Reposted by naila (labonno) 🇧🇩🍉🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
Just look at this li’l guy. I love how the shape of the brush is obviously a stiff circle, like the basic brush in a paint program. (It was probably, basically, a stick, dipped repeatedly in watery slip.) It’s easy to imagine and perform the set of strokes to draw himb.
![Excerpt from later Blue Horizon books' drafts, first draft:
“Oh, your family likes, um,” Fernando noticeably concentrated. “Whitish sea-green, right? I know you don’t have a family color, since you’re not like our…um…martial arts families, but I noticed you guys favor that really pale sea-green!”
“My dad likes us in that color,” Diego scoffed. “Um, I actually like blues more. Like your family, but…maybe lighter?”
“I have a lot of that,” Fernando laughed. “I can’t believe you indirectly told me your favorite color. Mine is—”
“Red,” Diego guessed.
“Pink,” Fernando said, smugly.
“Manly.” Diego was impressed.
“I know pink is considered a bit gory now.” Fernando pouted. “But I just like it. I’m aware a lot of Red mages still favor it. I do find it cute. Don’t you think it’s sort of cute, the paler variety? So soft. Pastel!”
“It is,” Diego said. “It’s sort of seen as corny amid Reds, and the Beloved’s Red made it funky, but it’s really adorable when other Gods’ Eyes and normies try to show off their support with it and other types of reddish tones. You obviously do.”
“I love my brother,” said Fernando. “He’s less annoying than Raj when he shuts up about the Laws. Well, I love you now, too, but like, romantically.”
“That’s crazy.” Diego chuckled.
“So you want a light blue?” Fernando hummed. “That’s pretty common in Pathra, actually. It’s annoying how Valerians see it as girlish. We should do something… Oh, don’t you like aquamarine? You don’t wear it much, but I see it in your stuff!”
Shyness took Diego.
“I do,” he whispered.
[End snippet.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltxe4576c5pez5nbfkylpqsp/bafkreigwzrrasrx5xr4zulnpyf7e6oq7s4j7r6f6ytbgnxfzhyy2urwk2i)
![A group of characters from Blue Horizon. From left to right: Beryl Andrada-Safir, an effeminate guy, and in front of him is a main character, Juan Aguilar-Herrera, who is buff and cheery as kids use his arms as monkey bars, including Fernando Chandrani-Rivera with his smiley t-shirt, a serious Raj Chandrani-Rivera and a cheerful Layla Chandrani. Below Raj and Layla are Antonio Chandrani-Rivera and Alejandro [Caldera-]Altaha as kids too, waiting their turn to swing on Juan's buff arms. Behind the quartet of kids is Alejandro's eldest brother Teo with a gentle expression toward the events; he's holding a picnic basket full of food like apples and possible wraps of some kind. The day is bright and blue. Beryl has Spectral Viridian eyes, Fernando and Teo have Spectral Gold eyes, Raj has Spectral Silver eyes, while Juan, Antonio and Alejandro have Spectral Red, and Layla has a Dual Spectral Red-Silver. However, Juan and Layla's eyes are dialed up to fuchsia.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltxe4576c5pez5nbfkylpqsp/bafkreicrrtk42ldwprgytqgwt5ekzbfbb4fne56dxddpeu7kvfyd2xp6sq)
![[Blue Horizon later books' first draft excerpt.]
“Um…” Antonio squinted. “No? Pubiers is like, about babies. And we don’t have ‘they.’”
Antonio Khan got this look like he was talking to a ten-year-old. “Okay… You can be a ‘they.’”
“We don’t have those,” said Antonio. “I’m second place in academics.”
Antonio Khan, he looked spooked.
Then he looked crushed.
“You don’t have those…? In the future?”
Antonio…
His Red fluxed. He decided to risk it.
Then he simply panicked. He blurted out, “Um, wait, I remember…! Um, long ago and far away, wait, Aojiangdae’s not that far away, umm, so long ago, my grandpas adopted kids! They gave them their magic. We have that magic! ‘Cause they gave them to us. They couldn’t have babies, and they adopted and gave magic… I remember ‘nonbinary!’ I forgot.”
Antonio Khan, he peered at him, and that brown gaze was too soft. “Yeah? Really? Your grandpa was nonbinary?”
“Yeah!” Antonio became determined. “Don’t worry! It wasn’t that long ago. Umm…actually, I was scared, but I-I-I’m a ‘they’ too! Like you, Antonio Khan!”
Antonio Khan stood. Antonio Chandrani realized…
He was surprisingly short. The older Antonio Chandranis were scary tall. Antonio Khan was about 5’7”. Nasir Hadid was even taller, about 6’4”.
“So you’re a ‘they?’” Antonio Khan murmured, crouching down at him. “That’s sweet. I’m glad.”
“Us kids,” said Antonio, excitedly now. “Us kids, we’ll change it! We-we’ll make more ‘they.’ Like you!”
“And you,” said Antonio Khan.
Antonio became determined to learn what a ‘they’ was. He’d tried asking Nasir Hadid serious adult things—he often became sad, peering down at him. Then he’d go back to reading, or wandering around the way he did.
That was when…
Antonio Khan-Gill, he did something that shocked him.
The All-Red situation.
[End snippet.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltxe4576c5pez5nbfkylpqsp/bafkreifkgwmzzuskzabdz4xno7dp2u5dvvgx4skvca7s3blemt2qwybboq)
![[Later Blue Horizon books' excerpt. First draft.]
Antonio Khan-Gill, he smiled beautifully. He was a beautiful young man. He was a ‘Latin.’ He was a ‘Desi,’ too…! It was short for Bangladeshi. All the adults in Pathra said.
He then threw his arms out—Antonio thought to become mists—then his arms grasped him like it comprehended them, mists.
Then Antonio Khan-Gill, this short teen, he—
He spun him around! Antonio Chandrani, he did scream. Then he simply spun.
“Oh, I love you small Antonios,” Antonio Khan-Gill hugged him. “You’re all so cute! I thought you, the 10-year-old, you’d run away from me like the 11-year-old and the 12-year-old constantly do. I’m so glad you stayed. I was worried.”
Antonio Chandrani-Rivera…
He’d been hugged by many adults by now. He sometimes panicked. He sometimes saw a dead man—the living one. The dead one. The living one. The dead one. The living one.
Antonio Chandrani-Rivera, he clung. The waterfalls, they stopped whispering. They usually did. It’d never gotten this scary.
Then he began crying. He cried…
Antonio Khan-Gill, he gasped and became tense. This strange, actually human witch…
He became unhappy. He sat down and began to rock him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Oh, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? It’s fine if you’re not a ‘they/them.’ You don’t have to be!”
“I’m scared!” Antonio sobbed. “My grandpa, I can’t see him anymore!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry…” Antonio Khan, he sounded just a little panicked. “Hey…big man, do you want to hear another secret? It’s a secret just for you. You don’t even have to keep it. You can tell him.”
Secrets… Antonio concentrated. He’d understand, this time…
[End snippet.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltxe4576c5pez5nbfkylpqsp/bafkreiakculsyyxrxeizwdb2nnobiiritg34fkj7bn6xzmsnbdnbsokl3q)
