#i never in a million years had this on my bingo card for 2023

[weemssapphic]

Fanfiction Masterlist ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

masterlists:

Larissa Weems Masterlist

Brienne of Tarth Masterlist

Jane Murdstone Masterlist

Miranda Hilmarson Masterlist

Jan Stevens Masterlist

Captain Phasma Masterlist

Lucifer Morningstar Masterlist

*all fics are cross-posted on ao3, unless otherwise noted*

rules:

REQUESTS CLOSED

i will write for any gwendoline christie character

currently only taking x reader requests

i will not write smut for characters under 18 and i will not write student/teacher relationships

requests may (will) take me a while as i do work full time and deal with chronic illness, on top of being a perfectionist. life do be like that, and i apologize if it takes me a while to write your story! i hope they are worth the wait though <3

if i refuse a request for whatever reason i will try to contact you directly or post about it if you're on anon so you may seek out another writer

i will usually default to fem!reader so if you'd prefer nb!reader, kindly specify :) smut will be written with female anatomy as the default as it's what i'm comfortable with, but let me know if you have preferences for me to work around or that i can accommodate!! <3 (also as far as kinks go)

Join my taglist!

[naniskys]

hi!! gmmtv anon again :)

it feels like they’re trying to catch up with all of their delayed stuff, which is good for them and for us ig. they’re already filming two of the announced shows, and phuwin said they are gonna start filming we are pretty soon - they have three q’s for wednesday club left and filming for we are should start soonish after he’s done with that. also, the interest has already been filmed i think. same goes for my precious which is apparently just a longer version of the movie from what i’ve gathered.

and i just saw that they dropped the wednesday club trailer which is supposed to start airing at the beginning of november (sidenote: i love how they air two eps a week for a lot of their het shows lmao). 23.5 is definitely gonna air in 2024 but we already knew that. cooking crush and last twilight might take over the slote of dangerous romance and only friends. so that would be another two unaired gmm23 shows out of the way.

pls fk also had me fooled. mostly bc they said they were gonna go on stage together and i mean they didn’t lie but damn was i disappointed when it was only for school rangers and the LOL announcement lol.

pond definitely said he was gonna focus on school next year, but idk about joong. i would love for him to do at least another show, preferably with dunk 🤡, since i don’t think he’ll play a huge part in ploy’s yearbook and his arc looks to be a adoptive siblings falling in love with each other story which i’m personally not a fan of.

i’m also very bad at predicitions but i think it’s mostly because i’m heavily biased when it comes to my faves 😭.

oh reddit is on another level fr. i saw the jossgawin rumor and was like oh that would be fun but never in a million years would i have expected them to actually pair them upx and don’t even get me started on the greatinn thing bc i read that post and was like 👁️👄👁️ when i was done

helloo :)

okay when u put it like that, it seems that they're not going too bad for scheduling so far (i'm so glad). wednesday club !!! absolute missed opportunity to not be airing it on wednesdays smh

also i find it so funny that taynew offgun got 2 new shows when their 2023 ones haven't even aired yet 😂�� gmm rlly said 💲capitalism💲, they know there's a guaranteed audience there so they went for it lmao

WAIT WHAT i did not know it was a stepsiblings story 😭😭 i've seen plenty of that in taiwan, was not expecting gmm to go there hajskdjf. i definitely want more joongdunk, but i also wanna see joong in another het role because he was great in the warp effect (also i just like seeing people outside of their established cps :)) also joylada gang show when?? i wanna see the 4 of them act together so bad 😩😩 it could be the worst show ever and i'd STILL tune in

also its interesting that there were so many rookies cast in shows this time around, i don't think it's usually this many?

that's so real about ur favs tho, if u ask me to make predictions about any het series i will NOT have a clue lmao

honestly half convinced someone on reddit works at gmm at this point, i'm gonna lurk on there for a bit before the next part of announcements and i bet there'll be a guaranteed bingo on my bingo card 😆

[halfseoulco]

Celebrating Mixed Asian Day: A reflection

Published Saturday, September 16th, 2023 — In 2020, the U.S. census recorded 33.8 million people who identify as multiracial, accounting for 10.2% of the population. With this number having more than tripled from what was documented in 2010, it has quickly become clear that more than ever, we need spaces where multiracial people can connect with others like them and celebrate both their own uniqueness and the uniqueness of their experiences.

