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atelier-dayz · 4 years

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The Conception and History of AtaLao

This is just a post for me to ramble on about how Ata and Lao (and Asha but he’s like 1/2 not an OC) got started as OCs and recount some of their history leading up to their roles in Under the Desert Sky. So for the one or two of you interested in reading this:

(GIF from awhiteshirt)

It’s long and convoluted so everything is under the ‘read more’ link.

Otherwise, just carry on scrolling through your dash! 8D

The Beginning

To talk about the start of AtaLao, I first need to talk (briefly) about Rogue One and The Lost Bladesman.

So I watched Rogue One and fell deep into Chirrut/Baze. That of course meant watching movies that Donnie Yen (DY) and Jiang Wen (JW) were in, which included The Lost Bladesman.

The Lost Bladesman was set during China’s Three Kingdoms period and starred DY as Guan Yu (GY) and JW as Cao Cao (CC). And lemme just say, in this movie (and in several other Romance of the Three Kingdoms adaptations, including at least one of the Dynasty Warriors games), CC is HELLA THIRSTY for GY. Which kicked off an interest in CC/GY and led me and two friends to evocates’ phenomenal Romance of the Three Kingdoms/The Lost Bladesman series a guide to (dis)honouring your deities which had an interesting approach to A/B/O.

Between that fic series and the many Hong Kong triad films and old “classic” HK films we watched, my friends and I ended up writing an A/B/O HK Triad AU in which CC was the head of a recently resurrected triad trying to protect/build up their home-city, while GY was one of the few good cops in a (obviously) corrupt system.

Anyways, getting to the AtaLao part...

On the left is General Zhang Liao, who acts as CC’s right-hand man in The Lost Bladesman. So naturally, he became CC’s second-in-command in our Triad AU! And look! He is, in fact, Asha! 8D Hence why I say Asha technically is and isn’t an OC LOL

As our Triad AU grew bigger, we added three “elders” to CC’s triad, people who had been important members of the triad before its collapse (due to the police) and were pulled back out of hiding when CC resurrected the triad. One of them, we decided, would be Elder (Ata) Zhang, Asha’s father. (Which was how CC also met Asha.) Elder Zhang had been The Accountant for the triad pre-collapse, knew where all the money in the triad was and went, highly trusted and held in high esteem. He was never arrested by the police, though they did pull him into interrogation once with...not great results for them. (Keeping this PG with minimal violence LOL I can talk about this another time if anyone is interested.)

I, on a whim, decided Elder Zhang’s facecast would be...

Tony Leung because it’s Tony Leung.

CC had his work cut out convincing Elder Zhang and Asha to support his bid for lead of the triad. *nods*

But what happened to Elder Zhang’s mate? Asha’s other parent? (Lao?)

(Aside: Andy Lau as his facecast because I LOVE HIM. And he and Tony Leung have SUCH AMAZING CHEMISTRY and ALL THE FODDER for me to use for inspiration, but I’ll stop myself here before I pic spam.)

WELL.

He died when Asha was about 5 or 6. He was shot and killed by the police while he and Ata were out on a date under suspicion of being a triad member. (”He has the face of a gangster,” they said.) The irony is, he is actually a normal civilian, a low-level architect, and has nothing to do with the triad other than being Ata’s husband.

Thus, by the time our AU took place, Lao hadn’t been present for...over 30 years and was only rarely referenced as a near mythical figure. (;﹏;)

So there we have the beginnings of AtaLao.

Their backstory makes me incredibly sad all the time. Especially when I think about their childhood/courtship and their dreams and plans for their future. I have lots of art drawn, content made, and thousands of words written for them so just say the word and I’ll share LOL

Proper AtaLao

What do I mean by ‘proper’ AtaLao? Well, when we were working on the Triad AU, none of the characters outside of the canon characters GY, CC, etc had names; we just abbreviated actors’ names. (Asha was just called Zhang. Ata was Elder Zhang. Lao was AL.)

Sooo that brings me back to Rogue One and....

