#an asian ghost story

[baankhunya]

An Asian Ghost Story (dir. Bo Wang)

[pyrotechnicarus]

I'm like this 🤏 close to making a Grindr, setting my location to Butte,MT, and putting "Asian trans men pls interact" in my bio

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, from the series One Hundred Ghost Stories by Katsushika Hokusai (1831-32)

[keystonepublishing]

The House of Aunts by Zen Cho

Well, it's been a while since I updated, and not for nothing. The fasting month has arrived and much of my weekend energy is preoccupied elsewhere. Also, there are several longfics that are currently WIP, full completion uncertain.

So imagine my feelings as they got slammed against the wall by this: The House of Aunts by the Malaysian-born Zen Cho. An original vampire fiction that is set in Malaysia, uses traditional Malaysian monsters die Dracula, and deals with issues that hit close to home for anyone living in this part of the world, such as overbearing parental figures, unspoken religious and ethnic boundaries, and familial shame.

Since the story is Malaysian at heart, I decided to use Malaysian pictures and themes.

The book cover is actually made from drawing paper, printed with the image of a rubber plantation to evoke the story's setting. The front side has a glued-on image of a frangipani flower - the flower of the undead in Malaysian stories — surrounded by Baba Nyonya tilework — the Baba being Chinese Malaysians who settled and intermarried with locals.

The printed endapapers threw me off. I wanted to have a tilework or frangipani motif, but none of the free internet sources came up with anything distinctive. I did eventually find a peculiar color gradient that reminds me of twilight, considered the time when Malaysian monsters strike the most.

The Malaysian motifs continue at the title page, where I used Baba Nyonya tilework and Malay woodcraft motifs to frame the title. Same thing too with the copyright page — believe it or not, I actually intended that part to be minimalist! But one curious placement of images led to another and soon, I was looking up different websites to find the right Malaysian decorative features to bedight the logos!

The story is divided into three parts, and I also wanted the headers to be minimalist. Something of that won out here more, as I decided to use plumerias to highlight the 'undead' parts of the story and the greyscale tilework/woodwork to highlight the human connections of the main character, whether they were broken or not.

This bind took me less than a week and it was actually refreshing to get my hands busy again. Full rights to the story goes to Zen Cho, who really deserves all the awards for writing a monster tale that hits at so many themes, it's quintessentially Malaysian!

[kowai-araene]

Kwaidan (1964) by Masaki Kobayashi - 3h3m

☆this is an anthology who adapts four famous folk tales of japanese ghost stories in beautiful and original cinematography☆

[the-cricket-chirps]

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北京, Oiwa (Oiwa-san), from the series "One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)" 1831-32 [top left]

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北育, Kohada Koheiji, from the series "One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)" 1831-32 [top right]

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北新, The Laughing Demoness (Warai Hannya), from the series "One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)" 1831-32 [below left]

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北新, The Mansion of the Plates (Sara yashiki), from the series "One Hundred Ghost Tales (Hyaku monogatari)" 1831-32 [below right]

[bleuskais]

Ryan:

Shane: *white judgement*

.

Ryan:

~

We Investigated The Hinsdale House • Ghost Files Debrief (~31m55s)

[ohnoitsthebat]

I was super excited to receive awesome books for Christmas. As some of you know, Kiki's Delivery Service and Howl's Moving Castle are two of my fave Studio Ghibli movies, so it was awesome to receive the books they were based on for Christmas. I also got an awesome collection of Asian Ghost Short Stories.

[spacespore]

HI TUMBLRR it’s me

[miralyk]

tldr for now (i'm currently too busy to draw "au explanation" art but i do want to get to that when i can!):

"ghosts in the machine" isn't really an au, they’re just goofy doodles me (viet kieu) or my friend (mainlander chinese) drew for each other of us being "haunted" by whoever's our blorbos or ""art muses"",, moreso inside joke doodles of ours we're sharing with people online, basically (i only made up the au title and tag bc people asked about these doodles more, thus it happened for organization,, but moreso bc i don’t want to be annoying and want to give people the ability to blacklist this LMAO)

sometimes we draw blorbos as supernatural angels/demons/monsters/etc! it's not really for a lore reason, since again, these aren't really "au" drawings,, it's just bc we joke that they're haunting us like hungry ghosts or clingy ancestral spirits and want to have fun drawing them in different ways.

