#like i want to read chinese womens history

[richmondflyingsquirrels]

cant afford this book abt chinese feminism thru the ages but i'm writing down the names of the works it translates so i can find the originals for my girlfriend to read

[teaboot]

How do Canadian schools teach about indigenous Canadian history and culture? -a curious USAmerican

In my experience we learned about colonization at the same time as we learned about the formation of Canada. At first it was "European settlers came and pushed out the indigenous population", then in the higher grades we learned more about the how and the why.

For example, how carts full of men with rifles would ride around shooting Buffalo, then leaving the meat on the ground to rot, because "a dead Buffalo is a dead indian", which was so fanatical it almost wiped out wild Buffalo entirely

Also how Canadian settlers were lured in with beautiful hand-painted advertisements for cheap, beautiful, fertile land that was unpopulated and perfect, if only you'd sail over with your entire family and a pocket full of seeds- only to be met with scared, confused, and angry lawful inhabitants already run out of ten other places, and frigid winters, and rocky, forested, undeveloped dirt.

also, smallpox blankets, where "gifts" of blankets infected with smallpox were intentionally given out

And treaty violations- Either ignoring written agreements entirely, or buying them out at insanely low prices and lying about the value, or trading for farming equipment that they couldn't use because they weren't farmers.

Then in the first world war, where they told indigenous peoples here that they'd be granted Canadian citizenship if they enlisted

To Residential schools, which was straight up stealing kids for slavery, indoctrination, and medical experiments

But we also covered the building of the Canadian Railway in which Chinese immigrants were lowered into ravines with dynamite to blow out paths through the mountain for pennies on the dollar

And the Alberta Sterilization Act, where it was lawful and routine procedure to sterilize women of colour and neurodivergent people without their awareness or consent after giving birth or undergoing unrelated surgeries

But I'm rambling.

We kind of learned Aboriginal history at the same time as everything else? Like. This is when Canada was made, and this is how it was done. Now we'll read a book about someone who lived through it, and we'll write a book report. And now a documentary, and now a paper about the documentary. Onto the next unit.

And starting I think in grade 10 our English track was split between English and Aboriginals English, where you could choose to do the standard curriculum or do the same basic knowledge stuff with a focus on Aboriginal perspectives and literature. (I did that one, we read Three Day's Road and Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, and a few other titles I don't remember.)

There was also a lunch room for the Aboriginal Culture Studies where Aboriginal kids could hang out at lunch time if they wanted, full of art and projects and stuff. They'd play music or videos sometimes, that was cool

And one elective I took (not mandatory cirriculum) was a Kwakiutl course for basic Kwakwakaʼwakw language. Greetings, counting to a hundred, learning the modified alphabet, animals, etc. Still comes in handy sometimes at large gatherings cause they usually start with a land recognition thanking whoever's land we're on, with a few thanks and welcomes in their language.

And like- when I was in the US it was so weird, cause here we have Totem poles and longhouses and murals all over and yall... don't? Like there is a very distinct lack of Aboriginal art in your public spaces, at least in the areas I've been

My ex-stepfather, who was American, brought his son out once, and he was so excited to "see real indians" and was legitimately shocked to learn that there weren't many teepees to be found on the northwest coast, and was even *more* shocked when we told him that you have Aboriginal people back home too, bud. Your Aboriginal people are also named "Mike" snd "Vicky" and work as assistant manager at best buy.

If you'd ask me, I'd say that the primary difference is that USAmerica (from what I've seen, and ALSO in entirely too much of Canada) treats our European and Aboriginal conflicts as history, something that's tragic but over, like the extinction of the mammoths, instead of like. An ongoing thing involving people who are alive and numerous and right fucking here

But at the end of the day, I'm white, and there are plenty of actual Aboriginal people who are speaking out and saying much more meaningful things than I can

So I'm just gonna pass on a quote from my Stepmum, who's Cree, that's stuck with me since she said it:

"You see how they treat Mexicans in America? That's how they treat us here. Indians are the Mexicans of Canada."

[azure-cherie]

☀︎︎𝑃𝐴𝐶 : 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 ☀︎︎

Pile 1. Pile 2. Pile 3.

Hey there guys , I hope y'all are having a lovely time so for this PAC

THE CONCEPT is in this pile i call upon one of your ancestors to narrate a story from their life so that you can learn something from it or just get the Ancestral tea ☕ .

Reblogs and feedback are highly appreciated !!!!

Want a personal reading: Paid readings , Paid readings 2

Masterlist

Choose using your intuition, you can choose multiple and take what resonates and leave the rest . Since this is a general reading take what resonates and leave the rest .

Pile 1 :

My dear pile 1 , i hope you're doing well

Some charms for confirmations and messages: Maple leaf , moon , bicycle , trumpet , tortoise, panther , yantra symbol , peacock , camel , flower wings , infinity symbol, clown , lantern. Some numbers : might be age , year or era ; 5,1,6,5,7 ; some initials : K , L , I , Q .

Who will I be channeling : The Empress card they could be a very nourishing female who was well regarded in their family , they were a queen , princess , authority , they married rich . They were really a successful and kind women

They want to tell you a story about : Strength , how they were courageous

Once upon a time in your ancestry , born in either Mongolian , Chinese , French or Italian roots , your ancestors were regarded as inventors of something creative , they liked romance a lot , they wanted to keep the fire in themselves alive , they could be cavemen and drew various types of architectural plans , for some buildings , could be of Moroccan descent , you had a very big family , the head of the family was a very nice man , your ancestor was the head of the family as well , as the wife of your male ancestor , she also was a very creative person , made antiques and stored them , was regarded as one of the bad bitches of that era, and everyone wanted to marry her , though she broke many hearts she married your male ancestor , they lived really happily until there was some , war in your place and some things were burned down in your place or in your home , the fire could be symbolic as well , they were left with no choice then to sacrifice themselves . Either they sacrificed themselves or something that belongs to them . I think some of your family history also burned along with the fire , could be representative of also fury of old powerful people lurking into your family wellbeing .

Through the course of wheel of fortune ,there was a change because of a smart person in your bloodline who really finally crafted a way to rise again , this could be your ancestor herself or some other person from your family I get the vibe of the sister in law , or an aunt . Because of that you were capable , your ancestors could be into herbal medicine or Ayurveda . Your ancestors helped the poor a lot and conducted lots of charity . They either had a rabbit or a furry animal by their side , the pet was one of the legacies and the pet really protected , could be a dog as well , if cat they protected from spiritual attacks .

Your ancestors later became the leader of some organization , and they were some sort of vigilante and served everyone with justice , were one of the most powerful . One of the next generation male member sore really high and was regarded , they gave everyone a head start at creative potential , they rose again from what hurt them , they later settled in some colder place probably .

There could be some curse due to which your family went into hiding , because the son of the empress was a vigilante they rose again and built up after moving places , they brought lands and could be the family was travelling , that could mean some hippie ancestors for some of you , and it could also be someone wanted to move places , lastly your ancestor went on a spiritual journey , the empress went on a quest to find herself and was looking into a peaceful life

She wanted to tell you about this lesson of strength , that no matter what happens you should go on , also they wanted to tell you that if you want something good in life you must also leave something , to understand the value of sacrifice , despite the hardships she went on a quest , her main aim to wait was to see her family well and after she was done she was ready to leave , this story might also be about detachment .she wants to tell you that though everything is nice , if you feel you're missing something , you must go after it , and that’s how your soul will feel happy

Pile 2 :

My dear pile 2 , hope you're doing well

Some charms for confirmations and messages: Fox , mermaid tail , shell, angel, coconut tree , crescent moon , sun , kangaroo, wine bottle . Some numbers : might be age , year or era ; 7,2,9,2 ; some initials : R,U,O.

Who will I be channeling : Ace of swords ,could be a warrior , they were really courageous , free thinker .

They want to tell you a story about : Page of coins , of abundance of a bright future

Once upon a time there was a break in your family because of lot of disagreements , everyone fought each other or just left their own ways , this could be about middle eastern , desert areas , ancient India , Mediterranean , there was lot of conquest , here comes about your grandmother or just a women in your family who was a psychic , she wanted everyone to be together , that lead to the family coming back together because she made everyone thinking she was sick , they later came to know she wasn’t ,

She realized there was someone was casting a spell for your family to break apart , your ancestor already had the vibe , and they worked hard to let it into their heads , might have conducted an uncrossing spell to get rid of the damage , the spell came from a family member who was obsessed with money and wanted to keep everything to themselves , your ancestor wanted to keep everyone safe and happy , and because of their good deeds things were right , there were minor issues but because your grandmother was so observant and a psychic , the family didn’t break and was happy . They kept lot of optimism.

They wanted to tell you this because you are having self-doubts about your abilities or judging people without knowing the whole story , listen more to your intuition , you're reaching conclusions without thinking and analyzing things properly and they wanted to let you know that . I picked another card , so they tell you to take rest and not think too much .

This is actually really cool because I was about to start pile 3 but I couldn't remember the image , haha they want to tell you one more story woah , this could either be for the same group or this story might not be for you , use your intuition

This is about a situation where they had both of their hands tied , they were people putting allegations onto them and they wanted to about sometimes to get forward you'll have to lose something , you have to work hard and put all in , you shouldn’t run , things may become severe but know that youre stronger , don’t run away , you must hope for the best because only then it comes to you , being emotionally connected is a blessing , never take your own emotions for granted

They served a king or a higher authority could've worked as warriors or oracles of their place , they were considered very courageous , this could also be someone from Salem witch trials , there's lot of fire as well as witch symbolism , so I feel this could be it , they revolted a lot against the men who were capturing them . There was someone who was so in love with your ancestors and tried to save her , she tried and got away though it was painful , they came together and lived happily ever after , this story could also go about some Brazilian , Hawaiian , ancestry .

They wanted to tell you this as a sign that hope can be found even after most gut wrenching times .