The Ascension of the Lord of Imwe *jazz hands*

With so much inspiration material thanks to the movies DY and JW were in (and because I’m a martial arts nut), I started writing a Chirrut/Baze epic wuxia AU titled the above. It involved Chirrut inheriting the title of Lord (Baze as his right-hand / retainer), a power struggle between households to gain/hold the favor of the Emperor, and the Imwe household working to prove the murder of Chirrut’s father. (It is not posted anywhere. Don’t think it’ll ever see the light of day, but it exists. LOL)

Since the story involved such a huge cast, I thought, why not pull in Zhang to help Baze with security. And if I’m gonna bring in Zhang, I should bring in Ata and Lao! And give them a happy ending. ;u;

And as it turned out, Ata worked perfectly to serve as a parallel for Chirrut (and AtaLao for Chirrut/Baze).

(And this part, you’ll notice, I took to fill in his backstory in Under the Desert Sky.) Ata Zhang was the firstborn son of a prominent family, but he was born mute (a reference to an...incident in Triad AU) and treated poorly because of it. He would have been selected to inherit the family title, but was passed over for his “normal” younger brother. He took over the family’s bookkeeping (a reference to his role as The Accountant), and later, bowed to their wishes to an arranged marriage, from which he got Asha.

(Chirrut is the firstborn son of the Imwe family, fully expected not to inherit the title because of his originally sickly constitution and failing eyesight. To the surprise and consternation of many, he did in fact inherit the title.)

As for Lao, he was an orphan taken in by the Zhang family and initially raised to be a servant, before they switched him to security. He met Ata when they were tiny children, and he accidentally found Ata crying over the way people were treating him. Lao ended up promising to always protect Ata, and eventually becomes Ata’s personal bodyguard.

Please know there’s a LOT of PINING, and longing looks, and knowing they have feelings for each other but never acting on them, and then there’s Ata’s marriage, and baby Asha imprinting like a duckling on Lao, and-- aaaaaaaaah (　ﾟДﾟ)＜!!!!!!!!!!!

Eventually though, as I reference in Under the Desert Sky, Ata’s wife leaves, causing a scandal, and the family takes their displeasure out on Asha, which is the last straw for Ata. He takes Asha and leaves, but of course Lao goes with him. They finally work things out, and when we see them in the fic, they’re an old(ish) married couple who joined the Imwe household along with Asha to protect Ata from his younger brother, who is trying to assasinate him to secure his leadership in the family.

That is AtaLao.

(Please look at this picture of them that my dear friend Kei / kannibal on here and twitter drew for me and that has been my phone wallpaper ever since. ♡ฅ(ᐤˊ꒳ฅˋᐤ♪))

And since they already were in a fic with Chirrut and Baze, I figured, why not include them in Under the Desert Sky, an actual SW divergent AU and not just something wildly AU LOL And it works out perfectly as a pseud-parallel(?) with Ata as a Guardian, Lao as a Mando vs Obi as a Jedi, Jango the Mando. d(￣◇￣)b

Other Existing Iterations of AtaLao

I will keep this brief in the form of bullet points:

Infernal Affairs AU - After watching Infernal Affairs, I had to, had to write a mash up of it and our Triad AU. In it, Ata is still an accountant for the Triad, but was planted by the police. Lao is the mole the triad places among the police. Ata and Lao have a sort of missed connection history when they meet in the fic. I do want to finish it someday because I love what I have written so far. Maybe for the zine I’m hypothetically making one day...

In addition to Triad AU, we also ended up creating an epic high fantasy/Three Kingdoms AU and made two additional variations on top of it. The Main AU involved Lao as a High Priest and healer who ends up mentoring one of the Emperors’ daughters in the healing arts, while Ata is a major in the Emperor’s army who ends up leading a lot of supernatural investigations alongside Lao.

Modern AU is a urban fantasy version of the high fantasy AUs, with everyone in similar roles, just updated for the modern age.

AAAAND THAT’S IT. I’ll do a post on AtaLao in Under the Desert Sky sometimes since I know their backstory won’t be much of a focus in the fic. :)

PS I ended up making a little diagram to make sense of the AUs that ended up popping up in what order and from what influence. Not sure it’s actually helpful to anyone but here is it:

#miya rambles #atalao #my ocs #long post #probably not of interest to most people so just carry on 8D #I could yell about them all day #under the desert sky

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