desmond and alex are drawn a shoulder angel/devil for me bc my friend and i have joked about "guardian angel protection"-like stuff that happened to me recently like surviving a car crash unharmed, they're just the two blorbos most associated w me and the associations just felt like they fit

in lieu of the previous bullet point, the assassin brotherhood are sometimes drawn as ghosts, specifically as desmond's ancestral spirits (think like disney's adaptation of mulan); the joke is they're still acting like desperate hungry ghosts begging me to worship/venerate them like drawing fanart of them 😭

i have considered drawing the ""ancestral spirits/hungry ghosts"" assassins to have more unique mythical forms like drawing altair/ezio/connor/edward like the vietnamese four holy beasts though! again, it's not really for a "lore reason" but just rule of cool and having fun, being self-indulgent drawing asian cultural stuff, etc

all of this at the end of the day is stuff that originated from two asian artists talking and joking about our days sometimes including asian superstition, something that's just a part of our lives,, hope all this makes sense LMAO

[elliepassmore]

If I Have to Be Haunted review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: portal fantasy, ghost stories, family expectations, rivals to lovers

I was definitely looking forward to reading this book when it arrived, but I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. It's a nice, light read if you're in the mood for a medium-stakes spooky adventure. I really liked that we got to know more about ghost talking as well as the supernatural world in this book as a whole. I'm definitely intrigued about the possibility of a sequel!

It was interesting to see how Cara dealt with her ghost speaking powers. Her family knows about them, but no one else is allowed to know, which means she has to deal with seeing ghosts around her town and not reacting to them. I think Sun did a good job showing how Cara was adept at ignoring ghosts while also still showing the strain it put on Cara and her non-familial (and, frankly, familial) relationships. I also really loved the idea of her getting to have a relationship with her grandmother because she can visit as a ghost.

There's definitely a lot going on in this book between Cara's ghost talking, her mother's dislike of it, and Zach being killed and turned into a ghost, without adding in the additional background hints of a grander plot with the chaos snake (I cannot remember it's actual name, lol) and Cara's and Zach's grandmothers' pasts. I think it all worked though since everything feeds back into the main plot and, to me, it felt pretty obvious how everything connected.

As mentioned, I like how Cara's ghost talking is portrayed and how we get to see both the nicer and less nice sides of it. Cara definitely feels like a teenager and, unusually, I actually liked that. There were a couple moments when it felt over the top, but by and large I liked the way she was portrayed when talking with her friends and mom. Cara ends up having to deal with a lot of heavy stuff pretty quickly in this book, what with finding a classmate dead and then having to break a curse to resurrect him and what not. I think she handles everything pretty well, all things considered, and she really comes into herself over the course of the book, despite some setbacks.

Zach was definitely annoying when he was introduced, but considering the obvious rivals-to-lovers setup, I didn't immediately dislike him. As predicted, Zach ends up being both sweeter and less obnoxious of a person once in private and dealing with the supernatural adventure. He's actually pretty funny and I enjoyed some of his comebacks when he and Cara argued. I also think his protective streak is obvious and it's clear he cares for other people. I also liked the glimpses we got into his backstory and getting to know a little bit about his family dynamics since we know so much about Cara's.

The last really 'main' character is Brittanie. I wasn't really a fan of her at first and honestly I found her to be a bit obnoxious. However, she definitely grew on me and by the end I liked her and am hoping to see more of her in future books. Like Cara, she can see ghosts, but unlike Cara, she didn't come about that gift naturally. She ends up coming along on their adventure because of her own family supernatural issues and a desire to prove herself to the rest of her family, who are ghost hunters. I'm actually kind of hoping that book 2 focuses on Brittanie and her family because I desperately want to know more about them!

I absolutely love the little friend group that Cara creates from her adventure. It was nice to see her and Zach getting along better (and of course the requisite romantic tension). I also ended up really liking Brittanie's character more and am hoping she shows up for more adventures in book 2. The three of them together are hilarious.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and think it's a nice low key ghost story/paranormal adventure. I liked the characters and the magic of the world and am looking forward to the sequel.

[spookcataloger]

Korean Spooks (2016)

[real-hot-grl-shi]

let’s talk about ghost stories

That anime is the most funniest shit I have ever saw in my life BRO IT HAD ME CRACKING UP IN SCIENCE CLASS I CANNOT IT IS SO UNDERRATED ITS SO GOOD THAT IM EVEN MAKING OCS OFF OF THE CHARACTERS 💀💀

tw: suggestive text for the last picture 🥲

Theyre so ugly looking though 💀💀💀

IM TRYING TO DRAW MEN IM FINALLY STARTING TO 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[alethiometry]

cw nancy drew episode where george gets possessed by the ghost of the murder victim and her mother who lives above a laundromat has to exorcise her using *~*~ancient chinese rituals~*~* is the funniest fucking hour of television on planet earth

[di-glossia]

Got to see Dear Evan Hansen live tonight for the first time and the chokehold this musical has on me.

[the-cricket-chirps]

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

(From) Thirty-six Ghosts

1890