While many "official" months have been established as periods during which certain groups are acknowledged and celebrated, there are still groups who have unequal access to certain spaces or are being left out of spaces altogether. With so many people existing in the in-between, we've long outgrown the binary approach to race; and the need for more literature on multiraciality and more representation for multiracial people is growing as quickly as the population itself.

Mixed Asian Day

Today, while the main event is being hosted in New York, Mixed Asian Media is inviting people who identify as mixed Asian to celebrate their diverse heritage and bring their own perspectives to our collective narrative, regardless of their ability to attend the event in conjunction with their third annual Mixed Asian Media Fest or their location.

It brings me more joy and comfort than I can express to know that MAM is using their platform to provide a space so that mixed Asians can have a voice in the cultural and racial landscape of the world we live in. The more that we can make ourselves seen and heard, the more representation we can secure for those growing up who have never seen anyone in media who looks like them.

Growing Up Mixed Asian

I think that a lot of the work that has gone into becoming secure in my own identity has happened within the last two or three years. Growing up was not without its own handful of uncomfortable experiences and feelings that I wasn't emotionally mature enough to articulate, but I had a very different view of myself until around the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit; and it forced me to reevaluate what I thought I knew about myself and how the information I had had shaped my identity.

My parents divorced when I was very young so I have no idea if they even had a plan for how they were going to raise a biracial child; as it happened, I only saw my dad on weekends, so my mom had the most opportunity to raise me with Korean culture, traditions, and values. It's not that I forgot that I was also Nicaraguan, it's more that I had no point of reference for what it even meant to be Nicaraguan. My dad rarely ever spoke about Nicaragua—and he never spoke to me in Spanish, although he spoke Spanish in front of me. With knowledge of my heritage but no idea of how I was supposed to go about my life with that knowledge in hand, I simply spent a lot of time being frustrated about how people treated me and not knowing how to process any of it in a healthy, productive way. I tried existing without having to explain myself to anyone, which worked for a little while. The other kids in my classes all throughout elementary school never said anything to me, at least not to my face, maybe because my mom was a teacher at the school—had been their teacher in kindergarten. But as I got older and other people around me got older and they started piecing together what they knew about race and appearances, it became more difficult to get away with simply existing.

I think this is largely due to the fact that most monoracial people don't realize the privilege they have in their monoraciality, and it shows in the way they speak to multiracial people. On our bingo cards, we have wonderful little squares that are cornerstones of the multiracial experience, including everyone's favorite question, "What are you?" or "Where are you from?", backhanded compliments ("That's why you're so pretty!"), and everyone's second favorite question, "Which half do you identify more with?" Sometimes you don't even realize that the backhanded compliments were backhanded compliments and then, like me, you end up being angry about something someone said to you several years ago. (I also ended up being angry about a lot of terminology that didn't bother me before, like "exotic"; and I stopped referring to myself as "half Korean and half Nicaraguan" in favor of the term "biracial". There are other terms that are embraced by other mixed race communities but I never really latched onto any of them. "Halfie", quite frankly, feels derogatory and "hapa" in its original context doesn't apply.)

Most of the time, though, you're just really angry because it's none of anyone else's business what your ethnicity pie chart looks like. It's your pie, after all. Why should anyone else care what it looks like?

Needless to say, I had a lot of things to sort through as I got older, including how I felt about Asian people and how I felt about Hispanic people. Having grown up in predominantly Asian neighborhoods, I always felt welcomed there, but because the Korean genetics won out in terms of my appearance, I had no shortage of experiences in other environments that were racist at worst and ignorant at best.

