Insectoids: The Job of the Males

Chapter 49.1

Repetition

Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil

Cheng Zhaoci thinks this male fan of his is pretty interesting. He’s never revealed his gender, so the readers are generally assuming he’s a demi or shemale. Yet, the male is actually using honourifics when sending him messages.

It’s quite unheard of to hear such courtesy afforded by males to members of other sexes.

Cheng Zhaoci watches the three clips once more.

Technology really is quite marvellous here. At least, Cheng Zhaoci can’t find any unnatural artifacts, whether in the movements of the characters or the expressions, or even the way the fabric moves and flutters, and even the background.

[IWan: I’m still working on the landfill planet setting. I actually wanted to go take a look around a real one, but the pirates have been really active lately, so it’s probably better I don’t]
[BombInMyPants: You don’t need to! It’s way too dangerous. This is already amazing! Do you have other published work I could check out?] Cheng Zhaoci is quite interested in the offer now, seeing how lifelike this great programmer is able to make his characters.

[IWan: I do, check these out]

He sends a few more clips after that.

Cheng Zhaoci watches them carefully. He knows nothing about how insectoids go about modelling polygons or making 3D animation, but if this male is able to do this much alone? Then it can at least be said that the insectoids have a much easier time doing such work than in his past life.

What’s unexpected, though, is that this time, there are only shemales in these clips. All sorts of them, with different hair styles, but there is one common aspect throughout – they all look unruly and defiant. Their eyes can send shivers down insectoids’ spines.

[BombInMyPants: Do you have a preference in shemales like them?]
[IWan: I do. wild and combative shemales are the treasure of insectoids. you might not understand, but they are very much my type of insectoid!]

He does. Of course he does. Cheng Zhaoci knows that feeling all too well. Ah, is this the feeling of having someone share your obscure interests?

[BombInMyPants: If you don’t mind, can I ask how old you are?]
[IWan: 21. I’m an adult male. grade B]

The male then also reveals that his name is Evan, and he is unmarried, for he hasn’t met the shemale of his dreams yet – apparently, the little mute shemale in ‘In a Tiny Flicker’ was one such possibility for him, even in spite of his usual preference in appearance. About as soon as he discovered his newfound love, however, Cheng Zhaoci had the shemale die.

Evan doesn’t live on the Capital planet, but there was a time when he seriously contemplated confronting BombInMyPants on the Capital planet directly, until he realised he didn’t know who BombIn was in real life either, and gave up.

Around the time Cheng Zhaoci’s new comic was getting published was when Evan moved on from his sadness, and even tried to recreate the plot in the story through his technical expertise.

He’s gone through many revisions already, according to him. He was unhappy with the performance and emotions and all the expressive stuff. When he’s finally got the characters looking how he wanted, he came to BombIn with it in tow.

Cheng Zhaoci thinks it’s quite plausible, but he first needs to consult with experts if he doesn’t want to get tangled up in legal minutiae.

He tells Evan he’s very interested in working with him, but he needs to ask for expert opinion first regarding the cooperation. He’ll reply in a few days.

Evan sounds happy Cheng Zhaoci didn’t reject him outright.

Afterwards, Cheng Zhaoci contacts his editor. He could have asked Lu Yao for help, given his necessarily large amount of contacts in his line of work as a Grand Marshal, but he’s also become busier lately, which Cheng Zhaoci can see, in spite of his claims to the contrary.

A Grand Marshal in name is still a Grand Marshal, after all.

Cheng Zhaoci’s editor is clearly competent in his work as well, telling Cheng Zhaoci to hand the contact detail over to him. They will get the contract sorted and everything before showing Cheng Zhaoci the final draft for approval.

So Cheng Zhaoci happily hands that bit of work over to work on the details for his next comic.

It’s not like he can do anything about the Jin Yue-Sun Wushe issue, or the underlying social dichotomy running through everything.

Even if the undercover Sun Wushe seemed to have some personal interest in him, it wasn’t enough, evidently, to deter him from what he has set out to do.
Never mind the mentally ill Jin Yue.

They are actually engaged in warfare in the frontline, while Cheng Zhaoci is, meaning no offence, an underage country bumpkin of a male.

Even if he had the ability to influence opinions with the power of his penstroke, or even trigger some sort of cultural renaissance, but with an ongoing war, it’s not like he could create some grandiose, tearjerking epic that’s just gonna recreate the Christmas truce between both sides, and achieve world peace or some insane bollocks.

It would turn this into a whole feel-good fantasy story. Something quite beyond the creative potential of the rather materialistic and pragmatic insectoids.

What Cheng Zhaoci can do, therefore, is not prancing about outside. If he did, and end up caught by space pirates, he’d only end up as a bargaining chip against Wei Zhuo.

If that happened, Cheng Zhaoci thinks he’d rather die of shame.

Time to stay home. The turtling ones always win in the end, if only because everyone else has died to infighting.

Cheng Zhaoci has even refrained from face-to-face meetings with the Zhou brothers now. They’ve moved all the work online in spite of their earlier reluctance.

Later, Xiao Ji and He Huaijian are already going back to school. Cheng Zhaoci… is bored.

He does miss Wei Zhuo for that matter, but because of the ongoing fighting, he can only call him about once every week, and never for long.

Sometimes, it feels like Cheng Zhaoci has only said a thing or two before the latest developments are prying Wei Zhuo away from the holodeck.

So for the sake of having something to do, Cheng Zhaoci is practically drawing every single moment he isn’t eating, sleeping or video-calling. It meant the third arc of his comic came out much more quickly than his second arc did.

After that, he immediately prances onto his next project, leaving his readers to their own devices.

That midnight, with his comic having been fully released and completed for more than half a day, Cheng Zhaoci finally checks the comments before sleep.

Now the comment section is just filled with the cry emoji. It’s a comment barrage all the same, but at least, it isn’t visually torturous like those unsettling comments urging him to update more often with the solid blue background and yellow characters.

Many of the insectoids are also giving the male and demi protagonists hugs.

They also want to love or be loved like them!

There are even insectoids who mention that they’ve once been in a similar relationship, but they did not end happily like the comic did.

Scrolling down, comments asking for the sweet everyday lives of the protagonists thereafter to be depicted are rising through the ranks. Cheng Zhaoci replies to the most liked ones, telling them this comic is officially over here, and there will be no extras.