acearohippo

[acearohippo]

🍇🎂

[acearohippo]

another jiujiu and a-ling for @spriteofmushrooms 💗

Jin Ling telling jiujiu ALL the hot baby gossip about his kindergarten class while Jiang Cheng cooks

jiujiu is convinced that hes going to ruin EVERYTHING if he doesnt add exactly one dash of salt. tell him hes doing so good!!! 🥺

(part 1 of jiujiu and a-ling the struggleverse)

[acearohippo]

[acearohippo]

First time doing animation

[acearohippo]

TIL that Gothic literature makes a distinction between “terror” and “horror.” Terror is the sense of dread and apprehension that precedes an experience, horror is the sense of revulsion after an experience.

via ift.tt

[acearohippo]

Okay, this post has been a long time coming.

Basically, there is a huge amount of misconceptions about liujiu and their history, and it's very frustrating to see in arguments about canon, so. I'm here to clear Liu-shidi's reputation and browbeat SJ with a newspaper (affectionate).

There is a whooping total of 4 liujiu interaction scenes in SVSSS. In chronological order:

The first meeting occurs at an inter-peak competition, where SJ hates LQG at first glance. LQG wins a sparring and has an air of "matter-of-fact arrogance" about him, which only strengthens SJ's dislike. What's interesting is that next SJ ambushes LQG after the sparring and "uses every means" to attack him, as recounted by Yue Qingyuan. Which does nothing to endear SJ to LQG and makes LQG very understandaby wary of SJ.

The second meeting occurs in a brothel. Backstory: SJ stumbles upon a Baizhan disciple named Ji Jue on the street, they have a quarrel, SJ beats and seriously injures Ji Jue, then goes to a brothel. LQG hears about it and rushes to "teach SJ a lesson". Interestingly, nowhere in the text is it mentioned that SJ is injured in any way after his scuffle with LQG, even though the fight has apparently taken quite a while and LQG is a way better fighter than SJ.

The well mission. SJ, LQG and SQH are assigned to deal with some evil spirits in a remote village. Spirits fly out of an old well, one of them attempts to attack LQG from behind, SJ sees it and attacks the spirit, but accidentally brushes over LQG's shoulder, which LQG mistakes for an attempt to kill him. SQH tries to clear the misunderstanding, but SJ threatens him into silence. Again, LQG and SJ come to blows, but no injuries are mentioned.

The disciple acceptance ceremony. SJ and YQY are watching the potential recruits, LQG arrives, has a brief but civil conversation with YQY, SJ intervenes, LQG insults him and leaves.

That's it, folks! That's literally every liujiu interaction in canon! Now with this out of the way, let me disprove some of those fanons I see in liujiu fics every damn time I dare to open one.

LQG did not mistakenly believe SJ to be a son of a wealthy family. Nowhere in the book does LQG ever comment on SJ's origin. This is a fanon from "The Grand Unified Theory of Shen Qingqiu", which is a great fic, don't get me wrong, but god did it mess with people's perception!

In the same vein, LQG never accused SJ of being lazy. Ever. That was QQQ.

LQG wasn't unreasonable to immediately assume SJ was trying to kill him during the well assignment. Think of what LQG knows about SJ at this point: SJ is willing to ambush someone because of entirely stupid and petty reasons like a lost sparring; SJ is perfectly willing to seriously injure his fellow disciple (see: Ji Jue); SJ is constantly threatening to kill LQG (mentioned in the brothel scene); SJ is not above using dirty tricks to achieve his ends. Yes, the suspicion made SJ feel bad, which is perfectly understandable (poor SJ was just trying to help!), but it wasn't entirely baseless. LQG's conclusion was based on SJ's prior behavior.

Speaking of SJ's dirty tricks: no, when people mentioned SJ's penchant for dishonest means, they weren't talking about harmless tricks like qiankun buttons. SQH insinuates in canon that SJ wouldn't be above shagging LQG with a poisoned knife in the middle of a sparring (Airplane extra, when he watches LQG spar with SY!SQQ), and Ji Jue, someone who's fought SJ personally, seems to agree.