As a kid going to school in downtown LA where the student population was incredibly diverse, there were times when I wanted to tell the Hispanic kids making fun of me on the shared playground that I was one of them just so that they would stop—but kids aren't usually having conversations about race and appearances. They're just being kids, but the memories stuck, as they often do; and as I continued to exist in predominantly Asian spaces, I subconsciously distanced myself from my Hispanic heritage and any possibility of having a community with other Hispanic people—something I've only recently been able to acknowledge.

My dad was worried that I hated Hispanic people, or maybe even that I hated being Hispanic—something that I should've realized when I got what's called a magic straight perm, a semi-permanent hair straightening solution, for the second time when I was nineteen. Honestly, while it was much easier to run a brush through my hair during that time, sitting at the salon for four hours was not fun. I have what some people might call an overabundance of hair, and it's very thick, which meant that the Korean lady who had been doing my hair for almost my entire life had to treat my hair twice with the straightening product in order to get it to take. The magic perm was supposed to last six to eight months but maybe my curls were too powerful because I had to constantly straighten my ends in order to maintain it; and I ended up damaging so much of my hair that after about a year, I cut it short and got a perm to bring my curls back. My hair was so dry and undefined for ages that when I finally brought it back to life, I decided that I would never straighten my hair again—until I got my hair cut at a Vietnamese hair salon in 2020 and they straightened my hair before cutting it. I was so angry that I refused to go back there, even though they had done an excellent job with my haircut.

The hair has been a touchy subject for a while, partly because people always want to touch it but also because it's the one thing that throws everyone off when they look at me and try to reconcile what they know about Asians and their appearances. It took almost frying my entire head of hair for me to appreciate it, even though my mom has been perming her hair almost my entire life so that she could have hair like me.

The other main catalyst for my shift in perspective was a recent set of updated results from AncestryDNA. When I was young, my mom had told me the story of how my grandfather, who came from a long line of "pureblooded" Spaniards, married my grandmother, who is Nicaraguan, Italian, and indigenous, and upset his entire family. I spent most of my life thinking that my Italian heritage was about an eighth of my makeup—until my AncestryDNA results updated for the sixth or seventh time and came back showing that Italian only accounted for 2% while Nicaraguan and Spanish accounted for 19% and 17%, respectively. The change in percentage for my Spanish DNA really threw me for a loop because, you know, colonization; and that was something else I had to wrap my head around because Nicaraguans themselves are the result of the Spanish mixing with the indigenous people in what is now known as Nicaragua.

It's all rather crazy.

I'll admit that I don't know much about Nicaraguan culture, mostly because my dad says there's not much to know every time I ask him, but I have a huge affection and appreciation for Hispanic and Latin American cultures in a very general sense. I still don't speak Spanish, even though I can read it and understand it on a very basic level; and the food has always been what makes me feel the most connected. I think I've had tamales made in so many different ways by people from different countries and I really, really love Peruvian food. I also find meaningful connection through art—music in particular—and I watched Encanto at least once or twice a week every week for about a year following its release, just because I saw so much of my own family in the Madrigals, including my own role represented by Isabela and Luisa. But just because I've embraced my Hispanic culture more doesn't mean that I still don't feel out of place when my dad leaves me by myself in the middle of the produce section at Northgate market or when the owner of a clothing store in downtown LA thought I was a family friend instead of my dad's daughter. I've had people at parties that were thrown at my dad's house talk about me in Spanish right in front of me as if I wasn't there—which I understood perfectly, even if I couldn't snap back. Whenever I go out with my dad. his wife, and my half-sister—who is full Hispanic since her mom is Colombian—I also feel like they're looking at me or that they think I'm adopted. Honestly, it makes me feel pretty terrible.

It's something I haven't been able to move on from completely but I'm actively trying to put those negative experiences aside so that I can focus on how very proud I am of being Nicaraguan and Korean rather than in spite of being Korean.

