#mxtx diaspora may

[mxtxdiaspora-may]

MXTX Diaspora May is back for 2024!

MXTX Diaspora May is an event in which Chinese diaspora creators come together to share the diverse aspects of Chinese culture, as well as connect with each other over lived experiences.

Through the promotion and creation of these fanworks, we hope to encourage thoughtful self-reflection throughout the broader fandom, especially with regard to embracing cultural humility and dismantling structures and behaviors that allow racism to flourish, both in fandom and in real life.

Support of MXTX Diaspora May will go a long way towards creating a more inclusive and open climate in our shared online spaces, especially for creators who rarely get their voices heard in the English-speaking side of fandom. We aim to uplift the unique voices and stories of our participants, and we encourage anyone who enjoys works from this event to share in the celebration of Chinese culture from Chinese creators.

Any creator with Chinese heritage may participate in MXTX Diaspora May. Event rules and work requirements may be found at the link below.

Please note one major change from last year: all works must be complete at the time of posting. We will not accept works-in-progress into our collection.

Event Rules & FAQ

Our prompts this year are based on 四象, the Four Symbols, also known as the Four Guardians, Four Gods, or Four Auspicious Beasts. You can find an overview of the Four Symbols on wiki.

Sub-prompts for the event will be posted soon.

Are you a creator of Chinese heritage who's ready to sign up for this event? Please fill out the sign-up form below!

You will receive a discord link to the event server after you complete the form. Please make sure to join the discord server to connect with fellow event participants and receive event announcements and updates.

Sign-ups will run from March 17, 2024 to April 9, 2024.

Sign-Up Form

Signal Boost!

Reblogs and signal boosts for this event are welcome from both participants and non-participants. Please feel free to boost on bluesky and twitter as well.

Feel free to check out our collections from previous years. Comments and kudos are always appreciated by creators!

2021 (MDZS only)

2022

2023

We look forward to sharing and celebrating everyone's works from the 2024 event!

[wangxianficrecs]

Hello, since you have the option of boosting fandom events, I thought that I could ask you whether you know of any writing events that I could sign up for. Maybe there is something coming up in the future that I can keep track of and sign up when it opens? I was following a fandom tracker but they haven’t updated in a year and I don’t follow any other accounts aside from yours. Thank you for your help!

Hi!

I took a look at MDZS Events over on BlueSky and also at @mdzs-fandom-events (who have a very neat up-to-date calender) to see what's currently happening and here are some upcoming events/sign-ups:

Qin Su Week 2024: April 29 - May 5 (no sign-ups needed)

ZhanChengXian Interest Check: March 11 - April 1

MXTX Chinese Diaspora Event May 2024 Sign-Ups: March 17 - April 9

MXTX Monsterfucker Week: March 24 - March 30 (no sign-ups needed)

Sweet & Spicy Wen Ning Day: April 1 - April 11 (no sign-ups needed)

MDZS Reverse Big Bang Writer's Sign-Ups: March 17 - March 24.

The MXTX Food Zine also still accepts submissions. Reach out to @mxtxfoodzine for more information!

MDZS Gotcha for Gaza: March 24 - March 30

If anyone else is aware of any events that are currently happening/which have their sign-ups open soon, make sure to comment! I hope you'll find something that interests you, dear nonny.

~Mod Kay

[tavina-writes]

A Visit In May

My work for this year's @mxtxdiaspora-may !

[aoxue]

on the wild nights, who can call you home? (T, 16k)

🌿 Syncretic cultivators/monster hunters songxiao 🌿 Southern USA, early 1900s 🌿 A-Qing and her secrets 🌿 Case fic/adoption fic

Summer is not yet come, but the sun burns hot, and the air is thick with moisture. New Orleans, delta built and water bound, thirsts for the respite of rain. While working on a case of disappearances in the bayous of Louisiana, cultivators and monster hunters Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen meet a young girl who will change their lives.

