why so many people took it the wrong way.

But.. the main thing I wanted to address was this post.

I.. can’t say I’m in the right, but I can’t say you are, either. I probably shouldn’t have made that post- but it was meant more as an off-hand joke. I didn’t mention you at all, as I didn’t want anyone to hate on you. It’s more of a running joke for my blog of ‘sexy tartar’, which is why it was funny enough that I brought it up.

#can’t feel safe#when i put an opinion out there#its easy.. to ignore a post yknow…? It’s also easy not to make a joke like that. Again- maybe you intended it as a joke, but it’s like one of those shitty april fools pranks where you tell somebody something bad happened. We got scared. Doesn’t make it right of us, but it doesn’t make it right of you, either.

But the ONLY thing I’m truly angry about- if you saying that ‘you, a minor, don’t feel safe because you’re being shat on by an adult’. The reason this makes me mad is because… I’m 18. Barely. And you’re 17. I’m… not even a full year older than you. I’m still in high school. The way you worded it made it sound like i’m a 32 year old getting off on sending hate to a 13 year old- and that’s not even close to the case. That is not cool, dude.

Anyway. Sorry about that, though I hope you can see why I’m.. unhappy with the wording. I’m trying to solve things here, not make them worse, ha…

And.. yes, I did block you. But not so you wouldn’t find out. You can still see my blog; i know this. I blocked you because I’ve been getting hate anons for the past few weeks, and I can’t be too careful with who I block. I’m tired of people telling me im ‘ruining the fandom’, so I tend to block at leisure, or when I have suspicion. And a big ‘ANTI XENO’ banner is reasonable suspicion, yes…?

Again, I apologize for that post, but i was not doing to to spite you, just because I found it funny. I didn’t contribute to the spreading of hate to you in any way- I am very anti-hate messaging, and very pro ‘block and ignore if you don’t like them’. Which is.. what I was trying to do, but I didn’t want to leave us on that sour note. I did not encourage anyone to ridicule you on your post, or send you any sort of messages and asks.The only people I complained to were my girlfriend and a select few close friends, who i KNOW would not participate in any sort of hate spreading.

I’m not asking you to be friends with me. I’m simply trying to clear off any misconceptions- I’m fully welcome to hearing what you have to say back. But…

All in all, I think the gist of what im trying to say is that we all made mistakes, and we should both own up to them. I’m very sorry about your heart condition- I sincerely, 100% hope you get better. And I’m hoping that by talking it out, we can clear things up and not let it stew..? I know that sometimes these things tend to eat at me until I fix them, and that is all I’m trying to do.

I’ve unblocked you for as long as it takes for us to resolve this issue, if you would like to move to DMs, or to discord. Either works. Or.. don’t respond at all, if you don’t want.

Have a nice night, and I hope you feel better!