#and i had figured that there was a cultural difference there

[bastardlybonkers]

re: ur post about toshiro and laios - i humbly offer this panel of laios completely misunderstanding the way izutsumi eats isn't an 'eastern thing', cuz hes not used to it

a good panel to bring up 👆 laios is a great example of a well meaning white person who ends up making micro agressions and racist generalizations without realizing because hes ignorant and very underexposed to any cultures other than his own. i mean hell both he and falin are extremely racist about 'the mountain people'

and much like theyre racist towards the nomadic people, kabru is racist towards kobolds due to him conflating them with monsters. tbh i think every character in dunmeshi exhibits some sort of racial bias at least once, which can be hard for fans to deal with, as i think most people are unused to racism being one of the major character flaws in their favs. unfortunately, when writing a story that is implied to take place in an earlier time period, or hell even just writing a story period, you cant really ignore racism as part of your worldbuilding, especially if, like kui, youre using it to make a point.

tldr everyone in dunmeshi is kinda racist in one way or another and it is a deliberate choice on kuis part, because she wanted to portray both real-world tensions through a fantasy lense and flesh out her own world with realistic tensions that would build in its history. if you are ignoring that the characters are racist then you are missing the point

also, im saying all this as a white person myself, so please Please do not think that im the only person talking about this. there are many poc, both in the replies/tags of my post and in posts of their own, who have made similar points to me and brought up things i havent touched on and you should absolutely read their takes as well

[prince-liest]

I’m reading Witch King by Martha Wells, and now that I have read more than one (1) series by this author, I have been suddenly brained with a two-by-four sharpied over with “realizing that I really enjoy novels by Martha Wells because they live in the specific niche created by the intersection of casually and thoroughly queer casts and non-romance storylines”

I am as ever a sucker for non-human main characters struggling with their very human feelings, which is why I jumped on Witch King the moment I saw “the author of Murderbot wrote another book with a main character that’s non-human,” but I live in this dichotomy where I can really enjoy reading queer romances but I don’t really identify with non-ace characters (which is not actually something I figured out how to differentiate until I was Last Week Years Old). so there are lots of books out there that I enjoy reading but it’s comparatively rare for me to read something that feels like it was written For Me and Martha Wells does that very well

anyway, give me more ace it-pronouns human-spliced robot main characters and people-eating demons who consider rank over gender when finding new bodies to inhabit

[laventadorn]

This is half about danmei, which isn't the main or even tertiary purpose of this blog, BUT also half about writing in general, so here I stick it.

I've been reading danmei since 2020 but I've really struggled to write anything for it. If i measure success by just getting something going, the fic I'm currently working on is the most "successful" venture I've had. It took me ages to even crank out the opening scenes. Despite longing to write in the New Hyperfixation for a long time, I just couldn't grok it.

Initially I thought it was unfamiliarity with the background of the culture the media was based in. With HP, for example, there is a whole lot of English culture that's easily accessible to me, and I studied British literature in school for years. Obviously this isn't the same thing as being English, but it gave me enough of a background to fake it that once when i applied to a graduate program in England, they thought I was actually English.

But with china, there is so much I don't understand and can't access in the same way, so I thought perhaps that was the problem.

But now I'm thinking it's more about the literary approach.

The tradition I learned to write in is one of realism. I often cite Jane Austen as my favorite author; she was a writer of realism: people, situations, and style are all as close to reality as possible. She was actually one of the most hard-line realist writers of the time, even meticulously accurate in minutiae such as how long it took to travel between cities, or when you could reasonably expect to receive a letter. The way she renders character is also heavily based in the psychology of real people, especially in the latter half of her career. And I love the psychology of character. Nothing interests me more as a reader or a writer. It's what I use as a foundation for writing: how to render people and their emotional responses within a tradition of realism, so that they feel (as much as possible, given that i also love fantasy) like genuine human beings.

But this is not, in my experience of it, what Chinese BL is about.

