A Little Comic About Hands, Love, And Owning A Body That Was Not Your Own

a little comic about hands, love, and owning a body that was not your own

hi tumblr I'm back, it's been a while

I want to know how mxtx constructs her relationship dynamics. They aren't just tropes, archetypes, foils. They feel so full, especially in the ways fandom explores all the nuggets of detail sprinkled throughout canon (and the ways the adaptations add or explore more). And not just the (canon) romantic ones, but also family members and political counterparts. It feels like all the combinations are fleshed out, including implied out-of-scene developments that have creators of transformative works salivating. The relationship between Lan Xichen, Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue. My Qing and Feng Xin. Beefleaf. Shang Qinghua and the other peak lords. Pre-canon parent lives, the juniors, towns passed through, the people of the land. Dynamics aren't just push-pull, teacher-student, savior-saved, unstoppable-unmovable, caregiver-cared for, dom-sub, light-dark, runner-statue, etc etc etc. And then to provide reasons for why characters crave that dynamic, why they resist it, how some cave to what they want and need due to circumstance or relationship development, how some are never able to for similar reasons. The part of me that likes to tug and prod at that flow, feeling the angst, struggle, desire and love, has an ocean of content to play with. It's no wonder Wangxian is one of the most prolific ship tags, and I hope to see more for Hualian once (if 😩) more is adapted as animation or drama. (Unfortunately I'm sure SV will continue to be the neglected eldest child -- more/continued adaptations would help there too.) Creators are just so damn creative in the ways they play in this sandbox and I'm just happy to be here to enjoy it. 🥰

I want to know the story of the burial mounds. How did this place of great resentment come to be? Is the war framing wwx's first life just one of many, does it even make the list of the worst?

A mass grave that everyone knows about, the land barren and abandoned -- how much effort was put into cleansing and at the cost of whom? Where are the families of those buried there, descendents that know of those restless, resentful spirits left to fester?

Every interpretation of what wwx was exposed to, what he learned and lost, what he did to survive there makes me so feral. 3 months in hell. He knew one person couldn't do all that the Yiling Laozu was accused of, the unconsenting object of the masses' need to construct a boogeyman. But I think he came out of the burial mounds knowing well what a systemic force of greed and violence could accomplish.

(All this related to some chaotic thoughts about wwx & his empathy being his key characteristic -- not just his genius. As much as he was stripped, homicidal, starved, feral coming out of the mounds, it is his fundamental ability to connect and relate that saves his spirit over and over. I'm obsessed with him 😭.)

I think my favorite thing about 3zun is that all three of them are actively trying to make 3zun work, but because they all have completely different worldviews and circumstances, the harder they try the more they push each other away. It’s a microcosm of some of the themes of the novel and I love it