Pile 3 :

My dear pile 3 hope you're doing well

Some charms for confirmations and messages: fish , elephant, gun , cap , shell , infinity symbol, witch , cat . Some numbers : might be age , year or era ; 9,8,2 ; some initials : M, A . Please check pile 2 if you were drawn

Who will I be channeling: Knight of wands adventurous, enigmatic person

They want to tell you a story about : The Sun , of fame and dignity

Once upon a time there was someone who was a miser and wanted your ancestor to be wed off , just so they could get rid of your ancestor , they thought your ancestor was a crooked person , who wanted to be reckless all the time , they didn’t appreciate your ancestors free spirit at all , the guardian showed they were happy but they wanted to destroy the life of your ancestor , your ancestors might have been kept hostage or had an evil step parent for some of you .

Someone could have died or poisoned , the husband of your ancestor was very supportive , the guardian didn’t like it , someone might have told that to your guardian , or higher authority , only to cut the wings of your ancestor , she yet lived with happiness because she was actively practicing freedom and was loved and supported by her husband , I think she wanted to be in a higher position , in education or in the swordsmanship sector , this could go back to Europe , in the renaissance period , haha your reading is reminding me of the anime called " Arte " .

She was shown love because fate turned her life around This reminds me of " My happy marriage " (anime).

There could be a lot of jealousy shown to her by the men around, the neighbor's , but your ancestor was always rising higher , there could be someone who sabotaged her telling her that she's a bad person , she payed no mind to them , she became one of the greatest of her times , swordsman , merchant . This could also be in the education sector , they became highly educated , just saw 333 might be significant to you .

They were abundant and happy , they later became a teacher in their sector , kids loved them a lot , probably rose to nobility , were honored as a survivor and a riser .

They want to tell you this story to make you believe in the power of love , though its mostly about bravery her husband helped her get through a lot of it , she wants to show how if you take a chance in love , love can be good for you . Though her arranged marriage was scary things turned out for the better so will it turn out for you , keep the belief , I got one more card , they also wanted you to let go of your mentality that everything will go bad trust that good things will happen to you , if you hit the rock bottom you can only go higher do what you need to do

The back of the deck is Empress , how sweet is it that the pile 1 started with empress and you're finishing at it , you come from line of very powerful women who worked so much for their dreams they're always here for you just call upon them . I see 555 as I conclude can be significant for you.

Thank you so much for reading have a great day/night 🧡

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Du Wen at Her, the bar she started last year, in Shanghai. “I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,” she said.

Her is a self-described feminist bar in Shanghai where women gather to talk about their place in society

Tang Shuang at her bookstore, Paper Moon, in Shanghai

Wang Xia, left, and her Xin Chao Bookstore space in the Shanghai Book City in Shanghai

The female bookstore, Paper Moon, in Shanghai

In bars tucked away in alleys and at salons and bookstores around Shanghai, women are debating their place in a country where men make the laws.

Some wore wedding gowns to take public vows of commitment to themselves. Others gathered to watch films made by women about women. The bookish flocked to female bookshops to read titles like “The Woman Destroyed” and “Living a Feminist Life.”

Women in Shanghai, and some of China’s other biggest cities, are negotiating the fragile terms of public expression at a politically precarious moment. China’s ruling Communist Party has identified feminism as a threat to its authority. Female rights activists have been jailed. Concerns about harassment and violence against women are ignored or outright silenced.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Mr. Xi’s inner circle or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new “childbearing culture” to address a shrinking population.

But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community.

“I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,” said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions.

Frustrated by the increasingly narrow understanding of women by the public, Nong He, a film and theater student, held a screening of three documentaries about women by female Chinese directors.

“I think we should have a broader space for women to create,” Ms. He said. “We hope to organize such an event to let people know what our life is like, what the life of other women is like, and with that understanding, we can connect and provide some help to each other.”

At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. “Why are lonely ghosts always female?” one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death. They share tips for beginners to feminism. Start with history, said Tang Shuang, the owner of Paper Moon, which sells books by female authors. “This is like the basement of the structure.”

There are few reliable statistics about gender violence and sexual harassment in China, but incidents of violence against women have occurred with greater frequency, according to researchers and social workers. Stories have circulated widely online of women being physically maimed or brutally murdered for trying to leave their husbands, or savagely beaten for resisting unwanted attention from men. The discovery of a woman who was chained inside a doorless shack in the eastern province of Jiangsu became one of the most debated topics online in years.

With each case, the reactions have been highly divisive. Many people denounced the attackers and called out sexism in society. Many others blamed the victims.

The way these discussions polarize society unnerved Ms. Tang, an entrepreneur and former deputy editor of Vogue China. Events in her own life unsettled her, too. As female friends shared feelings of shame and worthlessness for not getting married, Ms. Tang searched for a framework to articulate what she was feeling.

“Then I found out, you know, even myself, I don’t have very clear thoughts about these things,” she said. “People are eager to talk, but they don’t know what they are talking about.” Ms. Tang decided to open Paper Moon, a store for intellectually curious readers like herself.

The bookstore is divided into an academic section that features feminist history and social studies, as well as literature and poetry. There is an area for biographies. “You need to have some real stories to encourage women,” Ms. Tang said.

Anxiety about attracting the wrong kind of attention is always present.

When Ms. Tang opened her store, she placed a sign in the door describing it as a feminist bookstore that welcomed all genders, as well as pets. “But my friend warned me to take it out because, you know, I could cause trouble by using the word feminism.”

Wang Xia, the owner of Xin Chao Bookstore, has chosen to stay away from the “F” word altogether. Instead she described her bookstore as “woman-themed.” When she opened it in 2020, the store was a sprawling space with nooks to foster private conversations and six study rooms named after famous female authors like Simone de Beauvoir.

Xin Chao Bookstore served more than 50,000 people through events, workshops and online lectures, Ms. Wang said. It had more than 20,000 books about art, literature and self-improvement — books about women and books for women. The store became so prominent that state-owned media wrote about it and the Shanghai government posted the article on its website.

Still, Ms. Wang was careful to steer clear of making a political statement. “My ambition is not to develop feminism,” she said.

For Ms. Du, the Her founder, empowering women is at the heart of her motivation. She was jolted into action by the isolation of the pandemic: Shanghai ordered its residents to stay in their apartments under lockdown for two months, and her world narrowed to the walls of her apartment.

For years she dreamed of opening a place where she could elevate the voices of women, and now it seemed more urgent than ever. After the lockdown, she opened Her, a place where women could strike friendships and debate the social expectations that society had placed on them.

On International Women’s Day in March, Her held an event it called Marry Me, in which women took vows to themselves. The bar has also hosted a salon where women acted out the roles of mothers and daughters. Many younger women described a reluctance to be treated the way their mothers were treated and said they did not know how to talk to them, Ms. Du said.

The authorities have met with Ms. Du and indicated that as long as the events at Her didn’t become too popular, there was a place for it in Shanghai, she said.

But in China, there is always the possibility that officials will crack down. “They never tell you clearly what is forbidden,” Ms. Tang of Paper Moon said.

Ms. Wang recently moved Xin Chao Bookstore into Shanghai Book City, a famous store with large atriums and long columns of bookcases. A four-volume collection of Mr. Xi’s writings are prominently displayed in several languages.

Book City is huge. The space for Xin Chao Bookstore is not, Ms. Wang said, with several shelves inside and around a small room that may eventually hold about only 3,000 books.

“It’s a small cell of the city, a cultural cell,” Ms. Wang said.

Still, it stands out in China.

“Not every city has a woman’s bookstore,” she said. “There are many cities that do not have such cultural soil.””

[twig-tea]

GL odds and ends 6 October 2024

I haven't been as good at posting about shows as I wanted to be, so I'm trying a round-up format instead because it feels like a lot of GLs skirt under the radar. It's exciting that we're in a time when there's enough GL airing that it's worth doing a round-up! This was a great week for the lesbians to figure themselves out, so it feels like a good week to start. No idea how regularly I'll do this, need to figure out a cadence that makes sense.

Currently airing (with thoughts up to Oct 6):

Reverse 4 U 5/8 (Thai, Tuesdays 1:00 PM EDT, Netflix / YouTube) This week the girls finally sorted themselves and we got set up for the main plot to start next week. I was initially really stoked about this one and then a little bummed that it's not taking it's very cool premise and the stakes it establishes as seriously as it could be, but I'm still hoping it will start to have real stakes in the main plot stretch.

The Two of Us s2 ep 6/6 END (Thai, 29 Aug-3 Oct 2024, YouTube) It was so great seeing women in their 40s being romantic together but I did not love the plot of this one; I find their romantic conflicts too juvenile (lots of easily-triggered jealousy). The moments they're being sweet are great though.

Unlock Your Love ep 4/8 (Thai, Wednesdays, GagaOOLala / YouTube [cut version]) This is the first episode that this series felt a little more assured; I liked the series this production company produced with a short run time, it feels like this series has been worse off for its longer episodes. That being said, when these couples get to do their thing like in this episode, they have good chemistry.

Chaser Game W s2 ep 3/8 (Japanese, Thursdays 12:30 PM EDT, GagaOOLala) @lurkingshan is already doing a great summary of this week to week in her JQL weekly round-up!

Affair the series ep 6/8 (Thai, Fridays 11:15 AM EDT, iQIYI/ YouTube) Finally! I liked that it was Ek pointing out that Wan was unhappy the entire time she was gone that finally got Pleng to give in to her desire to be with Wan. This show is so melodramatic but the emotional threads follow and the character motivations are clear and consistent; I'm enjoying it in spite of not loving melodramatic storylines in general. It helps that the acting in this one is excellent.

The Loyal Pin ep 10/16 (Thai, Sundays 12:15 PM EDT, YouTube) Glad we finally got confirmation of Patt's history! And I'm relieved Anin knows she has an ally, though I feel like it's given her false confidence that worries me. These two are stressing me out by how bad they are at being careful but I do love how desperate they are for each other, as well as how beautiful this show is.