Now, the first of my caveats is that plenty of western media isn't, either (though fandom tends to be obsessed with it to the point of mania, where a character's psychology is microscopically detailed, in particular their responses to trauma). But western media often maintains a veneer of it -- my favorite marvel movie is Captain America: the Winter Soldier, which features Steve feeling purposeless and empty in a world he no longer fits in. (And then his internal conflict is symbolically made external with the reappearance of his dearest friend, whose mind has been wiped to forget him.) That whole movie revolves around Steve's psychology. And that's a big budget blockbuster movie chock full of punchy, blow-uppy action scenes. It still finds time to make a character feel depressed and lost.

(They then did absolutely nothing interesting with it, but you know. They had a single moment.)

To a certain extent, if western media is character based, it has to explore the characters' mental state, and tries to do so in a way that enlightens both the audience and the character, opening up their dark parts and forcing them to change. We probably have Joseph Campbell to thank for a lot of this; his Hero's Journey was modeled heavily on the works of Carl Jung, the psychologist. In fact, Carl Jung was hugely influential in English-speaking literary criticism of the 1970's. (I say "English speaking" because that's the only field I'm familiar with.) To give you the biggest example I know of, Ursula K. le Guin's phenomenal Earthsea trilogy is steeped in Jungian psychology, no book more so than the opening novel, A Wizard of Earthsea. The climax of that novel blew my mind, by the way.

My second caveat is this: it's not that the patterns of Chinese BL don't have character work, or that they aren't concerned with the character's interiority. With my fixation on character, if those things were entirely absent, I wouldn't be reading these books. It's more that the media tradition of hyper-focus on the characters' mental state, the delicate unfolding of their psychology, is not what drives the media. The characters do suffer, and they have feelings and desires, but they are often preternaturally strong-willed and able to withstand horrific trauma while still maintaining their sense of self.

(Two characters really come to mind. One is Chang Geng from Sha Po Lang, whose "mother" repeatedly puts him through such intense physical and psychological abuse in his childhood that you wonder how anyone could possibly stay sane. But he's also been injected with a magical poison that will drive him insane, and gives him bloody nightmares every night, and requires him to drink blood -- you get the idea. The other is Gu Mang from Yuwu: Remnants of Filth, who goes through things that are just mind-bogglingly Yiiiikes. Each of them feels the pain, but realism isn't where we're trying to arrive at, because it would be impossible for a real person to hold it together under the things they endured. But neither of them is supposed to be like a real person. Chang Geng, Gu Mang, is supposed to be more.)

Nothing is always. To use the novel I'm writing for as an obvious example toward some measure of realism, Xie Lian spends Book 4 being deeply traumatized; it's part of his character journey and essential to the plot. But his character psychology is still not based in realism. It wasn't designed to be. MXTX herself said in her afterword for TGCF that neither Hua Cheng nor Xie Lian were remotely like real people, because they weren't supposed to be. They were supposed to be larger than life, more than mere existence.

So when I am puttering around with my Psychology of the Individual writing tool, I get a bit wrong-footed because the entire way that I approach writing does not seamlessly settle into this brave new frontier. How can I realistically explore the emotions and mind of people who are not written to be like real people at all? That's what's truly been stumping me.

[bnhaobservation]

Thank you a lot for contributing to the discussion!

And yes, undoubtedly Quirk counseling is very likely based on the idea of teaching children to show the expected Tatemae, because, according to Japanese people, ‘Deru kui ha utareru’ (出る杭は打たれる “The nail that sticks out must be hammered down”) but in the whole fallout of Quirk counseling there's more than Himiko just behaving in an 'inappropriate way' and needing to learn which is the correct way to act, in fact it ends up being judged a curse by Heteromorphs as well, so I'll say it's also based on racistic pregiudices and the idea of 'impure blood'.