Written for @mxtxdiaspora-may 2024! It was lovely getting to participate this year <3

[drpanda99]

Reflections on AAPI May and Fandom Racism

I started this entry when I was still feeling really hurt and angry from some stuff that happened early in the month. I’ve since cooled down and have read the beautiful reflections written by the mods of MXTX Diaspora May, so I plan to write about my experience as a creator instead.

Cut for length!

The What

MXTX Diaspora May was started in 2021 to celebrate Chinese diaspora creators and to elevate own-voice works after a number of fandom racism incidents happened. I wasn’t around MDZS fandom at the time of the initial creation of the collection, but I found some of the works when I was lurking on AO3 and reading.

After reading one of the fics, I felt like I was coming home for the first time. Up until that moment, I had not experienced seeing my own experiences and struggles mirrored in fic at all. Many of the works dealt with the idea of feeling “not enough” to be any of our identities - not Chinese enough, not North American enough, not anything enough. I had never felt as seen as I had reading those fic. In days, I read through as much of the collection as I could and I managed to find the Danmei Diaspora Creatives collection and the discord server. Up until then, I felt like I was a single lurker awash in the vast ocean of fandom - there were so many fics and so many creators of such talent that I felt like I my own voice wouldn’t make a difference or perhaps, that it wouldn’t matter. I was someone who spent years being in love with writing, but never feeling like I could ever be good enough - I had felt like a lost a part of my creativity and my mind felt empty of fiction. That’s part of why I started with podfic - it felt better reading someone else’s words rather than my own.

I lurked around the Diaspora discord for quite a while before I felt comfortable talking. But once I did, I realized that there was a whole group of people out there who were like me - normal people with normal lives who had lived through the experience of being forever tied to our motherland through our appearance despite being separated for years or even generations. The Diaspora collection means so much to me because it was a chance to see people like me in the works I consume, something that was incredibly rare and entirely absent as I was growing up.

The Why

I can’t really reflect about fandom without talking about my own life and how I got here.

I found fandom initially when I was very young and feeling very isolated. I was a visibly Chinese kid in a school full of white kids and I had only been in North America for about 3 years. My English was bad and I didn’t have many friends except the other Asian kids, partially because that was expected of me. I think I was pretty quiet and internally focused - I was really struggling with family stuff, but I never had the words to tell anyone else. In the end, I turned to fandom as an escape when I was feeling the most lost and alone. I remember spending many days and many nights reading through as much as I could find voraciously so I could feel and be someone else. Fiction became a magical place that could transport me into any life or any story in an instant. The endless nature of fan fiction kept me coming back for more; some days, the only thing that kept me going was knowing that the fic I was reading wasn’t finished, that I would never know the conclusion to some stories that I loved.

I was probably unhealthily hyper focused on fanfic, but I got through that bit and, as I became more well-adjusted, I had less space in my life for fandom.

Then, in 2021, I got into a pretty serious car accident that derailed my entire life. I became unable to work in the career that I spent over 10 years training to do. With Covid restrictions at its most limiting, I became a recluse at home who could hardly do anything. I became extremely depressed as I started to wonder if my life could ever get back to how it once was. Up until that point, 110% of my energy and focus had gone into my career and it was suddenly gone. Luckily, I had watched CQL and started reading fic just before the accident. Soon, it became the only thing that helped me pass the time.

I don’t know how much I read, but I know that for many days, all I did was lie in bed and read fic in small bursts. Without the ability to do much else (and with limited ability to read at all), it felt like my life was falling apart and I was becoming a useless person.

Fandom helped to pull me out. I started to make podfic because I wanted to make things more accessible (since I also had lots of trouble reading). I was thrown by some of the pronunciation in some podfic since it was so different than what I had heard in the show. There were certainly lots of people who tried their best and I appreciated it each time. I finally had the confidence to add my voice to the mix and the rest is history.

Fandom became the focus of what limited energies I had, whether it was consuming works or making podfic. At some point, as I started to recover, I was able to write again and I started penning some of my first fanfic. For the months that I was completely off work, and the months where I was starting to increase my hours, fandom became an escape and a purpose. My life was uncertain, but I had fic to write and pods to do and each thing I made was another accomplishment.