Red Whisper ep 2/8 (Korea, Wednesdays and Sundays, YouTube) Starting with cheating is not my fave but is par for the course with these SukFilm short series; my fave so far has been their first GL so if you haven't seen that yet I'd honestly recommend that instead.

Recent One-offs

Out of Breath (re-release in a bingeable version; Korean, YouTube) Highly recommended! Also the creator, Soo not Sue, announced she's working on another series to hopefully air before the end of the year, which I am super stoked about.

The Suffering of Xiqing Mountain (Chinese (censored), YouTube)

Sastra film app YouTube channel has several short Cambodian GL series that come out weekly Honestly they are not to my taste but I don't like gatekeeping GL especially from smaller markets. I check in on these time to time and if there are any that I think are great I'll give them a shout-out

Ditto above with JPC media YouTube channel for Thai GL shorts if there are any that stand out to me I'll say so

Recently ended that I haven't had the wherewithal to write about:

Hoshikuzu Telepath (fansub) Thank you to @yuiyuihan for your hard work making it possible to watch this series! I I haven't read the original manga but I do know they changed the kiss communication to a forehead rest; Unsurprised that this adaptation, starring idols in the same group, would be left ambiguous in terms of whether their feelings are friendly or romantic. I liked what this series was trying to say, but in all honestly didn't love the execution. It's too bad because I absolutely love the concept of an alien being helped by girls obsessed with building rockets.

The Secret of Us 8 eps [complete] (24 Jun-15 Aug 2024, YouTube) I first included this in my recommendations from the summer and then retracted, but I ended up liking this series and then never updated again. So to set the record straight: Though it lost me in the middle, the ending on this series won be back over. I really appreciated the way this series handled filial piety and balancing that against personal happiness. I appreciated SO MUCH that the main characters decided together how to handle Lada's situation with her mother. I finally understood too late that Earn believed the lies Lada's mother told her in ep1, and that affected some of their decisions in the middle of the series. I still think the execution was wobbly, but the acting and chemistry between the two leads carries this series through. This has some of the best domestic fluff in any GL, as well as my favourite GL counter lift to date. And it's gorgeous. Tentatively recommended with the caveat that you do have to either enjoy or power through the melodrama in the middle.

Starting soon:

Apple My Love, Thai, 12 October, GagaOOLala

Pluto, Thai, 19 October, VIU

The Nipple Talk, Taiwanese, 1 November GagaOOLala

My Ex's Wedding [in theatres in Thailand 14 November]

Petrichor, Thai, 23 November, TBD

[nieves-de-sugui]

A Quick History of BL

As someone who wrote a thesis on this very subject a few years ago, here is the short version of how BL has evolved throughout the years. For the new comers ❤ 

a minute of silence for the original form of this post that tumblr decied to not save right after I saved it

I am going to go with a chronological approach. Unfortunately, I cannot put everything in one post so if there’s any questions about this or that aspect of the history of BL that you want to know and it’s not talked about here, you are welcome to ask me directly :)

Context and influences - Japan in the 60′s

Before the US forced Japan to open its borders to the outside world in the 1800s, homosexual practices were common place between budist monks, samurais and kabuki actors. During the Edo period (1600s to 1800s) there was a very rich amount of poetry, art, books (such as Nanshoku Okagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love) by Ihara Saikaku) and codes of conduct about how to have a good master/aprentice relationship, kinda like the greeks if you know what I mean. However, with the arrival of western influences, in order to become a more “civilized” country, it was all put in the closet. 

Yet, in the 60′s Japan started to pick it up again through literature about young androginous beautiful boys (aka bishounen). On one hand, in 1961, the novel Koibitotachi no Mori (A Lover’s Forest) by Mari Mori was published. It tells the story of a young and beautiful 19 year old worker and a half french half japanese aristocrat, and their tragic romance. On the other hand, Taruho Inagaki wrote Shounen ai no Bigaku (The esthetics of boy-love), an essay on aesthetic eroticism (of which he wrote a lot of). All this was know as Tanbi (lit. aesthetic) literature. It generally refered to literature with implied homosexuality and homoeroticism such as works by Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, etc. And of course, Mori and Inagaki. 

In chinese tanbi is read as danmei (term used to refer to BL novels in china today, ie: The Untamed it’s all connected friends).

From the birth of Shonen Ai  to Yaoi - 70′s to the late 80′s

Around the beginning of the 70′s, shoujo was being revolutionized by the Year 24 Group, a generation of women manga authors (mangaka) who started to explore new themes. Among them, their interest in tanbi gave birth to a new subgenre: Shounen ai. 

Their most known manga were:

Kaze to Ki no Uta (The Ballad of the Wind and Trees) by Keiko Takemiya, and Toma no Shinzo (The Heart of Thomas) by Moto Hagio

Their stories are characterized by having suffering eurpoean bishounen in boarding schools, living an idealized perfect love (meaning passionate) that, despite the tragic end of one of them, lives forever in the other. 

As this genre starts getting popular, more and more fans of these stories start making their own self published manga, aka doujinshi, of the genre. It is around this time that the term Yaoi is coined. Meaning “YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi” (no climax, no fall, no meaning). Basically PWP fanfiction, for the most part. Doujinshis could be considered an equivalent of fanfiction in manga form.  It is also here that the term Fujoshi (aka Rotten Girl, for liking rotten things) starts being used to refer to women readers of yaoi. 

With this rise in popularity come the start of the commercialization of the genre. Which meant the publication of magazines dedicated solely to yaoi/shonen ai/BL. The most popular yaoi manga magazine at the time was June. The common trait of their stories being the therapeutic power of the love between the mains. The traumatized character would heal throught this newfound love.

Most of the stories at this time happened in the West (Europe or the States) as the exploration of these dark themes intertwined with homosexual romance and homoeroticism still feel safer to explore as a foreign concept. One example would be Banana Fish (1985).

Commercialization and Yaoi Ronso -  90′s 

As more publishing houses pick the genre up, the term Boys Love is used to include every type of manga about homosexuality made for women. 

The increasing amount of BL series sees a changes in its themes: 

the start of the “gay for you” trope where one mantains their heterosexuality despite being in a homsexual relationship, 

the uke/seme dynamic (mirroring hetero realtionships) also relating to physical appearence (one being more feminine, the other being more masculine), 

the use of rape as an act love (sexual violence has always been present but here it becomes a staple),

anal sex as the only type of sex, 

older and more masculine men start to appear 

they now happen in Japan

Good examples of the presence of these themes in manga are Gravitation (1996) or Yatteranneeze (1995).

However in 1992, Masaki Sato (a gay activist/drag queen) wrote a letter in a small scale feminist magazine attacking yaoi and pointing out how it “represented a kind of misappropriation or distortion of gay life that impacted negatively upon Japanese gay men”. The female readers of yaoi responded, defending the genre as a means to escape gender roles and explore sexual themes that was never meant to represent the realities of gay men. This is know as the Yaoi Ronso (Yaoi Debates).

The debate ended with both sides understanding more of each other, with mangakas starting to include queer views in their works. It also started the academic reasearch of BL. 

Yet, it is a debate that has been restarted more than once, as it is still relevant despite the evolution of the genre.

more on this on another post

Globalization and coining of BL - 2000′s 

By the beginning of the 2000s BL is being sold all over the world (like all manga), and has become a stable industry. We could say it has finally become it’s own genre. 

Some of the most well known manga series, to us (in the west), of the time are:

Junjou Romantica 2002 Koi Suru Boukun 2004 Love Pistols 2004 Haru wo Daiteita 1999

all of these have anime adaptations for the curious ones

We also start seeing short anime adaptations or special episodes of the most popular series, with questionable themes, such as: adoptive father x adoptive son  (Papa to Kiss in the Dark 2005), father x son’s friend (Kirepapa 2008), etc... 

However the themes remain more or less the same. Junjou Romantica’s love story starts with a non-con sex scene by the older one (masc, seme) to the younger one (more feminine, uke) addressed years later in the manga btw. Koi Suru Boukun’s love story is triggered by aphrodisiacs and rape. They’re still very present in the stories but slowly going away. A mangaka that represents this era could be Natsume Isaku (Candy Color Paradox 2010).

Change is slow in Japan. Even though the voices of LGBT+ people started to be taken into account in the genre it is not until later that we see it reflect in the mangas themselves. However, we can already see the start of this in Doukyusei (Classmates) (2006) by Asumiko Nakamura. Also Kinou Nani Tabeta? (2007) which is actually part of a more mature genre: Seinen.

It is my personal (subjective) theory that the BL of this era was the one that got popular outside of Japan, which is why we see lots of references to the themes, tropes and dynamics of this time in today’s BL series. 

The LGBTzation of BL and the rise of webtoons - 2010′s to 2020′s

Slowly but surely LGBT characters and themes enter the scene of BL. Existing simultaneously with the previous tropes and themes, we start seeing a shift in these stories. We now see:

characters that identify as gay or some type of queer

discussions about homophobia

more mature themes about life and romance

At the same time as we get the usual love stories with the usual themes, a new trend starts to take over. And we get simultaneously, cute, sometimes questionable but light love stories:

Love Stage 2010 Ashita wa Docchi da! 2011 Kieta Hatsukoi 2019

More profound stories and darker or more complex themes:

Blue Sky Complex 2013  Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai 2011 (mafias) Given 2013 (suicide) Hidamari ga Kikoeru 2013 (deafness)

And others that adress the queer experience in a more mature way (which might actually fall into the Seinen genre)

Itoshi no Nekokke 2010 (slice of life, queer characters) Smells like Green Spirit 2011 (two ways to deal with a homphobic society) Strange 2014 (relationships between men) Shimanami Tasogare 2015 (an LGBT group helps a closeted gay) Old Fashioned Cupcake 2019 (you know this one 😉) Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu 2020 (the end of the world)

As queer stories are explored, BL mangakas and mangakas from other genres start to consider more stories about queer people such as the Josei Genderless Danshi ni Aisaretemasu (My Androgynous Boyfriend) (2018) by Tamekou, or the Shoujo Goukon ni Itarra Onna ga Inakatta Hanashi (The story of when I went to a mixer and there were no women) (2021) by Nana Aokawa. 

