#Vietnamese characters

[shiranuieditorial]

20 inspirational names for a super summer!

List summary: 新夏、夏向、夏涼、夏艷/夏艶、琉夏、夏樂、夏怡、夏悅、夏嬉、夏歡/夏懽、梨夏、夏梅、夏蓮、莽夏、青夏、勇夏、承夏、平夏、峰夏、and 夏緒！ (Keep reading ’til the end to discover their meanings, readings, pronunciations, guide to etymology and history, and more linguistic knowledge!)

Is it just me or has this summer been unnervingly chilling for us tropical islanders? 🌞🥶

Check out this summer-inspired name bank I’ve been working on for the past 5 months!

Each name was…

→ meticulously hand-picked like exotic cherries 🍒

→ carefully translated to the best of my ability 🉑

→ and then packed with a mini beginner’s guide to 夏 (the Han character/Chinese character for “summer”, used throughout the Sinosphere) 📖

→ which contains its standard readings in many languages: Mandarin Chinese, Dungan Tili, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Wu, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese! 🀄

(If you need info on any other topolect, dialect, or time-specific variant not mentioned here, just ask away! I’ll see what I can do for ya!)

👉🏼 An incredibly versatile character, it’s impossible to run out of given names containing/based on 夏!

The possibilities are endless, and the only limit is our imagination! 💡

👉🏼 If we visit the Wiktionary entry for 夏, we’ll see a whole lot more linguistic variants & historical hypotheses on this ancient grapheme dating back to 2070 BC, and even a reconstruction of its Middle Chinese & Old Chinese pronunciations based on recovered millennia-old scripts! 😱

👇🏼 Comment “Wiktionary” and I’ll send you the link to read further. It’s very interesting to read, whether you’re a curious beginner or a veteran Sinologist.

❓ QOTD 1: Which name stood out to you in particular? 🤔

❓ QOTD 2: Do you know what the difference is between “reading” and “pronunciation”? 🗣️

👇🏼 Also also also, let me know what you think of this list! 📜

Is it interesting enough? Are the tables mathematical enough? Are my font choices weird enough? Have I managed to convince you that I’m secretly an omniscient Taoist immortal from the 16th century BCE here to steal all the trees off your backyards, or should I try harder? If so, what other attempts at floor-length grocery lists should I make to satisfy your most honourable expectations?

Remember—your plants are at stake here! 🧚🏼‍♀️🌲🌳🌴

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix'

Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee

adventure

Asian fantasy

LGBTQIA

lesbian characters

mythology

pirates

queer books

romance

swashbuckling

ya fiction

My Review: 5 of 5 stars

At the farthest edge of what the westerners have historically branded "the opening of China," two young women discover the unmapped intersection of youth's uncultivated curiosity and the desperate proclivities of a dawdling adulthood. A CLASH OF STEEL begins painfully slow, but once all of the rightful pieces are in place, the novel's momentum churns forward with such unrelenting power that no amount of dramatic irony can outrun the book's satisfying conclusion.

Xiang's wistful gaze, from the rough mountains beyond her tiny river village, spy a curtain of distant ports and a mixed and matched fleet of merchant vessels. She lives in modest comfort, yes; and she has wont of little beyond the approval of her regularly absent mother, certainly; but what Xiang desires most is more. That is to say, the girl desires to stride the deck of a sea-worthy vessel, to taste and smell the vastness of a mercantile city a thousand times the size of her home tea shop, hear the myriad languages spoken by the myriad folks who sail the world's distant oceans. Xiang is an avid reader, but she wants to do more than read about adventure, she wants to experience it for herself (Xiang: "[W]ould I be satisfied merely listening to travelers' stories now that I've had a taste of the world?" page 273).

A chance trip to Canton, to visit her mother's center of business, enlightens Xiang to the possibility that she was born for more than being scolded by her tutor on lazy afternoons. Bandits running through alleys. Pirates and smugglers skulking the bay. Corrupt government officials absorbing bribes day-in and day-out. Trade for salt, fish, and more, are heavily tracked and regulated, but between the seams, the people of Canton, ephemeral, drift from one glimmering opportunity to the next, danger be damned.