I’ve been lucky that fandom found me in some of the toughest times in my life and I’ll always love fandom for that.

The How

I participated in Diaspora May 2022 by contributing some podfic. It was all I could manage at the time, but I felt so lucky to be able to participate with a group of people who touched me so much with their fic. I was still nervous to be around fandom spaces since I’d never participated in the community before, but everyone was lovely and welcoming. I had a great time and I received a beautiful gift fic from @dragongirlG. I produced my longest podfic. I read lots of incredible stories in the collection.

This year, I chose to produce podfic instead of writing fic again. I chose to pod works of other diaspora creators so that every work I created would help to make more own-voice stories accessible. I would’ve loved to do a lot more, but time didn’t always allow for it. I’m just a single creator, so I know I don’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but I told myself that if I helped a meaningful story to reach even a few more people, I would’ve accomplished what I set out to do.

At a time where conversations around racism in fandom are flying around, it’s even more important for us to highlight the own-voices stories. I would love for these works to reach the other people out there, lurkers like the Panda of 2021 who needed to hear them. I’ve really struggled with some of the conversations around racism lately, partially because some of the most oft-cited voices about fandom have considered Asians to “not count” as POC because of the model minority myth. dragongirlG’s essay addresses it much better than I can. I was also hurt when I saw that creators enthusiastically involving themselves with anti-racism work also posted fic that perpetuated unconscious cultural erasure of the Chineseness of the characters. The worst part is knowing that none of that is on purpose - people really do mean their best. Seeing it happen time and time again is exhausting and trying to correct those assumptions is sometimes a thankless task. I’m grateful whenever I have positive interactions around these topics, but my exhaustion is a big part of why I don’t really do much sensitivity reader work.

The Now

At the end of the day, I hope we can highlight the works of creators of colour in fandom. I also hope that fandom will slowly move to improving inclusiveness. I don’t pretend to be a saint or faultless in any of this - I know that I have held and do hold racially biased assumptions based on cultural stereotypes and my upbringing. I want to constantly challenge myself on these assumptions, but I often flounder and make mistakes. I try to learn from them, but I’ll never be a blank slate of perfect anti-racism because stereotypes and assumptions are impossible to disentangle from my upbringing. I think I’ll feel satisfied as long as I keep trying to learn.

Having seen some of the dialogue around racism and being anti-racist of late, I worry that calling out and shunning of people who are considered “racists” will only make those people become more entrenched in their ideology. LIke the spitefic that people have mentioned in MDZS, calling people racists and kicking them out of the group can result in more hurt rather than solving the issue. The more divisive fandom becomes, the more difficult it is to reach the people on the extremes. LIke with research on the radicalization of youth, the more isolated people become, the more vulnerable they will be to extreme views. If we keep kicking out the “racists” in fandom, they’ll look for community elsewhere - the only places these people will be accepted is with the other “racists,” the people we’ve kicked out of the group. I worry this will result in more of the aforementioned spitefic if not outright harassment or worse.

My personal approach is that people need to be allowed to have the opportunity to change and I don’t have to forgive them for hurting me. I’ve struggled for a long time about how to care for people who have hurt others; some may say this is mental gymnastics, but it’s what I need to do. Part of my real life work is specifically with people who have been incarcerated, sometimes for extremely violent crimes. Despite the things they have done, they still deserve a chance to be rehabilitated into the community. At the end of the day, I still need to be there to help them to change if it means preventing them from hurting others in the future; I’m very proud of that. Isolating them more and giving these people fewer choices only makes them return to things that society does not want them doing. I know fandom is not an equivalent comparison, but I believe the same applies - we need to give people the opportunity and space to change even if the people they hurt do not forgive them. And that’s okay.

So where do my ramblings leave us?