Still, we can see two realities live side by side. Doukyuusei gets adapted into an impactful animated movie in 2016, meanwhile Banana Fish gets an anime adaptation that keeps the homoeroticism but not the homosexuality.  

For those who might be interested. Here are some of the authors that represent the first half of this era, where they start to include newer points of view:

Scarlet Beriko, HAYAKAWA Nojiko, KURAHASHI Tomo, OGERETSU Tanaka, Harada, KII Kanna (Stranger by the Sea), etc...

And authors that while keeping classical themes break the stereotypes in a subtle manner:

CTK, ZAKK, Jyanome, Cocomi, Hidebu Takahashi, SUZUMARU Minta, etc...

Mangakas also no longer stick to one genre only. They explore whichever of them they want, from BL to Seinen to others. 

ie: Tamekou, 

or Asumiko Nakamura

The curious case of Webtoons

With the digitalization of mangas, throught Renta and Lehzin, it has become easier (and more expensive) to access these stories. Korea makes and appearence with their webtoons. Through the lack of piracy protections and the majority of them being digital, manhwa (korean webtoons) sees a rise in popularity. Through the digital medium the influencee can be the influencer.

However, like many other East Asian countries they have consumed BL, without hearing about the conversations about BL. So they end up mantaining the older themes and stereotypes that newer BL is trying to leave behind. Therefore, we end up with a mix of old and new, ie:

Killing Stalking 2016 Cherry Blossoms After Winter 2017 Painter of The Night 2019

Additionally, it is also thanks to the easy access to internet that Omegaverse, with its higher dramatic stakes (that parallel hetero dynamics), enters the mangasphere in 2016. It has grown in popularity ever since.

With the Thai BL Boom of 2020, Japan rediscovers its own BL market and starts investing in it more. Which is why we get live action adaptations of BL manga that was popular years ago (Candy Color Paradox was a manga from 2010), the more recent ones (The End of the World With You) or new anime adaptations (Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai in 2020). 

more on this in my japanese live action BL post

What has it become now? is it BL? ML? or Seinen? Or is it all just gay manga?

It is clear that Shoujo manga (with BL, Josei and Seinen) is exploring queer themes such as gender and sexuality more and more. Japan is interested in this conversation, not only in manga (Genderless fashion). Which brings up the current question in BL studies: Does it make sense to keep these categories?

As a response to BL, ML (Male Love), which is made by gay men for gay men, started happening (around the 70s too). And Bara (gay manga porn) in response to Yaoi. However both gay men and women read BL and ML. We also see other themes being explored through BL, such as friendship (in BL Metamorphose), food (in Kinou Nani Tabeta), male relationships of all kinds (in Strange), and different queer views on life and its challenges (in Shimanami Tasogare). More and more what is LGBT and what is BL is merging, the line is blurred. 

Conclusion

BL has been in my life for longer than it hasn't. It is through shoujo and BL that I have come to understand people and romance.

It is flawed, like everything else this life, but it's flourishing in many ways.

The genre feels old and new at the same time. 

We can still find shounen ai/tanbi elements in more modern manga (All About J). Or the gay for you in a new light (Itoshi no Nekkoke). Or more educational manga on queer issues (My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame). BL has around 50 years of existence but it is also being born anew in Thailand and Korea. 

BL manga will continue to evolve in acordance to Japanese tastes, as it is still a local market. Hopefully the korean webtoons that get popular will be the more daring ones in their themes. Who knows where it will go from here? The only thing we know for sure is that it will continue to change. Isn't it exciting?

A post on the evolution of live action BL in Japan is coming, to complement this post.  As well as a more detailed explanation of the Yaoi Debates and gay manga.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

[jymwahuwu]

I love and think about Emperor Jing Yuan a lot. Like a servant girl getting called in to be the emperor Jing Yuan's Concubine 😋

I love ancient China like the history, art and clothing. when I think about Chinese Emperor Jing Yuan I think of Cinderella Chef (animated version) it's so cute and romantic. I also think about the fic series I used to read in 2020 or 2019 when the reader is the selected tailor for the emperor and the emperor falls in love.

It was such a good story, with many good different story elements to it even though it's was an yandere x reader 😭 and I'm not even exaggerating how good it is. It was slow burn yandere yet sooo good and worth it

I have to read it again cause it's sooo good.

There's sooo many good art of Jing Yuan in ancient Chinese clothing and I love and appreciate it sm 🤤

Jing Yuan kept a servant girl as his concubine, wanting her by his side every moment. As emperor, he faced countless threats and worried constantly for her safety. Yet, he couldn’t resist making her his bride, even though the public and his family disapproved. How could a servant girl from a humble background become empress alongside the emperor? But he paid no attention to their criticisms, choosing instead to live in his Fantasies with her. She was the only woman he’d ever met who cared for him beyond his wealth and title, and he was determined to keep her close forever. 😇

Wow, I also like Chinese palace stories actually!! What you said made me imagine a lot. It turns out that Jing Yuan is so suitable for the palace AU🥰✊

Have you watched "Story of Yanxi Palace"? It was a popular palace drama in 2018, and social media was all about it at that time. The historical prototype of the female protagonist is Empress Xiaoyichun (孝儀純皇后). She first started as a concubine. During her lifetime, she was the "Imperial Noble Consort" (皇貴妃), which was the highest position among the concubines after Empress. The core of its story is about a confident servant woman who starts from the bottom and moves up through the ranks with wisdom and courage.

A negative example is "Ruyi's royal love in the palace". The show still gets a lot of negative criticism in China today (yes, that's happening in 2024) - for its slut-shaming and superiority theories. The lower class people must be loyal to the noble people, otherwise they will be severely punished. There are a lot of torture scenes of women, never criticizing the mistakes of the misogynistic system, vilifying all historical figures just to beautify the female protagonists, advocating that women must be loyal to one man throughout their lives or else they are sluts, vilifying and torturing ambitious women, etc.

Oh, I'm sorry I really hate that TV show so I'm talking too much about it, but to get back to the point, it occurred to me that if Jing Yuan were the emperor, he would be very - very infatuated and dedicated. There was an emperor in Chinese history called "Emperor Xiaozong of Ming"(明孝宗) who insisted on living a monogamous life with only one empress. The same is true for Jing Yuan! Jing Yuan has only married you from beginning to end! You are one of his servants. No matter what your personality is, witty and lively/shy and kind, or even arrogant, Jing Yuan finds you really cute🥰💖He is very happy that you entered the palace and were assigned to serve him. He will sometimes sleep on your lap and ask you to feed him. He was like a big sleeping lion. But no one in politics dares to underestimate Jing Yuan because he always predicts everything.

Jing Yuan built a fruit garden in the palace, as well as a place to raise cats and birds. He got to pet cute cats and birds every day. The kittens purred around him. Maybe you were the servant who took care of the cats here. And he discovered you💖You are so suitable to be the mother of cats. And maybe he's hiding his identity and you care about his health and happiness before his status.

Politics and the harem are closely related. Those ministers petitioned Jing Yuan to marry a girl who matched his status, but he would not marry any girl except you. This is his own business! There was an emperor named "Emperor Gaozong of Tang"(唐高宗) in Chinese history. Despite the objections of his ministers, he insisted on marrying his father's concubine (named "Wuzhao"- 武曌) as his queen and sharing power with her. This is a very real love among emperors! After her husband's death, the queen became the only female emperor of China. The expression of the emperor's love for someone is to give them the best at all costs, including power, fame, wealth, and status. Jing Yuan wants to give it to you. He married you. Based on your status as a maid, you start as a concubine but work your way up. And he will also give birth to kitty babies with you. Those little princesses and princes running happily are all of your blood and his.

And he also decided to discuss politics and decide national affairs with you, collectively called "two saints" (based on Wuzhao's history haha), and share power with you. Because he knows how smart and cute you are, able to sharpen your claws and handle government affairs💖He is also ready to build a royal mausoleum, where only the two of you are buried together (it may be a bit scary, but this is how the Chinese emperors express their love haha). Even after Wuzhao became the empress, she didn’t build a mausoleum independently because she loved her husband. No matter what, you are always together, with sweetness and honor forever💖

[punkeropercyjackson]

The thing about Jason is that he IS a feminist and racially inclusive character but because he treats the women and poc in his stories well,not because he's 'female-coded' or a substitute for canon poc.Now i do support transfem readings of Jason or Lina as i like to call her and consider him canonically afrolatino but that's because i love trans women fictional and real and am afrolatino myself so Jason reads as afrolatino to me from personal experience.And a big part of the latter is the diversity of his cast!!