The novel's opening act pivots grudgingly around the main character's misgivings for her simple, rural life, whereas the quickened pace of the book's later events makes for an effective contrast: life around narrow rivers and rice terraces versus life in the smoke-filled streets of a loud port city; life at a rural tea house with few visitors versus life among the raucous fools scratching for coin aboard patchwork ships. One has sympathy for readers who never made it past the first 80 pages.

A CLASH OF STEEL doesn't hit its pace until Xiang wields such opportunity by tagging along with her first new friend in ages, a pirate girl named Anh. Warm, brown skin. Wild hair. Talkative. Fearless.

Xiang's connection with Anh flares bright and hot, almost immediately, and the young woman is both enthralled and fearful of what that means. A CLASH OF STEEL nurtures and frames and scolds and builds back up Xiang and Anh's fledgling relationship, revealing, to those not previously aware, the author's skill in crafting queer characters worth believing in is nothing to worry about.

The lure of riches notwithstanding, boarding the Huyền Vũ and making for an island chain and a hidden hoard are the least of Xiang's troubles. After all, seeking to mend a fractured mother-daughter relationship by running away from home and pursuing a decades-old folktale thanks to an ancient, family relic? If that's not adventure, then what is?

A CLASH OF STEEL is a fun read for several reasons. Some such reasons pair well with the novel's reflection upon a long-eroded Age of Exploration. Others more to do with the book's structural arrangement and clever narrative positioning. What is the relationship between humanity and nature? What is humanity's relationship to itself when assimilation is believed inevitable? Why is the bond between government and the individual so heavily strained (stained) by greed? Relatedly, if there is no room for good people to conduct legitimate business, then does that mean freedom is only guaranteed through means of illegitimate business? (Xiang: "Who is more the thief: the government that preys on its people, or those who must become thieves in order to survive?" page 241)

Xiang stumbles into these questions and more while slowly transitioning from pampered countryside waif into a scraggly but sprightly shipmate with salt in her hair and a few splinters in her heels. The girl soon learns that an adventurous life is equally sought and earned.

Xiang's greatest education comes not from her trusted tutor, Master Feng Zhanli, who loves her like a daughter and protects her from the wrath of the girl's absent mother. Instead, Xiang learns kindness from the garrulous Captain Hoa Ngọc Hạnh; she learns steadfastness from shipmate Maheer, gentle and devout but indiscriminating; and she learns feminine ferocity from Ling Shan, a former courtier in the Forbidden City, who is now a skilled swordfighter whose tongue is a pit of vipers.

The book builds its tale of the modern imaginary on this foundation of furtive exploration. Readers of fairytales and folklore will recognize the author's exquisite use of a call to purpose, a lure from the quotidian, the foreshadowing of disappointment, the shifting standard for filial piety, and the introduction and subsequent destruction of a source of intrepid enlightenment. Tales of legendary pirate commanders? Stories about playful and distant relatives who only tease their benevolence? A CLASH OF STEEL is about leaving home on a treasure hunt, but it is also about unburying friendship and camaraderie from the embers of a discomfited life nobody truly asked for (Xiang: "I'm tired of others deciding my story for me," page 352).

❯ ❯ Book Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[grendel-menz]

the folk of the air series but south and south east asian

[nananarc]

Dungeon Lord Marcille . 2024

I'm sorry Marcille for the poor fashion taste of all your friends, we thought you were cool as hell.

Timelapse will open on May 15th for Patreon members. Commission Info on my website.

[rainboopz]

New chars! 🌜🎙️ A wannabe 70s singer dies and is lost in the afterlife till a demon offers him stardom in exchange for servitude. Little did he know this human's been CRAVING 👹 the spotlight- and now the biggest bolero monster musical show shakes up the spirit world! He's living the dream he damned deserved!!

Until there was a misstep, and he discovers a bygone dream he can't seem to let be.

closeups under the cut ✨

[zeroarmsgrani]

[oc art] chúc mừng năm mới!🐉 🧧

[mankadavi]

Travellers Families and Cast

[yenpondering]

like a day or so late for mermay but I wanted to try redesigning a mermaid I drew back in 2019 and also try my hand at some more designs!

[isagaiia]

part two of my bachelor redesigns ! (part one + three + bachelorettes)

alex and sebastian 🏈👾

[asian-character-of-the-day]

Day 101

Today’s Asian character is Nguyen-Nguyen Stevenson from F is For Family!

