foxwell

Finally, all 5. Aolie being the latest and final addition!

Now, I struggled with his design for some time. First, how to even approach it! Because, for the four I had designed first, this was ‘human’ clothing. Earthly clothing. Now, Lielie is royalty, even though was banished. Being both beautiful creatures, too— a dragon and a white horse, it’s really lovely.

I knew only two things I wanted to do for his design— firstly, 云肩, the cloud collar. Second, a ponytail jsjs. What is royalty without long hair?

For some background information, I have known JTTW for as long as I have been learning Mandarin— since I was around 5 or 6 years old. That isn’t to put me any higher than anyone else, but this was my first exposure.

Like many, my love for it has re-enlightened when the Black Myth: Wukong game came out, because it was a media I already knew so much about. Interaction wise, I solely kept to myself— i didnt even know there was a huge fandom about it because I never sought it out.

When i finished reading the novel in Chinese and watching the 86 series, I began to create fanart. If you know me, I liked the pairing of Xuanzang and Wukong, or any other rendition containing the two. My pixiv and XHS only had feed of these two anyway, so I always consumed videos with them both.


So I drew art of them, not in any romantic matter at all, but with the proper tags the ship would have onto tumblr.

What did I get introduced with? Hate comments. But not only that, they all came from the LMK fandom. I know and have met so many nice people in the LMK fandom, but they all happened to only consume LMK these commenters, and there is a usual pattern of many fans not ever reading the actual novels and accepting a lot of what happens in the show to be canonical to the novel. Besides the point, ever since I started to post more and more of the pair, I’ve gotten hate comments and many dms on TikTok when I began posting there, too.

It’s easy to say to just look away, Ignore or block. I guess blocking is unknown to most people. I try to mind my own business, but it gets to a point where a lot of these and people I can’t ignore.

With this, and people not liking how I drew some characters from certain adaptations, I decided to create my own designs mixing historical and novel context into them, and being inspired from many saiyuuki aspects that i combined to make my own personal designs. All of them are incredibly special to me— I’ve had many tell me just how much they love them! Some even have drawn fanart of them for me! I love that! I love that people love my illustrations!

But, when people begin to trace and take credit for what I’ve made— illustrations I’ve literally posted speedpaints for— it hurts. It’s insulting. I know the people who trace as usually young children, but it enstills into me even more how messy of a fandom this is, one that as far as i can see is mostly dominated by children. If not that, people who act like children.

So maybe what I am here to say is, while not leaving the fandom, I do know I’m falling out of it and i want to minimize the amount of interactions I have with others in this fandom. Simply I am an artist just floating in the space that is JTTW artists, but since day 1 i have had nothing but issues.