His adoptive mom is an arab-chinese woman,his love interests are a wasian/half cambodian woman an egyptian woman and a darkskin black woman,his brothers he gets along with are that mom's bioson and his eldest brother on his dad's side who's romani and the remaining brother he's on good terms with is THE FIRST EVER BLACK ROBIN who is also the ONLY one he's always liked and been nice to and the only white character he actively likes is also a girl and has a completely platonic relathionship with him.This along with Jason's personality and other individual traits is why i have such a black view of him,because he feels afrolatino to me

That's what gets me about fanon Jason being claimed as a minority!!!Canon Jason actually works as one with a design update only but it CAN'T be just him!That's not representation or good writing!Instead of Talia bashing or some random ass white woman replacing her,she should have her pre-Morrison history employed and act like a typical brown/asian mom in a positive relatable and accurate way.Instead of sweeping Jason's girls under the rug for BEING girls and acting like it's not misogynistic because you're shipping him with Roy as if og Rhato dosen't have racialized misogyny fused into it's formula,explore their romantic dynamics with him and how they diffenterate and have in common and fucking care about Rose,Artemis and Dana as their own characters too as they're much,MUCH more than just 'DC's failed attempts to make Jason straight'.Instead of infantilizing Dick and animalizing Damian,make Dick Jason's cool reliable older brother he was close to as Robin but never mollycoddles him as Red Hood which JASON dosen't want as seen by his dislike of Roy and give him and Damian equal respect if not Damian way more since he's done way less bad fore more understandable reasons.Instead of lying about their age difference,aknowledge that Stephanie in current canon is 19 at the oldest while Jason is 23 at the youngest and in pre-reboot he was 19 when she was in high school and very specifically NOT a senior so yeah,it IS a minor x adult ship in almost every scenario they meet in the ship content

And for fuck's sake,STOP LEAVING OUT DUKE!!!!!!!The blue eyes Batkids rule isn't real,it's never been brought up in canon or joked about in official sources,it's segretation y'all made up!'Honorary Batkid' my ass,he's so literally Robin-coded the writers gave him light powers and 'The Signal' as his mantle!You know NOTHING about superheroes if you actually think Duke's not a core Robin,a Batboy AND a Batkid-Or if you think Jason's supposed to be a normie,a power fantasy or an abuser!He's a tragedy and commentary and an adventure and a comedy and same goes for Talia,Rose,Artemis,Dana,Dick,Damian,Duke AND Stephanie!Jason wouldn't wanna be Jason without them and they also do NOT exist just for him because they're his loved ones,not his tokens!Y'all want Jason Todd?Ight,then you want the Red Hood cast too because they're a package deal.You don't?Then keep that shit to yourself and invest in a dating app since you clearly can't write anything except white ass porn

[specialagentartemis]

Black Women writing SFF

The post about Octavia Butler also made me think about the injustice we do both Butler, SFF readers, and Black women SFF writers by holding her up as the one Black Woman Writing Sci-Fi. She occupies an important place in the genre, for her creativity, the beauty and impact of her writing, and her prolific work... but she's still just one writer, and no one writer works for everybody.

So whether you liked Octavia Butler's books or didn't, here are some of the (many!!! this list is just the authors I've read and liked, or been recommended and been wanting to read) other Black women writing speculative fiction aimed at adults, who might be writing something within your interest:

N. K. Jemisin - a prolific powerhouse of modern sff. Will probably have something you'll like. Won three Hugo awards in a row for her Broken Earth trilogy. I’ve only read her book of short stories, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? and it is absolutely story after story of bangers. Creative, chilling, beautifully written, make you think. They’re so good and I highly recommend the collection. Several of her novels have spun out of premises she first explored through these short stories, most recently “The City Born Great” giving rise to her novel The City We Became. Leans more fantasy than sci-fi, but has a lot of both, in various permutations. 

Nisi Shawl - EDIT: I have been informed that Nisi Shawl identifies as genderfluid, not as a woman. They primarily write short stories that lean literary. Their one novel that I’ve read, Everfair, is an alternate-history 19th century that asks, what if the Congo had fought off European colonization and became a free and independent African state? Told in vignettes spanning decades of political organization, political movements, war tactics, and social development, among an ensemble of local African people, Black Americans coming to the new country, white and mixed-race Brits, and Chinese immigrants who came as British laborers.

Nnedi Okorafor - American-Nigerian writer of Africanfuturism, sci-fi stories emphasizing life in present, future, and alternate-magical Africa. She has range! From Binti, a trilogy of novellas about a teenage girl in Namibia encountering aliens and balancing her newfound connection to space with expectations of her family; to Akata Witch, a middle-grade series about a Nigerian-American girl moving to Nigeria and learning to use magic powers she didn’t know she had; to Who Fears Death, a brutal depiction of magical-realism in a futuristic, post-war Sudan; to short stories like "Africanfuturism 419", about that poor Nigerian prince who’s desperately sending out those emails looking for help (but with a sci-fi twist), and "Mother of Invention" about a smart house taking care of its human and her baby… she’s done a little bit of everything, but always emphasizes the future, the science, and the magic of (usually western) Africa.

Karen Lord - an Afro-Caribbean author.  I actually didn’t particularly like the one novel by her I’ve read, The Best of All Possible Worlds, but Martha Wells did, so. Lord has more novels set in this world—a Star Trek-esque multicultural, multispecies spacefuture set on a planet that has welcomed immigrants and refugees for a long time, and become a vibrant multicultural planet. I find her stories rooted in near-future Caribbean socio-climatic concerns like "Haven" and "Cities of the Sun" and her folktale-fantasy style Redemption in Indigo more compelling.  And more short stories here.

Bethany C. Morrow - only has one novella (short novel?) for adults, Mem, but it was creative and fascinating and good and I’d be remiss not to shout it out. In an alternate-history 1920s Toronto, scientists have discovered how to extract specific memories from a person—but then those memories are embodied as physical, cloned manifestations of the person at the moment the memory was made. The main character is one such “Mem,” struggling to determine who she is if she was created from and defined by one single traumatic memory that her original-self wanted to remove. It’s mostly quiet, contemplative, and very interesting.  (Morrow has some YA novels too. I read one of them and thought it was okay.)

Rebecca Roanhorse - Afro-Indigenous, Black and "Spanish Indian" and married into Diné (Navajo). I’ve read her ongoing post-apocalyptic fantasy series starting with Trail of Lightning, and am liking it a lot; after a climate catastrophe, the spirits and magic of the Diné awakened to protect Dinetah (the Navajo Nation) from the onslaught; and now magic and monsters are part of life in this fundamentally changed world. Coyote is there and he is only sometimes helpful. She also has a more traditional second-world epic high fantasy, Black Sun, an elaborate fantasy world with quests and prophecies and seafaring adventure that draws inspiration from Indigenous cultures of the US and Mexico rather than Europe. She also has bitingly satirical and very incisive short stories like “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” about virtual reality and cultural tourism, and the fantasy-horror "Harvest."

Micaiah Johnson - her multiverse-hopping novel The Space Between Worlds plays with alternate universes and alternate selves in a continuously creative and interesting way! The setup doesn’t take the easy premise that one universe is our own recognizable one that opens up onto strange alternate universes—even the main character’s home universe is wildly different in speculative ways, with the MC coming from a Mad Max-esque desert community abandoned to the elements, while working for the universe-travel company within the climate-controlled walled city where the rich and well-connected live and work. Also, it’s unabashedly gay. 

And if you like audiobooks and audio fiction (I listened to The Space Between Worlds as an audiobook, it’s good), then Jordan Cobb is someone you should check out. She does sci-fi/horror/thriller audio drama. Her works include Janus Descending, a lyrical and eerie sci-fi horror about a small research expedition to a distant planet and how it went so, so wrong; and Descendants, the sequel about its aftermath. She also has Primordial Deep, about a research expedition to the deep undersea, to investigate the apparent re-emergence of a lot of extinct prehistoric sea creatures. She’s a writer/producer I like, and always follow her new releases. Her detailed prose, minimal casts  (especially in Janus Descending), good audio quality, and full-series supercuts make these welcoming to audiobook fans. 

-

Nalo Hopkinson - a writer who should be considered nearly as foundational as Octavia Butler, honestly. A novelist and short story writer with a wide variety of sci-fi, dystopian futures, fairy-tale horror, gods and epics, and space Carnival, drawing heavily from her Caribbean experiences and aesthetics.

Tananarive Due - fantastical/horror. Immortals, vampires, curses, altered reality, unnerving mystery. Also has written a lot of books.

Andrea Hairston - creative and otherworldly, weird and bisexual, with mindscapes and magic and aliens. 

Helen Oyeyemi - I haven’t read her work but she comes highly recommended by a friend. A novelist and short story writer, most of her work leans fairytale fantastical-horror. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a collection of short fiction and recc’ed to me as her best work. White is for Witching is a well-regarded haunted house novel. 

Ashia Monet - indie author, writer of The Black Veins, pitched as “the no-love-interest, found family adventure you’ve been searching for.” Magic road trip! Possibly YA? I’m not positive. 

-

This also doesn’t include Black non-binary sff authors I’ve read and liked like An Owomoyela, C. L. Polk, and Rivers Solomon. And this is specifically about adult sff books, so I didn’t include Black women YA sff authors like Kalynn Bayron, Tomi Adeyemi, Tracy Deonn, Justina Ireland, or Alechia Dow, though they’re writing fantasy and sci-fi in the YA world too.

And a lot of short stories are out there in the online magazine world, where so many up and coming authors get their start, and established ones explore offbeat and new ideas.  Pick up an issue (or a subscription!) of FIYAH magazine for the most current Black speculative writing.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: Dear Chappell Roan... | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: To mark the October 7th anniversary, we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East. And the way I'd like to begin that process is by addressing an open letter to Chappell Roan.

Now, to those viewers who aren't watching this while also looking at their phones, let me explain. Chappell Roan is not the name of one of Tru.mp's golf courses, she's actually a great new recording artist who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing up. In just a few months, she went from a struggling artist to getting three billion plays on Spotify. Netting her almost 11 cents.

But here's what caught my eye. She seems like a Gen Zer who can be reached, because I saw her on TMZ say: "it's like, obviously, fuck the policies of the right. But also, fuck some of the policies on the left." That sounds like something I would say!

She also said, "I think it's important that people use critical thinking. I think it's important for me to… question myself… question my algorithm, question: is some person that tweeted something about someone else even true?" Preach, queer ally, preach.

But then we get to Israel, and Chappell, this is where we must put to the test your pledge to use critical thinking and to question whether what you're reading on social media is true. Because it isn't. There's a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans aren't hearing about. So, why don't you let me be your spirit guide through this?

But before I do, let me tell you a little about myself, since you may have no idea who I am, considering that when this show went on the air you were barely old enough to be told you were in the wrong body. So, my name is Bill Maher, I'm 35. I've been to all of Diddy's freak-off parties, and I work at the same place as Euphoria. In fact, she's right down the hall. My TikTok handle is "B-Nasty" and I go live every Friday night with the anime filter on, and I once won a smoke-off against Willie Nelson, Woody Harelson and Snoop. Okay, that one's true.