We see that Joki Joki doesn't manage to do something inappropriate with his Quirk, his 'sin' which lead him to being imprisoned is his Quirk was different than the one of his family.

Quirk discrimination started, after all when Quirk owner were accused of being a subbranch of humanity and the 'Meta' people ended up being considered freaks.

My guess is that the Quirk counseling of pre-AFO defeat is still tied to this, to the fact that not only it has to push people to drop 'undesirable' behaviours, but that he pressures who's different by using the idea if they don't conform they're subhumans, freaks, and where it's just impossible to conform (Shouji can't really cut his extra arms for example, nor Shuuichi can not look reptilian) they place in them the idea they are to blame.

Uraraka's new Quirk counseling might be expanded to include also children who instead 'fit the norm', so as to teach them to be more accepting, that the 'tatemae' they've to show toward who's different isn't one that pushes them to run away in disgust but one that accepts the differences.

Also Ochako's words previously implied that Himiko's Quirk wasn't a freak one because since she could share blood with people, she could help with transfusions, like how Eri's Quirk isn't a freak one (even though her mother thought so) because she could heal people, so it can be that the idea is that now Quirk counseling would focus on the positivity of different Quirks as well, not just tell kids they've to hide what's different because it doesn't conform but that their Quirk can do something good if used in this and this way so as to help them find a way to conform not by suppressing themselves but by using their differences positively (it's Himiko's speech at the end, how she could have lived better if she had known she could take and give blood, instead than being told solely she couldn't take it and being left unaware she could give it).

However all of the above are just speculations.

The truth is the series don't explain how exactly Quirk counseling was administered (if to all the class together or to each child in private), if children who had problems with their Quirk could have a level of privacy or if said problems were tossed in the open with a negative judgement attached (completely possible as in Japanese schools teachers often saw bullying as a way to force kids to correct their behaviour) and so on... nor it explains which exactly is the reform Uraraka brought beyond 'expanding' it.

So yes, the fact that western readers might not know about honne and tatemae or how the counseling work in Japan, nor be familiar with ideas of outcasts like eta and hinin makes undoubtedly harder to figure out how Quirk counseling work... but the fact remains that the whole thing with Quirk counseling was pretty vague, as it got mentioned a total of 6 times in the manga (Chap 22, 165, 226, 370, 392 and 460) often without going in deep with it, the last time just praising its expansion without really explaining how this would suddently make it work.

As I said in my post having more cultural knowledge can surely help, but I still think the story would have benefitted of more expansion/development on this side since it's apparently one of the important improvements... but like the whole Heteromorph situation instead it ended up being mostly sidelined so it ended up feeling less impactful... though, of course, that's just me. Again thank you for the contribute!

There something I don’t really get: Uraraka said to have expanded quirk counseling along with her group, but wasn’t that one of the factors that sent Toga spiraling: counseling only be used to push people with certain quirks to be “normal”? I agree on the surface level it’s a noble cause and the closest we got to specific actions being taken by the characters helping to fix society, but if it’s just expanded on and not reformed wouldn’t it just push people like toga feel excluded again since nothing is actually changed in the system? I don’t remember, but did Toga tell Uraraka her time in quirk counseling?

Let's start in reverse.

No, Himiko didn't tell Uraraka about her time with Quirk counseling. If Uraraka figured it out that it was the people in Quirk counseling that tolkd Himiko to stop grinning, kudos to her.

There's to say Curious knew Himiko went to Quirk counseling, so Uraraka might have also discovered about it later. It would be nice if Uraraka tried to learn more about Himiko even after her death.

Now... what's Quirkc counseling and what's wrong with it?