She is Vietnamese-American.

(I don’t know much about the show but the clips I’ve seen of her made me laugh so… IM SORRY BUT HER NAME IS SO FUNNY I CANT TAKE HER SERIOUSLY BC HER FIRST NAME IS NGUYEN-NGUYEN 😭 at first I thought her parents named her Nguyen with the top of her last name but ahahaha 😭)

[borealhao]

[absolutebl]

hey, do you know of any BL-s similar to A boss and a Babe? I don't mean plot wise or setting but a bl with a similar uke (Cher). I feel like I haven't seen much or at all BL-s with an uke that's such a crackhead, so vital, positive, non dramatic, up for anything, vocal about feelings and love, the one who also kinda pursues when it's needed, that pushes boundaries etc etc

Huh, you mean like a GGG uke? (good giving game)

There are LOTS of crackheads... seek ye Japan. But that goes real fast into cringe, like Secret Crush On You.

The GGG part is where we fall down. This is a very new take on the archetype. Also non-dramatic, I mean it's a BL drama so dramatic is kinda the point.

I'll take a stab!

crackhead

vital & positive (sunshine)

pursues when it's needed (switchy)

non dramatic (good)

vocal about feelings and love (giving)

up for anything, pushes boundaries (game)

Fits all 6 criteria (but in their own countries' style):

All the Liquors (Korea)

Mr Heart (Korea)

Ocean Likes Me (Korea)

Be Loved In House I Do (Taiwan)

Love Sick (Thailand - bet you didn't see that one coming)

And now some that do their best satisfying 4 ore more of the above requirements.

Thailand

Everyone is just really dramatic in Thai BL.

Coffee Melody (sides 1,2,4,5,6)

Ghost Host, Ghost House (2,3,4,5,6)

Great Men Academy (if you count it 2,2,3,6)

Ingredients (2,3,4,5,6)

KinnPorsche (1,2,3,5,6)

Love By Chance 2 (1,2,5,6)

Love In the Air (PayuRain 1,2,5,6)

Love in Translation (2,3,5,6)

Make A Wish (1,2,3,5,6)

My School President (2,3,5,6)

My Tee (1,2,3,5,6)

Secret Crush On You (1,2,3,5,6)

Why R U? (2nd couple 1,2,3,5,6)

Taiwan

Seme/uke is always weak, queerness is more authentic so roles less prescribed and campy

DNA Says Love You (sides 1,2,3,6)

Kiseki Dear to Me (sides 1,2,3,6)

Stay By My Side (1,2,35,6)

Korea

Seme/uke is pretty weak, little to no crackhead, and everything will be more reserved and muted.

Some More (2,3,4,5,6)

The Eighth Sense (2,3,4,5,6)

Behind Cut (2,4,6)

Jun & Jun (2,4,5,6)

Long Time No See (2,3,4,5,6) but also LIES

Our Boarding House (2,3,4,6)

Oh My Assistant (1,2,3,6)

Tasty Florida (2,3,4,5,6)

The Lover (2,3,4,6)

Tinted With You (2,3,4,6)

Unintentional Love Story (2,3,4,5,6)

Why R U? (2nd couple 1,2,5,6)

Japan

But the ones it does have it REALLY leans into.

Seven Days (2,3,4,5)

If It's With You (2,3,4,5,6)

Restart After Come Back Home (2,4,5,6)

Silhouette of Your Voice (1,2,4,6)

Takara & Amagi (1,2,3,5)

My Memory is shot but???

Like Love from China might work.

Most stuff from the Philippines first some if not all.

Vietnam's My Lascivious Boss and You Are My Boy satisfy soem criteria.

Might also be worth reading

List dated Mid Dec 2023, ongoing BLs not included. If it aired after that date you should add it to the comments or something.

[guy-in-a-dress]

Happy 40th anniversary to the most devastating scene of all time

[nananarc]

What I'm Wearing Today . 2024

A 3hr speed paint. It's cold out, it's almost Tết. I'm layering.

[rainboopz]

hughie and his mean babysitter 👹⚠️

[alienturnipp]

Nemi Soreiyuu's summer outfit for my friend (fellow Midheaven WOA dev)🌿