#ariaste

There I found @ariaste's Different for Vampires, which quickly became my very favorite IWTV fic, and I read it repeatedly during my TVC breaks. THEN their TVC (books only) fic, Daniel Molloy’s Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) started showing up, and I think I might love it even more than the other fic?

Both fics are funny, sweet, and the characters just shine in all the best ways. And I've read them both A BUNCH. And they've helped to break up some of the sloggier bits of TVC and push me through Anne's theological navel-gazing.

Now, here's where I get to be a really lucky fucker in fandom because during this time, I found out that @ariaste is a published author of queer novels that I can buy and hold in my hands and read! And I have done!

This is absolutely the same kind of hilariously endearing story with characters that charmed and hooked me immediately. It's a comedy, and an adventure, and an adorable queer romance, and there's cake! I loved the incredible fuck out of it, and I might have to buy a second copy because I loaned mine to a friend and now I miss it.

So, I'm back to The Vampire Chronicles now. But Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland sits close by as extra motivation because I'm gonna be on that as soon as Lestat gets his body back. I also have A Taste of Gold and Iron for later, and ngl, those two fics I mentioned have found permanent tabs in my browser as well.

the HOA will rue the day they crossed Meng Yao (chp. 1)

used to want you dead (now i only want you gone) by Ariaste (AO3) Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed – Mature – Lan Huan/Meg Yao, Lan Zhan/Wei Wuxian #Alternate Universe #Modern Setting #Frenemies to Friends #Established Relationship #xiyao and wangxian are both already married #Family Feels #Domestic Fluff #Family Bonding #Slice of Life #Discussions of Past Trauma #wei wuxian's canonical kinks #HOAverse

“It is not a coup,” Meng Yao says, which he has said at every weekly covert cheeseburger assignation since they began doing them. “A coup is, quote: a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government. Unquote.”

“The HOA counts as a governing body. Trying to take it over is a coup.”

***

Two gremlins, eating cheeseburgers in the car in a parking lot at 1am, five feet apart because they're not friends.

Part 1 of the Meng Yao vs. the Board of the Homeowner’s Association series (AO3)

Absolutely judge this book by its cover!!! It’s just as freaking beautiful and soft and lovely as the cover suggests!! It’s all fealty and reciprocal devotion and a love so pure it’ll worm its way into your brain and re-wire you!! All the side characters are also amazingly memorable! It takes place in a fictional Ottoman Empire-like kingdom in a queer-normative world where a third, gender-neutral pronoun is totally normal, and about a third of the characters are actually referred to by it. No one has issues with any kind of sexuality at all. It’s just such a beautiful world to be the backdrop of this absolutely addicting love story.

It also handles anxiety and perceptions - both of ourselves (the people we think we are and who we’re aiming to be) and that of other people (who we expect them to be and who they really are) - with nuance and care.

I read this first as an audiobook. But about a quarter of the way in, I knew I had to have a physical copy of the book and immediately ordered the hardcover. The book came in the next day after I finished the audiobook. And when I tell you I immediately picked up the gorgeous book and reread it in its entirety, I mean IMMEDIATELY!

I'm declaring it the week of the pamphlet bind, because this is the second of three I've got in my backlogged queue of fanbinds to share.

Sometimes, a vaguely ridiculous idea gets ahold of you and won't let go.

When I discovered that there were not one, but TWO short MDZS modern AU fic with the incredibly specific meet-cute premise of "character A encounters a swarm of bees, and character B is the beekeeper who rescues them," I decided I needed to bind them. Together. And they were both short, so a quick pamphlet bind was the perfect solution.

I think I did this two summers ago, and would probably do a bit better with the text placement on the cover now, but I stand behind all the bee theming in the typeset unreservedly.

There must be something about the Twin Jades of Lan that not one, but TWO authors looked at them and said, you know what? Beekeeper.

So here we have, both with awesome titles, Save the Bees (Ride a Beekeeper) by @ariaste and Covered in Bees by @scarlettohairdye.

Public domain images, cardstock cover, sewn with some orange crochet cotton, because god knows I have enough random thread around. To make up for the disreputable cookie sheet used for an atmospheric industrial space background in my last post, this one is photographed on the orange and yellow stripes of a rainbow plain-weave tablerunner I wove out of the accumulated scrap basket at the weavers' guild.

@ariaste I made fanart of Armand Bearing Witness to the 3D printer lolol.