-Isolation and shunning only breeds extremism/radicalization

-Racism sucks and still happens in fandom

-Because of upbringing and culture, I hold racist views and so do you

-Combatting them requires constantly challenging yourself to change

-People who are hurt do not have to forgive those that hurt them

-We still need to keep space in fandom for people who have done racist actions if we want to change their views

This is only semi-coherent rambling, but I hope those take homes are meaningful. I’m definitely feeling less hurt and more proud about the Diaspora May collection. I’m grateful to fandom and fandom is also a source of great angst, often because of cultural erasure or racist actions. But I’ll still be here and I’ll still keep trudging on because of the wonderful and kind friends I’ve made. If I can somehow resonate with even a single person out there, then what I’ve created will have meaning.

[fiercynn]

hey, since you mentioned that you are calling dragongirlG (a chinese POC) out to do her own anti-racism work in your tags, you know she constantly does anti-racism work right? with her own-voice diaspora stories and modding for mxtx diaspora may… except whelp i guess all the anti-racism work stuff got buried with your campaign, didn't it

lol the reason i said that was because SHE is shitting on the way other people do anti-racism in fandom???? like. i'm not coming for anyone doing anti-racism the way they think is right as long as they are not actively harming people or undermining the way others do anti-racism. which is what she was doing with that poem. she was so committed to speaking against fandom anti-racism (what she herself dubbed it; she didn't choose to specify anything more than "fandom anti-racism") that she paid for people to see that post. so forgive me for taking her at her own word that she doesn't support fandom anti-racism ¯_(ツ)_/¯

and yes, i am aware she is a poc. fun fact: poc, especially my fellow non-black poc, can be racist, especially when it comes to anti-blackness! hope that helps

[yuklaa]

AO3 Wrapped - 2022

tagged by @microcomets <3 thanks claire!

Works Published: 8, if i count my ficlet compilation and cleaned threadfics!

Total Word Count: 82,005 wow an increase from last year!

Most Popular by Kudos: my heart is an open wound (superbat)

this was sooo fun to write! it’s a silly 5+1 with povs from different daily planet employees as they observe clark’s fake dating shenanigans :)) this was back when nobody i knew was into dc yet, so it was EXTREMELY self indulgent and shameless...i read a bunch of superbat fic one weekend and then slammed this out in a three day frenzy

Most Hits: same as above haha

Longest: the boy who cried ghost (sambucky)

my ghost sambucky fic...44k words is by far the longest story i’ve ever written! it was an on-and-off writing process for about a year and a half...tbh i poured my SOUL into this one, and it’s one of the fics i hold closest to my heart :)

Shortest: at the midnight hour (wangxian)

1.3k words, a little nye threadfic i wrote the morning of new year’s day 2022! literally sat up in bed and typed it up in 30 min while leaning against my pillows 

Fic that made me cry: i don’t really cry when i read fic, but an emotionally wrecking recommendation is yiqie’s canglanjue fic 双命; twin fates ...read for intricate and lush world building, emotional wounds, and a delicious splash of body horror!

Fic that made me smile: biblionerd07′s sambucky fic need a hero was full of one-liners that made me cackle out loud! i love sam and i love himbos, and this fic has them both :)

Events participated in: my first and (for now) only event, the mxtx chinese diaspora event in may 2022!

Most Underrated Fic: i don’t know that these are underrated since their fandoms are on the smaller side and they’re both only around 1-2k words, but i have a soft spot for my modern au hs tennis team jiang yanli/wen qing fic shaped like your thirst , and my ghost!di feijing & lei chun fic the longest journey

Coming in 2023: omg...who knows. maybe a little cdrama fic, maybe a sambucky, maybe fic for a fandom i’m not even in yet! i think 2023 will be the year of pleasant surprises (please don’t prove me wrong on that)

[mxtxdiaspora-may]

The 2024 MXTX Diaspora May collection is now complete!

We’d like to extend our sincerest thanks to all of our participants this year! We have a wonderful assortment of fanfic, podfic, and fanart/comics from Chinese diaspora creators in the MXTX fandom!

Check out this year’s works on AO3!