According to Curious:

CURIOUS '“Kosei” COUNSELING', jita rikai no yugami o kyōseishi shakaisei no suri awase o hodokosu jōsō kyōiku (read: PROGRAM). Mochiron, kanpekina PROGRAM de wa naishi, kojinsa o yori tsuyoku kanjite shimau to iu mondai o kakaete imasu. Chi o nomi henshin suru, umaretsuki motsu sono inō ni yotte anata wa “chi” ni tsuyoi kyōmi o hikareru yō ni natta. Shikashi shin no fukō wa “akogare” to iu dareshimo ga daku futsū no kanjō. Chi to akogare kamiatte shimatta nitsu no yōso wa tōtei shakai ni ukeire rareru MONO de wa nakatta. Dakara, anata wa FUTA o shita. Jishin o yokuatsu shi kamen o tsukutta.' キュリオス「『〝個性〟カウンセリング』、自他理解の歪みを矯正し社会���の擦り合わせを施す情操教育（プログラム）。もちろん、完璧なプログラムでは無いし、個人差をより強く感じてしまうという問題を抱えています。血を飲み変身する、生まれつき持つその異能によってあなたは〝血〟に強い興味を引かれるようになった。しかし真の不幸は〝憧れ〟という誰しもが抱く普通の感情。血と憧れ噛み合ってしまった２つの要素は到底社会に受け入れられるモノではなかった。だから、あなたはフタをした。自信を抑圧し仮面を作った。」 Curious "Quirk counseling, it's an emotional education (read: program) to correct distortions in self-understanding and others, and to adjust for socialization. Of course, it's not a perfect program, and it has the problem of making individual differences even more apparent. Your innate ability to transform by drinking blood has made you very interested in "blood". However, your true misfortune is "admiration", a normal emotion that anyone can have. The two elements that go together, blood and admiration, were never going to be accepted by society. So you put a lid on it. You suppressed your confidence and made a mask."

Basically the purpose of Quirk counseling is to help people harmoniously cope with their Quirk and society... but the downside of Quirk counseling is it doesn't really work toward having people accept themselves and be accepted by society, but just tries to remove whatever undesirable trait by suppressing it.

In Himiko's case they told her to stop acting 'abnormal'. I don't know how they handle Heteromorphs but the Heteromorphs have a bone to pick with Quirk counseling as they can't really hide/suppress their appearance.

Now... how expanding it might help something that doesn't work?

It can be that the whole expanding was a typing mistake, early on in chap 22 it was implied all the kids in elementary school receive Quirk counseling, so what does it mean to expand it if all the kids have access to it when they turn 6?

Or it can be that 'expanding' refers to expanding the resources put into Quirk counseling. If more people work at it with more time they might figure out which problems it has and help the children better.

In fact if few resources are put in the program, of course the program will rush to a quick and easy fix that will often not work in the long run. However, if more resources are put in it, people might put more efforts in helping the kids.

Said all this, Quirk counseling was really not well expanded or explained in the story, and mostly tossed in.

It might make sense for Japanese readers as Japanese schools have a counseling program (it seems schools in USA also have it but their own is different) and it turned out this Japanese counseling program needs reform so Japanese readers might see the Quirk counseling program as based on the counseling program of their schools, think it work the same and guess it also have the same problems.

For who's not Japanese, especially if they don't come with a school with a counseling program, the whole thing feels like something Horikoshi tossed in, left it mostly unexplained and generally showed it was bad/poorly working.

We don't see value in it because the story hardly showed us it had value (with Himiko it ruined her, with the Masegaki kids it didn't work, with the Heteromorphs it made them feel worse) so an ending that says 'yay, let's expand it' feels like they want to expand something that makes more harm that good out of nowhere... but again, this might be because we miss the cultural context in which said program is meant to be read.

Still, I really wish Horikoshi had developed it more because while it had potential, it mostly went untapped so it lost it's potential when it got mentioned again at the end of the story.

Thank you for your ask! I love to talk about BNHA! I hope my reply was somewhat of some help!

[danieyells]

Do you think methods of exorcism and laying spirits to rest would have to differ depending on the spirit's origin? Or would it depend more on where the act is taking place than where the spirit is from?