On the opposite end, I actually discovered later in my twenties that Asian people also have some not-so-nice opinions where mixed Asians are concerned, which didn't make me feel great either; and Koreans especially still look at biracial Koreans as foreigners instead of Koreans, although my experience has probably been more favorable since I speak Korean fluently. I'd had so much self-confidence about my Koreanness up to that point, thinking that I had checked enough boxes that no one would doubt me but it turns out that I have to field questions in that regard as well—which then led to a doubling down on self-education and cultural immersion to prove that I am Korean enough. And maybe I have expended more effort into proving that I'm Korean enough instead of trying to prove that I'm Nicaraguan enough because I believed the latter to be a lost cause—but the reality is that I shouldn't have been trying so hard to prove either because regardless of how much I know, I can't rewrite my own DNA any more than anyone else can.

After that, I can now just be.

Conclusion

One of the biggest ways in which I've always gotten in my own way is that I was so utterly convinced that being biracial was the only thing people were ever going to notice about me—that it would become my default identifier. People wouldn't remember me as a great writer or musician; instead, I would always be known as the mixed person because that would be the most memorable thing about me. I also thought I was alone; I can count the number of mixed Asians I know or have known personally on just over one hand and I wasn't close enough to most of them to try to build a tiny community for just us so that we would have someone to talk to about our shared experiences.

What I want most for myself and for other people who identify as mixed Asian is that by having more spaces like Mixed Asian Day where we can fully embrace our identities, we can stop feeling like we have to prove ourselves to others—that we are Asian enough—that we are enough. More than that, it allows us to see that we have a community of people with similar experiences, people who look like us, people with whom we can relate; and it shows us that we are capable of anything and everything, just as much as anyone else. We are just as multi-faceted, just as diverse, just as unpredictable and full of possibilities.

Happy Mixed Asian Day, you beautiful people. This day is ours.

[art-of-manliness]

Odds & Ends: August 4, 2023

“The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church.” We’ve talked about the rise of religious “nones” on the podcast with political scientist Ryan Burge. The author of this article highlights a new book coming out that uses Burge’s research to explore what the book’s authors call the “dechurching” of America. The book argues that besides abuse scandals and the rise of secularism, Americans have also stopped going to church because modern life doesn’t lend itself to living in community and, counterintuitively, because churches ask so little from their members these days. Shotgun: The Hilarious Family Card Game For Road Trips. When the McKays go on road trips, we have our kids cycle through periods of screen time and periods where they have to entertain themselves sans screens. Earlier this summer, I queried our X followers for some road trip game ideas that the kids could play during the latter stretches, and Shotgun was recommended multiple times. Each card has a silly prompt like “Who weighed the most as a baby? Fattest baby gets two points,” and “Vote on who has been the highest maintenance person on this trip. That person loses a point.” We all enjoyed it on a recent trip. We didn’t play for points, but I think it would be fun to do so and to offer prizes. Another fun game for road trips is interstate highway bingo. Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. We’ve had author Steven Pressfield on the podcast several times. One of my all-time favorite books he’s written is Gates of Fire. It’s a fictional recounting of the Battle of Thermopylae. It was once a part of the Marine Corps Reading List and inspired an article we published several years ago: Courage vs. Boldness. Mallard Hat. A mallard is just a damn handsome bird. I love looking at mallards, whether at the pond or on Federal Duck Stamp art. So when I saw this ball cap with a mallard embroidered on it at Huckberry, I had to get it. It looks even better in person than the pictures convey. It’s real awesome and my new favorite hat.  Quote of the Week The man who is worthy of being a leader of men will never complain of the stupidity of his helpers, of the faithlessness of his followers, of the ingratitude of mankind, nor of the non-appreciation of the public. These things are all a part of the great game of life, and to meet them and not go down before them in discouragement and defeat, is the final proof of power. —Elbert Hubbard The post Odds & Ends: August 4, 2023 appeared first on The Art of Manliness. http://dlvr.it/StD1Xw