We also hope you take the time to check out the past years’ collections, which also contain many amazing works by various Chinese diaspora creators!

2023 MXTX Diaspora May

2022 MXTX Diaspora May

2021 MDZS Diaspora May

Please feel free to reblog this post, browse through the collections, and enjoy and rec any fanworks. Comments and kudos also do wonders!

We'll see you next year!

[wangxianficrecs]

Another Fandom Event Dropped!

~*~

Hey mods, sorry if this is a repeat, but I wanted to boost the MXTX Diaspora May collection. I feel like we often overlook the Chinese diaspora voices in this fandom despite the amazing meta and translations they provide, and this yearly event does a great job showing works written by the diaspora and their cultural perspectives. The 2024 collection finished at the end of May. - Anon

MXTX Chinese Diaspora Event: May 2024

Make sure to check out the collection linked above and you can also reach out to @mxtxdiaspora-may if you have any questions! For more detailed information and the event's FAQ, make sure to check out this document!

~*~

*** REBLOG so everyone enjoy! ***

Wangxianficrecs doesn’t coordinate anything in our Eye on Events segment, we’re just letting everyone know about them.  If you have an event you want the fandom to participate in or know about, let us know, and we’ll make a post about it.

[tavina-writes]

My second work for @mxtxdiaspora-may! Getting To Be Retirement Age

In which: new stages of life are reached and old friends...return.

[aoxue]

Wait, tell me more about songxiao in the bayou tho 👀

AHAHA well! If things work out, the story will appear sometime this month for MXTX Diaspora May (fingers crossed) 👀 But it would be part of a historical fantasy/horror AU that I've had cooking for... over three years now, wow.

The premise involves ghost/monster hunters Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen, living and working in the USA in the 1890s/turn of the century. They're married and travel the country, handling supernatural threats using a blend of Chinese and Western magic and rituals, and also guns (it is the USA lol). The main fic I've been chipping away at over the years (working title "Come Back Alive") follows the guys as they attempt to settle and semi-retire in the part of Appalachia where Xiao Xingchen grew up in order to raise their daughter. But things devolve into horror territory with the emergence of something very strange and powerful that puts even these seasoned hunters out of their depth. 🙃 Oh no.

The bayou story would be a lighter prequel to all this, though! The lads hear about some odd happenings as they pass through New Orleans, and they may team up with a plucky little street girl in order to get to the bottom of things....

[drpanda99]

[Podfic] 过眼烟云 (Like smoke in the air)

I podded this incredible fic by frostferox based on The Farewell. Lan Sizhui returns to China after he learns that his grandmother is very sick. He grapples with the differences between his two cultures and he gets to know the family he has not seen in many years.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences No Archive Warnings Apply Fandoms: 陈���令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù Relationship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Additional Tags: Modern AU, Homage to The Farewell, Don’t worry Nainai lives, Happy Ending, food as a love language, The weight of loss and grief carried by diaspora, Drinking during a wedding, Family Feels, The whole cast of MDZS but mostly as background, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1.5-2 Hours, Mandarin-speaking reader Collections :Danmei Diaspora Creatives, MXTX Chinese Diaspora Event:

Click here to read!

[angry-ace-grape]

If your opinion on MXTX, or any of her works, was formed by making the conscious choice to ignore Chinese fans, and fans from the Chinese diaspora, you are wrong. There is no room for debate.

Chinese members of the fandom are CONSTANTLY trying to teach us better. They explain the language and cultural background to us. They gladly rephrase and re-explain things that may have been lost in translation. They discuss Chinese perspectives so we can learn just how much our own perspectives (and thus our opinions) have been skewed by a western lense. Like...they're really out here doing ALL THAT. None of which they are obliged to do. But you just...shove all that off the table because it can't fit into your current narrative? No, truly, fuck you.