I will not claim any particular skill at art but do you see The Vision

they don’t write transgender characters, period. and let me start with the fact that I (nonbinary) and my spouse (also nonbinary) have read EVERY book so I’m not talking out of my ass—there is a pattern. I’m a hater AND a scholar 🤓

read my review of Running Close to the Wind for an actual review and a good foundation to their writing quirks since I won’t touch on the sexualization of teens and bad writing in general here. and i also reviewed Ylfing on goodreads here (before i read any of their other works.)

in Choir of Lies (2019) they took a crack at a trans woman and made her predatory and creepy, and Some by Virtue Fall (2022) has a throwaway trans man who was lumped in with the women and treated as a woman (and there was an offhanded mention of a trans woman who (in canon!) had to leave the story to preemptively avoid being hate crimed by their society. I’m not making this up!) That’s the only 3 binary transgender characters they’ve ever written.

The rest of their books fixate intensely on cock, cock, and more cock and how yaoi = cock and and how woman = womb (I won’t even touch on the misogyny) and how pussy = woman’s parts (<quote!) It’s just the bioessentialism of it all. To the point that in Taste of Gold and Iron (2022) there’s some weird incest vibes as the protag (cis man) thinks on how his sister (womb haver) should be planning on getting pregnant again soon (SHE’S 3 MONTHS POSTPARTUM?) and by whom and how many men she should be getting knocked up by, since the more men women sleep with, the better their baby will be. I think they intended this to sound feminist, somehow.

And I know someone will say that they do a great job at nonbinary characters… do they? Is having Man, Woman and Weird liberating, or did we just reinvent the gender binary with an extra flavor? cool. I guess some people want the option to put an X on their passport instead of getting rid of the gender marker altogether. and what lies outside of that binary? (nothing :)) and when there is a character who seems to be not part of the gender binary (yay) you find out they come from a society with 1 binary gender, which they are! but don’t forget. they do have a pussy, but they own a lot of dildos, in case you were wondering how they’re having penetrative gay sex with men, for which you need a penis. I’m not exaggerating. All of this is stated on the page.

(and in canon there is a WHIFF of this character starting to explain their complicated relationship with the 1 gender binary (interesting! I want to read it!), but the protag cuts them off with ‘sorry I’m too stupid to understand. can we talk about something else?’ and the convo is dropped. presumably to avoid writing it. yay!)

also it’s interesting that intersex people in this world are assigned Gender 3 at birth (I only know this because they went out of their way to state this. For some reason.) hey, what does that mean? why are intersex babies assigned the ‘weird’ gender 3 category at BIRTH? and then why can you (presumably) transition to the Weird category as an adult? and why is Gender 3, the one for intersex people, also the one for asexuals? Is anyone else hearing this? it’s so cold and dark in here………

I wouldn't really care about their total lack of writing transgender characters if they didn’t CONSTANTLY bring up how they’re doing such #diversity win and how they’re really helping the community and how we should all be thankful for their diverse writing. Constantly. Sure, they want their fantasy world with 3 binary genders—whatever, your choice. But then to brag about how the queer community should be thankful for their total lack of transgender men and women and characters who identify OUTSIDE of the 3 gender binary? Who are living in this diverse world where everyone in fiction is so fixated on what genitalia you have? And don’t get it twisted—any they/them and çe/çir characters are side characters. protagonists are cis men. with cock. who only like other men, with cock.

Again, since this is the piss poor website: I’m not saying that nonbinary characters are not ‘trans enough’. my beef is with this specific author in particular, and how they—by definition!—will not write a character who is outside their 3 gender binary or transitions from gender A to gender B. and it’s weird that the three times they mentioned an explicit transgender character they were written… like that. and even the nonbinary gender 3 characters aren’t main characters! (And side note… all these worlds are like so insanely heteronormative? the only two gay men who seem to exist are the main couples. I guess there was a tradwife lesbian couple mentioned once, or something…) Write whatever the fuck you want, as poorly as you want, but I better not get talked down to about how these bioessentialist worlds are a blessed gift of representation to the LGBT community.

My partner asked them if their newest book will have any trans characters and they said ‘no :) but I’m nonbinary and my name is on the cover so it counts!’ And when they posted yet another ‘everyone be thankful I’m writing such genderqueer trans characters for you all’ and I (very politely!) asked ‘where? because the only trans woman you’ve written was predatory’ I was blocked without comment. Which leads me to believe they get that a lot, since they typically love to argue with haters. (Following this they went on a rant about how they don’t owe anyone anything and how rude it is to demand representation in THEIR books but like… if you’re not writing for me, a gay transgender reader, and you don’t want ME reading it, then who is your target audience? cishet fujoshis?)

and again. if they had a sensitivity reader or ANYONE to tell them hold up… maybe the bisexual men shouldn’t all be typecast as nasty whores…. There would be a glimmer of hope.