Like Zenji covers his face around purifying incense and covers his ears when Haku plays his flute to lay the childrens' spirits to rest, but would non-Japanese methods still be a threat to him?

Knowing him he wouldn't wanna risk it, but I'm imagining Hotarubi going on a mission thinking they're dealing with a Japanese spirit and Haku's like okay I'll put it to rest and it doesn't work. . .because the spirit is from another culture entirely. At most it's put off for a bit but it comes back because it hasn't been given proper peace or something.

[vv-ispy]

Amos' bow lore translation thoughts

I could be taking the idiom too literally with my struggling chinese but gives the impression Deca refused to listen as opposed to couldn't understand

The young man, elf/sprit, and knight are all specified to be nameless — why does no one have names? ????

Chinese — "scaled the towering spire, and challenged the eccentric lord within the winds"

[trash-bin-ary]

Man, apparently 6000 years ago people thought the earth was made 6000 years ago… that seems like such a long time ago and now we think the earth was made 4.5 billion years ago. Do you think in 4.5 billion years an alien or something will find our studies and go wow like I am now

[fabdante]

lately i've been on a comically intensive quest to recreate my grandmothers rice pilaf

the dilemma being my grandma died when i was in elementary school and i cannot ask her questions

[dykefever]

i think ... it is time to start writing some of the new book... scary

[ei-mugi]

one time i was talking to my american online friends about stuff and i was like "haha yeah people always say i look ambiguously european but cant place what i am specifically" and they were like "i dont think europeans have a look though." what do you mean. you dont believe different ethnic features exist...?

[blujayonthewing]

a slightly annoying thing about playing dnd for Me, Personally is that I do think it'd be fun to play some kind of thief, but rogues are pretty obviously the best suited for that, and I'm so annoyed on principle that 5e automatically assumes your rogue Must Be some kind of criminal that I stubbornly refuse to build a rogue who steals shit

[izzy-b-hands]

gdocs has apparently decided it no longer wants profanity, and is suggesting the replacement of 'ship' for every time i use 'shit' in this draft (thus far only twice, but we're early on and no one's had reason to swear more yet lmao)

Which is whatever (horrifying and weird that a word processor is trying to keep me from swearing, not a thing I had on my Future Bullshit Bingo Card), but I don't know how it anticipates I'll be able to resolve their suggested version of the current line 'throwing Stede's ship (sp. shit) overboard'

Honestly, if they could manage to throw the ship overboard while being on it is a new fic idea in and of itself.

[philsmeatylegss]

There is nothing to being a mentally ill 14 year old fan of shane dawson in the 2015-2018 era. That man travelled to a town absolutely devastated by the 2018 forest fire, people who lost absolutely everything, and just turned to the camera and was like “a laser in space is the reason for this. The government did it.” And you would just be like yep. Checks out.

[airenyah]

now that i've turned thai drama into my bachelor thesis, the only question left is: how to turn thai drama into my master's thesis

[fictionkin-culture-is]

fictionkin culture is having no idea if you kin a character or not because it feels different than your other kins and very very separated from you (to the point where you can call out the terrible outdated jokes and comments the writers gave the character-- and maybe the weird feeling of wrongness you get when you see them means you didn't say/do those things in canon-- and generally talk about them like they're just a favorite character) but you're pretty sure they've given you your first ever mem and the way you feel about them doesn't match with any of your usual feelings about characters and your voice keeps switching to one like theirs and maybe, just maybe, the anger you feel on behalf of another character from that source who's constantly mistreated isn't just the normal anger, because it's protective like how you feel when non-fictional people you care about are mistreated.... but even if you did know what was going on, you wouldn't be sure about telling anyone because you still want others to see the character as separate from you-- which might just be because of the aforementioned jokes-- and while you were typing this the Maybe I Am started increasing so you're just going to hit send now and continue the crisis

Fictionkin culture is!

[starlooove]

A lot of y’all see Miles as “one of the good ones” and it shows