But, no, look the truth be told, I'm a baby boomer, I remember phone-booths and cars with ashtrays and vaginal sex. And I didn't learn about the Middle East from TikTok, which is a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to have America's youth hating America. That's some of that algorithm stuff you say you want to look into.

Now, first off, the fact that you don't know much history isn't your fault. You live in the United States where the schools stop doing that whole "teaching facts" thing a while ago. But getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.

I know you're moved by what you see on there, we all are. The dead Palestinian bodies. But it's odd that your generation didn't seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7th. You killed at Coachella this year, but when Hamas kills at a music festival it's a whole other thing. Doesn't the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews "colonizers." But colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area, like when Spain conquered the Mayans. Or when your mom took over Facebook.

When the Dutch took over South Africa, they had no history to the land, they just wanted it. But Israel is the Jews homeland. And Jews have always lived there, I cap you not. You can look it up. It's in this book called The Bible, which is horribly wrong about sex ed, slavery, science and cooking, but the archaeology checks out. It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed, and sure as shit, you can still go there and touch it. Calling Jews colonizers in Israel is like calling Native Americans colonizers here. It's ridiculous.

Chappell, did you know that for 2,000 years, Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three star rating? Nobody wanted it. And there was never any Arab country called "Palestine." It was an orphan province, and if you ask people what they thought about it back then, they'd say it gave them the ick.

But after World War II, and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country so that for once they could defend themselves.

And the UN - we like them, right? Yeah, they agreed, and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples. One side agreed to that. But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal. They said, "how about we keep it all and wipe you out?"

Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the midwest, try the Mid East. You're a female drag queen and you sing, "I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner, your parents at the table." Yeah, that wouldn't fly in Gaza. Although you would, straight off a roof. The same goes for, "knee deep in the passenger seat and you're eating me out." Yeah, my guess is the morality police would figure out that one's not about the drive-thru and kill your featherboa wearing ass. You know when you sing that LA is where "boys and girls can all be queens every single day"? You're welcome, but offer not good in the West Bank.

Chappell, you're not wrong that oppression is bad or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed. You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing. Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza. The Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist mafia that took over Iran. ISIS is a terrorist mafia that took over Iraq. The Taliban is a terrorist mafia that took over Afghanistan. These are the oppressors and when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them. You enable them.

The Iranian regime has killed 600 protesters after a 22-year-old woman died in police custody following her arrest for the crime of wearing her head covering incorrectly. Just to be clear, that's your team. Iran is who sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with?

Meryl Streep spoke at the UN recently and said this about the Taliban, who are only slightly more conservative than your heroes in Hamas. She said, "today in Kabul a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today… A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not." You're a singer and you're advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under.

Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong kind of is.

==

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/achievement/

Baseline: NAEP Proficient

And this is just US History. Now consider proficiency in World History.

Having watched the full video, I've come to the conclusion that Chappell Roan is a window-licking weapons-grade ignorant moron. What's more concerning is that her fans will uncritically parrot her ignorant, ahistorical politics just because they like her music.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/black-sheep-empire-actors-actresses-ancient-rome-0010292

The ancient Greeks loved the theater and ancient Greek actors enjoyed a position of eminence and respect. In contrast, although entertainment and drama were similarly adored in Ancient Rome, theater performers were often demeaned by the upper-class society and also perceived as morally unclean.

We need to go back to this.

[robotpussy]

i was just about to watch this video by Cheyenne Lin

Avatar and the Wh*te Imagination (or lack thereof)

about the limits of white imagination and how evident it is in the Avatar movies, and it just reminded me that james cameron worked with an ethnomusicologist, Dr Wanda Bryant, to make music for the na'vi because he wanted something that "would sound like nothing we’ve ever heard on earth" then he decided what was made was too otherworldly and decided that their music should just be what white people would call "alien" and ethnic, aka, whatever music exists in African, Asian and Native American cultures (and that was the final result).

Originally there were many influences coming from all over the globe, but when Cameron listened to the demos, he claimed it was too recognisable as well as too 'weird', albeit for white people and just pushed for a more 'down to earth' version. Avatar is evidence of the continuation of generalized exoticism and stereotyping still being a driving force in Hollywood

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a segment from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"In our initial phone conversation, Horner asked me to find unusual musical sounds that “no one has heard before,” by which he really meant sounds not readily recognizable by the average American movie-goer as belonging to a specific culture, time period, or geographical location"

/END ID]

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a paragraph from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"Through a process of elimination we came up with 25 workable possibilities, including examples of Swedish cattle herding calls, folk dance songs from the Naga people of Northeast India, Vietnamese and Chinese traditional work songs, greeting songs from Burundi, Celtic and Norwegian medieval laments, Central African vocal polyphony, Persian tahrir, microtonal works by Scelsi, the Finnish women’s group Vârttinä, personal songs from the Central Arctic Inuit, and brush dances from northern California. None was an exact blueprint of what we were seeking, but each had at least one interesting musical device or characteristic that we could utilize. In some cases, it was a timbre that we might hope to mimic; in other cases, it may have been a song structure, an ornamentational style, or interesting intonation."

/END ID]

[IMAGE ID: A screenshot of a paragraph from the journal entry written by ethnomusicologist, Dr Bryant discussing the process of creating the music for the avatar films that reads:

"Horner then met with Jim Cameron for his input on our musical ideas. Cameron is a very hands-on director and wants to be kept in the loop about all major decisions. Most of the ideas we presented were dismissed by Cameron out of hand, rejected with appropriately blue language as either too recognizable (“Oh, that’s Bulgarian”) or just “too fucking weird!” Half a dozen examples were approved as possibilities."

/END ID]

You can read the full article here:

There is also a video by sideways that discusses this (if you don't want to read):

[timetravellingkitty]

hi!! I just found out about tumblr having an anti-hindutva tag and I shall be making myself comfortable here! just found your account like a few mins ago and if it’s ok, i wanted to ask some questions (you absolutely don't have to answer if you don't like any of them or even if you don't feel like answering :) ) (edit added, this ask got way too long lol. feel free to skip it! also, you're kinda super cool lol)

I'm Indian, currently outside India, and I've only started learning about the shitshow going on in my 'mahaan bharat' since November (specifically since finding out that we are Irahell's biggest weapons buyer). and the more I find out the more shocked and heartbroken I feel...

like this week i learnt about the immigration ban in US against Chinese women that existed a few decades ago, and the ongoing discrimination against Palestinians in Canadian immigration services... and both the times I was so disgusted and there was this subconscious feeling that India should never be like that. but then an hour ago I learnt about the 2019 CAA and wtf!?

another example being that currently we're seeing israhell's continuous bombing of heritage sites of great cultural and religious significance, that also held so many centuries old records and histories... and learning about how they are bulldozing over graveyards and exhuming them...

and then today I learnt about Akhonji Masjid and Gyanvapi Masjid and of course have known about Babri Masjid for a few weeks now...

and only learnt about Kashmir in november...

and I feel like my whole worldview has shifted from a previous foundation, except it's so drastic and I still don't have a new foundation...

I try to talk to members of my family about this but they're the Indian equivalent of the U.S. liberals, and every single time they'll tell me "whatever news you're hearing is propaganda written by Pakistan/China/U.S./Russia. trust me I have Muslim friends and they're very happy. you just don't know the situation cause you're not in India" and like it sometimes make me think maybe I'm the one losing my mind...

I even read some places about free Punjab and that confused the fuck out of me cause I'm Punjabi (who does not live in Punjab) and I don't have any clue what it's about... I asked my fam, but they just gave me a weird look and told me to stay away from anyone that mentions Khalistan😭💀

(this got way longer than I expected, so sorry) but would you have any recommendations for any blogs/articles/books/podcast resources or any personal recommendations for news publications that are reliable (finding God would probably be easier than finding such publications lmao) like I thought Al-Jazeera is super credible, but then read that they're super credible when it comes to Palestine, not when it's global...

like where tf do I go from here lol

hello nonnie! some news sites I'd recommend are newslaundry (they have a youtube channel too), the wire, scroll.in and newsclick. maktoob media is mostly focused on minority rights in india. hindutvawatch.org is about hindu fascist violence committed against minorities. I still think you should stick to al-jazeera at least when it comes to palestine (they have journalists on the ground there, shireen abu akleh was one of them)

this is a good introduction to anyone wanting to learn about hindutva, this and this are about how india is becoming increasingly unsafe for minorites and is undergoing a democratic backsliding. this and this are about the rss link to nazism

hostile homelands by azad essa is about india's historical relationship with israel and the parallels between hindutva and zionism. the brown history podcast has an episode about how india went from the first non-arab state to recognise palestine to its largest buyer of weapons, featuring azad essa (x). you can also read colonising kashmir by hafsa kanjwal about how india came to militarily occupy kashmir. if you want to learn more about kashmir there are the blogs kashmiraction.org and standwithkashmir (which is um. blocked in india. i wonder why)

i have not read khaki shorts and saffron flags yet but this one is about the history of the rss. i also suggest watching the documentaries ram ke naam and jai bhim, comrade which are about the hindutva mobilisation in the 1980s

for me free punjab is very ?? the indian government is beyond evil as they continue to spy on sikhs abroad (and ofc, the 1984 sikh genocide) but i don't think liberation will be achieved through a religious ethnostate. any state formed on the basis of religion will inevitably turn out to be a disaster. i do encourage you to read lost in history: 1984 reconstructed by gunisha kaur, which is about the human rights violations committed against sikhs during this time and why operation bluestar was in fact not about freeing sri harmandir sahib from "terrorists." all i can say is to stand with sikhs unapologetically as our shitass government continues to commit more and more human rights violations against them

in general, i'd tell you to observe the language used by different news outlets and question it (eg. american news referring to israelis below the age of 18 as children but the same courtesy is not extended to palestinians) and check their sources. if it's from whatsapp university don't even bother