LQG did not condemn SJ's womanizing and/or his visits to the brothel. The only times when LQG comments on SQQ's private life in canon have to do with LBH and bingqiu. To put it simply: LQG did not give a damn about SJ allegedly spending time with sex workers. Nor did LQG constantly stalk SJ to try and catch him in a brothel. Nor did LQG ever lecture SJ about sex being bad for his cultivation (that was YQY, but no one ever remembers this bit).

Actually, it can be inferred that most of the time liujiu tried to ignore each other when forced to be in each other's presence. They only interact when they cannot avoid it/when SJ does (or seems to do) something so shitty LQG cannot ignore it. Or when SJ deliberately attracts LQG's attention.

Conversely, LQG did not constantly pursue SJ demanding a sparring with him. Not ever. I have no idea where this particular fanon stems from.

LQG did not gossip about SJ's private life. It is never mentioned in the book; however, it is said that several Baizhan disciples knew of SJ visiting a pleasure house. Any of them could've spread the rumour; or hell, it could've been someone else who saw SJ entering the place at a later date. Or the brothel workers may have shared the story with their other clients. It's never clearly stated, but there's no reason to believe LQG specifically was the one responsible for spreading this rumour. For one, YQY promises SJ that LQG would keep quiet about their skirmish. Also, it just isn't in character for LQG to gossip.

Just... every time people write liujiu, they go out of their way to completely erase SJ's shitty behavior, blaming all of the bad blood between them on LQG "misunderstanding" the poor innocent SJ. Oh, if only LQG knew the truth, he'd immediately recognise the error of his ways!.. Except no, actually, it's not how it is at all. And I'm so tired of the people constantly mistaking fanons for canon.

#this explains the weird dissonance where lqg seems to not care about what people say #but somehow always care what people have to say about sj in fanfics #i always wondered about that #the scum villain's self-saving system #svsss #liujiu #liu qingge #shen jiu #but this clarification just makes the ship even better in my mind #and makes those fun headcanons about him surviving the pidw timeline and defending sj on martial brotherhood principles #all the more reasonable #gods i love liujiu #and i agree with op that sj isn't depicted as feral and toxic as he should be in these fics #i feel like there are two where everyone stays hating him but lqg is full ride or die and does not care that others think his man is scum #i need more fics of that

[acearohippo]

Thank you, MDZS JP for this Uncle-Nephew content. They know they can't separate the two. 🥺

[acearohippo]

i love you miserable old man

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Jin Ling when it's his Xiao-ShuShu who wakes him up instead of his beloved JiuJiu

[acearohippo]

[acearohippo]

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

[acearohippo]

[acearohippo]

How it feels logging into Tumblr late today...

[acearohippo]

Hmm, not a fan of any of these options. Third option is the best option, because really happiness for SJ would be agency over his body, reputation, and career (I cannot stress enough that SJ is FEMALE-CODED). Screw love, that's done jack for him in canon. Love played a major role in his downfall. He just needs men people to stop trying to control him.

One thing that I haven't quite been able to figure out about Shen Jiu's characterization is what exactly would make him happy (or as close to happy as he's capable of being). Going from orphaned slave to second-ranked peak lord sounds like a dream scenario, but he's still miserable.

What is it about his life that doesn't satisfy him? The fact that his colleagues and peers distrust and look down on him? The fact that his cultivation is stunted and others are stronger than him? The fact that he has no close connections, no people he feels he can trust? What's the key here?

#agency is the reason i ship sjxlqg the MOST #because any reconciliation between them always results in lqg supporting sj's decisions #WE 👏🏽 LOVE 👏🏽 AGENCY 👏🏽 #the hippo speaks #svsss #shen jiu #original shen qingqiu #scum villian self saving system

[acearohippo]

au where mu qing takes hua cheng's challenge, loses and is the only god to fullfill ghost's demands and give up his status (he does it with pride of course).

so he steps down, cuts his hair and vanishes for a couple of decades leaving feng xin his territory (the other god is mad and heartbroken again).

in his banishment he starts thinking about his life if he ever even wanted to be a god. his mother has been dead for years now and he doesn't have to worry about his income anymore so maybe starting over is not a bad thing?

(meanwhile hua cheng keeps following him displeased with how easily mu qing accepted his lose.)

[acearohippo]

Fuck it we back.

[acearohippo]

This is canon trust me.