[plan-d-to-i]

I’m Chinese (part of diaspora) and I don’t know what to feel about people excusing jc’s debt. I think he is a good character but ??? Stop excusing his debts lol. Why do people bring up cultural argument for this and consent argument for that but nobody brought up debts argument for the Wen sibs and by extension Wen Remnants (bc they saved him and wwx from being hunted), WWX (he got a core bc WWX ‘asked BSSR‘ to help him replace his core, however it may be. If such BSSR do exist, and she only wants to help WWX by proxy of him, JC used WWX’s name = indebted to him whether he knows or not of the core transfer), XXC (bc he is a BSSR disciple. If your master/teacher/doctor practitioner cured you off your bad disease, they have a family/apprentice in this case a disciple, you are indebted to them). I don’t know why nobody brought it up because as a Chinese, we took our debts seriously and we don’t like to be indebted. People who can’t pay their relatives or friend of relatives (technically strangers by proxy)’s debt because of whatever reason get shunned and talked. Because those people exist and to not repay such debts with proxy you are being indebted and they might get the impression you are ungrateful and that your parents Chinese or not didn’t teach you what to say if someone gifts you something and you’re trying to repay it back with thanks or gratitude.

I agree. I've also been on the "he got a core bc WWX ‘asked BSSR‘ to help him replace his core" train for a long time now.

What mxtx did was very clever. mdzs is not meant to be a novel where the central conflict is the result of some big miscommunication. Although the core reveal is a big dramatic moment it doesn't actually change all that much about anything. As you said, ultimately jc had always gotten his 'new' core thanks to WWX. Not knowing about the core transfer doesn't excuse jc's not helping the Wens & not helping WWX. It's not meant to! In mxtx's world there aren't really any excuses for doing the wrong thing. Not someone's past, not someone's trauma etc. The reveal of WWX's personal sacrifice is instead meant almost like a divine retribution for jc when he is being his worst- trying to whip LWJ as he's carrying an incapacitated WWX away. He's had years to deal with his misplaced hate and resentment and many opportunities in WWX's new life and instead he's just dug into it even deeper.

Even that powerful reveal doesn't drastically alter jc's behavior and world view bc his feelings towards WWX, obsessive as they were, always pulled towards the negative. Him thinking that trying to distract the Wen soldiers made him better than WWX was just a justification to feel the negative things & grievances he already illogically held against WWX that he lists in the temple in his rant in chapter 102 when LWJ almost decks him. Even WWX is surprised at jc's continuing vitriol. He's still twisting the meaning behind all of WWX's heroic actions, accusing WWX of not being his subordinate for life and 'betraying' YunmengJiang, still trying to guilt him- When WWX defected precisely to take the burden of protecting the Wens entirely on his own shoulders- in spite of jc himself owing them a life debt- all of which jc knows because they discuss it.

In the novel it's clear that the morally 'correct' thing for jc to have done was to support WWX in helping the Wens, & repaying his life debt- JGY makes it clear how that would have been possible. WWX no doubt knew it would have been possible, just as he knew jc would not do it. jc chose not to honor that & give free reign to the worst parts of his nature bc ultimately that's who he is and who he's comfortable being. Which is why he maintains his zero sum character growth even after the core reveal and is back on his bs in the extras, still hating on Wen Ning & "the same as before, always lashing out at people with his whip.”

[ladysunamireads]

Wei Wuxian's Super Spicy Kissing Booth!

Wei Wuxian’s Super Spicy Kissing Booth! by NoteInABottle

“No, you need to understand,” Wei Wuxian says seriously, chopping a hand against the table for extra emphasis. “The goal of this booth is for them not to kiss me.”

“This is still such a slutty idea,” Jiang Cheng says.

For MXTX Diaspora May 2023 - Week 4: Spicy

Words: 4419, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of MXTX Diaspora May 2023

Fandoms: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, Modao

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Niè Huáisāng, Niè Míngjué, Yúnmèng Jiāng Disciple(s), Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín

Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Fraternities & Sororities, Kissing Booths, Kissing, Rush Week, Alternate Universe - College/University, disclaimer: author has never been in a frat, Pining, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Humor, Peppers, scoville scale

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47451517