[msmargaretmurry]

hi i’m sorry super random question — i love your writing, and i was wondering if you had any fav books to recommend? i’m trying to read more lately!! thank you so much!!! 💖

no apologies necessary and thank you so much!! yay for reading more! i have so many books i love and usually i would try to tailor recommendations to someone's interests so i will just try to give a little smorgasbord here.

under the cut please find a very long list of recs; i hope there are a few that sound appealing to you! if there are things you like to have content warnings for and can't tell from the goodreads listing, feel free to message me to ask! 💕

literary/contemporary fiction

beartown by fredrik backman: this is the hockey novel, imo. somehow backman captures everything hockey is — violence, entitlement, racism, privilege, misogyny — while still writing a breathtaking story about people who love the sport and people who unwillingly get caught up in its wake. there are two sequels, which i haven't read yet solely because i'm afraid of how many feelings they'll make me feel.

the secret history by donna tartt: yes, the og dark academia book. moody, atmospheric, and pretentious, i feel like it's a you-love-it-or-hate-it, and i love it. a delicious critique of elitist academia even while filled with morsels for classics-loving nerds. fantastic, deeply fucked-up characters.

station eleven by emily st john mandell: not sure if reading this during a pandemic was the best idea, but it certainly added something to the experience. i love emily st john mandell's prose, and the post-pandemic-apocalypse world she builds feels simultaneously fantastical and painfully real.

evvie drake starts over by linda holmes: this is the perfect example of what i want in a contemporary romance novel. deeply character-driven, sweet, achy, lovely.

historical fiction

in memoriam by alice winn: oh man oh man. we read this one for book club last month and it blew me away. brutal, devastating, romantic.

how much of these hills is gold by c pam zhang: really loved how this book brought a new lens to the American western/frontier story, loved how it blended Chinese mythology into the story, loved how it unflinchingly did race and gender in ways that felt both illuminating and historically true.

the island of sea women by lisa see: i love lisa see's historical fiction because she does a shitload of research and weaves it into her stories in ways that don't feel like infodumping. on top of her being an excellent writer, i always feel like i've learned something.

the book thief by markus zusak: just a masterclass in point of view. made me ugly cry in public.

the nickel boys by colson whitehead: i mean, colson whitehead is just so good. harrowing, atmospheric, and smart, the characters and story feel absolutely real in the best and worst ways.

fantasy/sci-fi

the radiant emperor duology by shelley parker-chan: man, this duology is one of the best fucking things i've read in the past few years. kind of an alternate-history 14th-century china, now with more magic and more gender. brutal and delicious. morally gray everything.

the farseer trilogy and the liveship traders trilogy by robin hobb: these were my favorite books as a teen and i've recently been rereading them (i'm finally on the third book of the second trilogy!) and having such a good time. structurally they're very classic high fantasy but i think hobb is so fucking good at worldbuilding and characters.

the left hand of darkness by ursula k. leguin: look, it's a classic for a reason! i will say if you start it and you feel kind of lost: stick with it, slow down, and be patient. the pov character is a stranger in a strange land and you feel every bit of that. another masterclass in point of view.

tuyo by rachel neumeier: i love reccing this book because it's just a random self-published fantasy novel that one of the gals in my book club found somehow and it wound up being super fun? the worldbuilding is fun, the culture clash is tense (and fun), and i feel like the concept of a "tuyo" could do numbers as a fanfic trope if people got on board!

the thief by megan whalen turner: another great book for pov!!! just a really fun and satisfying read (and pretty short, if you need something short!). the rest of the series is also very good and worth reading but none of it hit quite as hard for me as this first book, possibly because the first book is just so excellent.

young adult/middle grade

on the come up by angie thomas: this is specifically an audiobook rec. i'm sure this book is also good reading with your eyes, but it's about a teen girl who wants to be a rapper, and i think being able to hear the rhythm of the language, esp the rapping itself, makes for a fantastic audiobook experience.

the westing game by ellen raskin: another classic for a reason!! one of the smartest books out there, a joy to read for the first time at any age.

michigan vs the boys by carrie s. allen: the thing is, i usually i find first person present tense so annoying it's nigh unreadable, but i found this book about a teen girl having to play on her high school's boys' hockey team after they cut funding to the girls' program so charming and compulsively readable. bonus points that the author really knows her hockey!

darius the great is not okay by adib khorram: even just thinking about this book puts a lump in my throat lmao. just a beautiful coming of age story that deals with identity and depression and belonging and family and more.

the loneliest girl in the universe by lauren james: pretty sure i tore through this book in one sitting. great sci-fi setting and sense of creeping dread.

a wrinkle in time by madeleine l'engle: another classic for a reason, lol. including it on this list because it is actually my favorite book. l'engle has such a special touch with writing — it's so full of heart. as a kid one of the things i loved about this book was that it didn't dumb any of its sophisticated worldbuilding and characterization down for me, which i think is a great lesson for a writer.

memoir-ish

they can't kill us until they kills us by hanif abdurraqib: hanif is the GOAT and i recommend anything he's written, but this book of essays about music, culture, and hanif's life is easily my favorite of his work.

a ghost in the throat by doireann ní ghríofa: stunningly original mix of personal essay, poetry, history — i'm not even sure how to describe it. but it floored me.

in the dream house by carmen maria machado: speaking of creeping dread!!! many people have said many smart things about how good this book is so i will simply say they are all extremely correct.

sports nonfiction

the boys in the boat by daniel james brown: a gorgeously written love letter to rowing juxtaposed hauntingly against the rise of hitler. i have not seen the movie, but there's no way it could be as good as the book.

bottom of the 33rd by dan barry: possibly this is a baseball book for baseball people, but i loved every meandering moment of this lovingly written microhistory of the longest baseball game ever played.

the last best league by jim collins: another baseball book, sorry, baseball books are so good. this one's about the amateur league on cape cod where the best college players play in the summer. a great august read imo.

impossible owls: essays by brian phillips: a sprawling book of sportswriting from a former grantland writer. i read it five years ago and still think about it sometimes

other nonfiction

forget the alamo by bryan burrough, chris tomlinson, & jason standford: i made myself pick only ONE history nonfiction for this list because otherwise we'd be here all day. but this one is so good, especially if you're interested in the making and unmaking of american mythology.

empire of pain by patrick radden keefe: i do actually recommend anything prk writes, but this book on the sacklers' evil pharmaceutical empire is both timely and exhaustively reported. another audiobook rec as well, because prk reads it himself and you can hear the disdain in his voice.

because internet: understanding the new rules of language by gretchen mcculloch: really fun read about the development of online dialect and language! at five entire years old it's already a smidge out of date, but still so enjoyable.

[gacha-incels]

Not gacha but psa Black Myth Wukong is made by a bunch of incels. One of the key developers had publicly stated that he think women are dragging the game industry down and souls like games should be for men only. The company never acknowledge this behavior and uses sexual innuendos as hiring ads. Chinese incels spend a lot of time going around both weibo and twitter harassing women who express negative opinion on the game as well as threatened refund and review bomb when the studio censored one of its female character's design.

Don't give the studio ur money and if anyone you know decide they want to play even after knowing the studio doesn't see women as people be careful around them.

Here's some context for eng speaker

https://www.ign.com/articles/how-black-myth-wukong-developers-history-of-sexism-is-complicating-its-journey-to-the-west

Thank you, I would advise everyone read the article as it’s a good overview on the entire thing and gives the reader some information about feminism in China. There would be a lot for me to post everything here, I’ll post a couple screenshots and encourage everyone to give it a read. I hope everyone will not support these extremely misogynist men.

BEYOND parody. Like a lot of these kinds of guys, he sees men as fellow humans with emotions- depression, anger, pain. Manly emotions women cannot understand I guess. He sees the games that cater to these men as worthwhile. He sees women as not human- their personality is that they are girls. They will play the sellout crap you make and spend money frivolously to make their friends jealous. He thinks this is biological for some reason. I guess I should have consulted my uterus before playing “bloodbath” games like Bloodborne 😂 I swear inside of his head must be one of those toy aisles where every pink thing is on one side and blue on the other…

[sherylhooper]

There's a reason that even tho my country and my people push very hard to have us included in Europe, and discard everything that make us similar to Asia, I don't count myself as just European but more Asian, because our country is moatly located in Asia and also because the Silk Road and other Asian coutries' culture is very similar to us. That's the conversation for another time tho but when someone reads this, I want them to know that foreigners may call us white because of our skin color (even tho my ethnicity is very diverse 😒) but they still always count us as Asians because we aren't white and European enough for them.

What I want to say with that is that as much as I like that damnei, and especially MXTX books became popular, western people with their idiotic ideas make my skin crawl.

Unpopular opinion here but Wen remnants weren't innocent just because they haven't done what Wen Ruohan did. If someone doesn't something horrible, doesn't make them innocent and good. This is why I can't stand western people. Someone made a tiktok about how horrible Jiang Cheng was for leading the siege against Wei Wuxian and how horrible he was and how heroic WWX is and I wanted to make something very very clear.

MXTX herself very clearly wrote during Sunshot campaign that "no Wen took Sunshot Campaign seriously". Here it doesn't say that every Wen, besides Wen Qing and Wen Ning and Wen Qing's branch, took Sunshot Campaign seriously. No, she very clearly wrote what she wrote. People assume way too much that Wen Qing couldn't leave Wen Ruohan's side. I'm sorry but yes, yes, she could, She could've taken Wen Ning with her, gone to Lan Xichen or Nie Mingjiu and given up as a prisoner, but she didn't.

The fact very much remains: neither she, nor Wen Ning or others gave up on Wen Rouhan. They clearly expected him to win (and he was very much winning before WWX turned up with undead army and turned the tides.).

Now I want to address another thing and it's called POW, i.e. what Wen Remnants were.

The phrase, Prisoner of War for the first time, has been used in 1610 but the idea of losing side of war being "either slaughtered of enslaved" has been there since ancient times: Romans, Greeks, Turk Sejuks, Turk Ottomans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, etc. They all have taken people from losing side of war as prisoners.

Now I want to adress what these POW were used as - "Typically, victors made little distinction between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although they were more likely to spare women and children. Sometimes the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a practixe known as raptio."

My people were part of raptio many times, as our enemies captured women from my country because they were beautiful and they wanted to "verbessern" (improve) their blood and bred them for that purpose as disgusting as it sounds, this is a very reason why many foreign leaders in history, especially in Asia, had my people as grandmas or mothers, most of the time unwillingly and my people also took their own life before that kind of fate would befall on them too.

That was what happened to women prisoners after war most of the time, as for men, they were used to work manually almost every time for their captors.

Now, as much as Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun make me very very angry, (not because how they acted against Wens but because they were simply disgusting people) they weren't wrong to take Wen Remnants in and make them work manually till they died (what could be argued that Jin Zixun was wrong in following that bat and capturing and impriaoning WN and his group during nighthunt). If everything WWX acting the way he acted was abnormal. He literally stole and freed them and went to the enemy's side.

Here is where I want people reading this to forget their western opinions and Geneva Convention (which was created in 1949 AFTER two world wars.). I know that most of them and their countries have never been to war in near history (USA involvement in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in iran, in many other countries doesn't count and neither does WW1 and WW2), have never had their people expeciance genoc!de so I want them to shut their mouth and listen to us, who have had wars at the hands oppressors and colonizators for more than 2000 years, yes two thousand years, who have experienced genoc!de multiple times. Even nowdays 20% of my country is occupied by our oppressors and we had 2 wars in last 32 years also at the hands of them. In 1992-1993 and in 1998 my people experienced ethnic cleansing alongside with our allies at the hands of Russians. And last war we had was in 2008, which I remember very well and it was hardly a war and more likely bombing the civilians!

Keep that in mind that I actually was in Jiang Cheng's shoes and understand that I also have a sibling. If, God above forbid, my sibling after what happened to us, got up, defected and went to Russians side, I'd kill that traitor with my own two fucking hands!!

Does people even understand what kind of bullshit they are speaking when they say that WWX was actually not wrong to take "innocent" Wens' side? There was no such thing as innocent people there!! They were elders, sure, but you can't make me believe that if they were younger they wouldn't fight in that war or that WRH wouldn't force them to fight. Did anyone from Wen Remnants say "oh, Wen Ruohan was such a bad person, we weren't actually on his side even tho we never defected during the war but just because we have done nothing against others, we are innocent". That doesn't work like that. They couldn't have been innocent when they stayed by WRH's side in the war!! At best, they simply were indifferent in it! They alao profited from war. Funding, medicine, etc have to come from somewhere, right?

Now I want to adress Wen Ning and Wen Qing and why I don't particulary care about them. Wen Qing was a healer, we have to understand that today's medical ethics that was created by Thomas Percival, is different from what physicians thought was correct in antient times, especially in ancient China.

"The traditional Chinese medical ethics emphasized heavily on physician's morality and set high standarts for medical practice. To summarie the ideas in these historical works, the phyaicians nuat rescue every like without any preconditions."

At that time there was no such thing as patient's automony. For that reason we can't fault WQ when she performed the golden core transplatation. She just did what WWX asked her.

There'a one thing that I'm gonna argue tho. When WQ and WN saved Jiang Cheng from other Wens, WQ told WWX that their debt from now on was null and void.

So when people say that Jiang Cheng should've always be in debt with her, is actually not correct. I also want to argue that she trully only cared for her brother. When she fell on her knees in front of WWX, she only wanted him to save Wen Ning. Nowhere did she say "oh, Jin clan is treating my branch so horrible, we all want to save ourselves. Help me save them."

Now about Wen Ning. He is a guy who has no other personality than just being m nice. He helped JC and WWX after Jiang Sect annihilation and that was also because he was nice. He is just a nice guy, nothing more, nothing less. He just exists to be "just nice guy".

I can't seem to force myself to care about him.

Someone on above mentioned tiktok commented and I quote:

"there is nothing jc went through that was significantly worse than what others went through yet people baby him so much 🙄 sry i don’t like mr genocide everyone"

The tiktok author replied:

"NO FR like “he lost his family” hate to break it to u bud but so did like. Everyone else … it was kind of a war,,,"

Did I read it correctly or did they simply compared Jiang Sect Genocide to people losing one or two relatives in the war??

The author in their bio had "free Palestine". Unfortunatelly that comment here clearly speaks that they don't actually care about anyone's genocide and they probably only do it for the trend.

Apparently these people also think that Jiang Cheng hunted down that tortured "pure innocent Demonic Cultivators for fun".

Are they dumb or do they trully think that these Demonic Cultivators all were like WWX and not blood-hungry like Xue Yang?? The only remotelly normal Demonic Cultivator was WWX!! Nowhere did MXTX say, even in interviews that JC hunted Demonic Cultivators for fun! Some people have never read a book in their life and it shows!

Especially when they act as if WWX was second coming of Jesus and has never done anything wrong.

First of all, WWX did, in fact, have an army in Burial Mounds, the army of undead, fierce corpses and ghosts. That army may not have Wen Remnants, but it was still an army! Also wasn't WWX the one who wrote death threats with his own blood and sent them different sects? He, obviously, wasn't in right mind at that time but he really was the threat to the Jianghu. He was arrogant and, what we know is that Jiang Cheng led the siege (please, remember that we also hear that from other people - who love rumors and speculation and etc. We don't know for sure if JC led the siege or not.).

WWX did betray him. He left him alone when he took Wen Remnants. They were brothers!! What kind of older brother abandons their little sibling? Wei Ying also indirectly caused Jiang YanLi's death. Mind you, Wei Ying didn't die on the same day as JYL, but three months later.

That alone left Jiang Cheng trully alone with a newborn nephew!!

It's a wonder he didn't go out of his mind.

Just because WWX suffered doesn't mean other people, especially Jiang Cheng didn't lose everything in the world. He had to revive a dead sect with his two very hands in his early twenties.

Some people also don't understand what kind of power vacuum Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan's deaths created! Take cultivation out of the novel and you are left with 5 big sect with Sect Leaders who are like the kings in their own land! People pay taxes here canonically. Do some people trully believe that Yumeng Jiang would remain untouched when there was no Jiang Sect left to rule it? Jin Guangshan and other sects, big or small, would start fighting over the land. Jiang Cheng had more problems at his hands than caring about leftover Wens and the problems that Wei Wuxian created because at that time, when he stole Wens from Jin Sect, he was still a part of AND the Head Disciple of Jiang Sect 🤌🏻

Wen Ruohan wiped out one of the 5 big sects and he may have done the same if Wei Wuxian didn't insult Wen Chao, but he indirectly gave Wen Chao the reason to hate Jiang Sect even more than his father's brainwashing and people think it's not that important.

People also genuinely hate Lan Xichen because he never cared about Wen Remnants enough to take them in or save them 🤦‍♀️

Wei Wuxian should also have cared enough for his sect to at least help JC revive it or something as his Head Disciple. Him giving JC his golden core meant nothing at that time, I said what I said! Especially because he didn't know! 🤷‍♀️ I blame Jiang Fengmian for raising him all highty and mighty and lone wolf or smt, but that's the discussion of another time.

I trully believe that some people read the novel with their eyes closed! This here is exactly why I hate westerns so much when they seriously think that JC is the worst character and hate him more than Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangyao/Meng Yao and Jin Guangshan 🤌🏻

MDZS fandom is clearly very toxic and I'm very glad I'm not a part of it. I'll stay in my SVSSS bubble for eternity.

P.S. just so I can make something very clear. The Siege didn't happen because of Wen Remnants as Jin Zixun allowed WWX to take them away, but because WWX killed Jin Zixuan, who was a sect heir and also husband of his Shijie. Wen Ning killed him indirectly, WWX had no control over his abilities, he was powerfull but with no control and his mind was deteriorating at that time. He was a danger to the cultivation world. Siege happened because of him, against him, and Wen Remnants died as a colletal demage. Morally right or wrong, what he created was a political disaster and it ended with every Wen, excluding WN and Wen Yuan, and with himself dead!

UPDATE. someone from China reblogged this post and called me quite horrible things, but that's okay. They also questioned if my people have even gove thro genocide at all. Okay, denial of my people's genocide is not new either. What they said next was that Siege of Burrial Mounds was a genocide of Wen Remnants. No, actually it wasn't. They died as an collateral demage because Wei Wuxian was there, that's the tragedy. I'm gonna repeat once again, Siege happened because of WWX, not because of Wens.

Another thing what they said is that people have empathy that I lack and I'm a horrible person for that, and I should be ashamed for even thinking that or that I'm Chinese literature to spread my hate, etc, etc.

My empathy died when things such these happened to my people.

Mind you, this is only one, one single city and it's not even the whole list of crimes they have done. I'm gonna find and update this post once again, cuz it's clear that I need to spread awereness, I won't let their names be forgotten...

Today the remains of 12 people, who were considered as "lost during war", were found and transferred to my country for burial and it was very emotional as many remains still haven't been found after 30+ years yet and people still hope that there could be even a single bone found and returned so they can bury it.

So, yeah, I bury whatever empathy I have left with the remains of people everytime something like this happens. Every time people deny the genocide of my people, every time these people call US colonizers and many degrading things, saying that we oppressed them when in reality it was other way around, when we couldn't speak our language, when they called it the "dog's language" and and laughed at it, couldn't get any service if we spoke it and they mockingly told us to speak "human language", which to them was Russian, WE were oppressed in our own country and land and they took everything from us and made the world believe that we were oppressors and colonizers, they even stole the name of our region for themselves....

And no one in the world did anything about this because they didn't care. So no, everytime I'll always imagine myself in JC's shoes that I'm asked to care about ethnic Russians and Apsuas, I simply can't care, don't care and won't even care unless justice is served, unless all the land they have stolen is returned, unless they all apologize for what they have done and stop spreading lies about us....

So, good for you, if you have empathy and are a better person, unfortunately, I am not...