#this isn't taiwan people

[absolutebl]

I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

IT IS EVERYTHING.

SHUT UP I AM FERRIL FOR THE BEAUTIFUL CITY BOY & HIS YOUNG FARMER.

Come on. Korea.

Have mercy?

Plus some language play?

I’m just going to die now.

Me:

Love Tractor:

[ubike-official]

gay ppl are so funny, one of my hinge matches listened to two whole accusefive albums and put one of the songs in her ig mood whatever thingy like gjfjdhdhshs, its sweet but also girl... anyways we're going on a date next week ~

[miss0atae]

My two favorite couples from this series 😍

Tall & Handsome Stoic Guy and his Smol & Feisty Gangster Boyfriend™

LET'S TALK ABOUT CHU (2024) episode 8

[cripplecharacters]

Is there any Asian specific tropes? Like I know Japan is super ableist, see uematsu satoshi, but what about Korea, China, Taiwan Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mongolia? And so on.

Hi!

This is not specific enough for us to answer. Please give some context as to what disability you're writing or which country specifically your story is set in.

Asia is a huge continent with over half the global population--all of Asia doesn't have the same views, and even one country is a lot of individual people and groups with different views!

Also, calling out Japan as a whole for ableism using one specific hate crime isn't a good portrayal. Hate crime is not indicative of the whole country's views. Most countries are "super ableist" it's not a specific problem, and it's certainly not recognizable from the actions of one person.

Please rephrase your question if you want an answer. “What are some common views of disability in Singapore” is infinitely more specific and answerable than “how is Asia super ableist”.

Mod Rock (with input from the whole mod team)

[qqueenofhades]

The thing that confuses me about the "don't vote" left (not the "I don't want to vote", I'm talking explicitly the "don't vote" left. I don't agree with the "I don't want to vote" left either but I can understand their logic) is they lose me at the final step of the logic. I've tried to connect the logic here, even if I don't agree with a political position I do try to understand where people are coming from (empathy for someones situation is not the same as cosigning it), but I just can't connect the dots here in a way that isn't deeply cruel. Does United States politics prioritize the lives of those in the US (and often white) over those in the Global South? Yes, it's a fucking atrocity. We should continue to make noise about it, cus Biden has used less drones and that shows progress, even if it's not enough. The part where I lose the plot is where the conclusion to this injustice is to let even more people die? Cus that's kinda how I see the idea of not voting: I can pick between shit and more shit, and at the end of the day, I'm picking whoever allows the most people to make it to the next day. Given Trumps stance on everything but specifically climate change, I feel like Biden is pretty significant harm reduction.

I don't think both things can't be true: that every life lost is a travesty we should not forget AND the more people we can save is worth fighting for.

The thing is, I have seen nothing among the "don't vote" far left (and I am talking here specifically about the people who both loudly announce their intention not to vote and try to convince others to do the same) to convince me that they actually care about harm reduction or stopping genocide. They only care about what makes them look the most Correct and/or superior to the Democrats. They yelled bloody murder about Obama using drones, they went dead quiet about Trump using them even more (even when he nearly started WWIII by assassinating the Iranian general Soleimani with one), and then said nothing at all when Biden reduced the drone program to almost nothing and withdrew the US from a failed war in Afghanistan it had long ago lost. Now they will yell all day about Israel/Hamas (something that Biden did not start and has had no direct military role in responding to) but they don't care about Russian genocide of Ukraine and Syria, Chinese threats to invade Taiwan, etc, because those governments are "anti-western/anti-American" and therefore should be defended. Their opposition to human suffering is extremely conditional and rests on whether they can look good out of it, and they never interrogate the hypocrisies of their own ideology.

Likewise: every country in the world prizes its own citizens above those of other countries. It's just a basic fact. Yes, the US has a grim history of intervening in other countries and causing untold civilian damage (especially during the Cold War and then in post-9/11 War on Terrorism). Yes, that legacy is complex and needs to be acknowledged. But literally none of that will be fixed, not to mention all the vulnerable people in America itself who will be punished, by Trump getting into power again. Biden is not just a grudging "lesser evil," but has done a lot of truly good and helpful things, regardless of the Online Leftists' constant lies, misinformation, and misrepresentation. If you spend all your time announcing what a champion you are for non-American marginalised people and/or those undergoing terrible suffering, and then deliberately and knowingly adhere to a course of action that will increase that suffering tenfold not only for those people but your own neighbors, friends, and family, then no, I don't believe you are a brave champion of social justice. You just want to know what categories of people you can gleefully and righteously punish and make to suffer for not believing the same things as you, that makes you just as dangerous as the right-wing fascists, and I can and will call out your ass accordingly.

[zaobitouguang]

What is Taiwanese?

As part of my return to posting on this blog, I want to start posting a bit more about Taiwanese! It's not really a language I've seen discussed much on langblr blogs, so I'm going to start with some basics.

Where is Taiwanese spoken?

Unsurprisingly, Taiwan! It's most commonly spoken in the central and southern parts of Taiwan, and less commonly spoken in the northern and eastern parts, but you can hear it spoken pretty much anywhere.

What else is Taiwanese called?

台語 tâi-gí and 台灣話 tâi-uân-uē "Taiwanese" are the most common names colloquially. Officially, (台灣)閩南語 (tâi-uân) bân-lâm-gí "Taiwanese Southern Min" is used as the name of the language. You'll also occasionally see terms like 福建 hok-kiàn or 福佬 hô-ló used. I've given the transcriptions of these terms in Taiwanese, but the same terms are used with their Mandarin pronunciations in Mandarin.

Where does Taiwanese come from?

Taiwanese is a member of the Southern Min branch of the Sinitic language family. During the late Ming and Qing dynasties, Han settlers came over from the Fujian province of China, especially the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou areas, and brought their own languages with them. For a while, there was conflict between Zhangzhou and Quanzhou speakers, but eventually the two varieties coalesced into one language, with dialectal differences causing some dialects to be closer to one or the other. This means that Taiwanese is mutually intelligible with Xiamen/Amoy and Zhangzhou Southern Min, and related to other varieties of Southern Min, also called Hokkien, spoken in China and Southeast Asia. Taiwanese also has loanwords from Japanese due to the island's having undergone 50 years of Japanese colonization, and younger people's Taiwanese has also been influenced by Mandarin.

Is Taiwanese a language or a dialect?

Though some people will refer to Taiwanese as a dialect, it's generally an argument based in a denigration of the language and not really defensible on linguistic or social grounds. I've come to believe that the distinction between language and dialect is mostly social, with some influence from factors such as mutual intelligibility. Taiwanese is treated as a language by the Taiwanese government and taught as a language in public schools. Taiwanese is also not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or other languages outside of the Southern Min family. Some people point to the mutual intelligibility of Chinese characters as evidence that all Sinitic languages are in fact dialects, but even that doesn't hold-- Taiwanese is frequently written in romanization, and even when it isn't, there are plenty of sentences that would be pretty much unintelligible to a Mandarin speaker. For example, the Mandarin sentences 那個女人很美 ("that woman is beautiful") could theoretically be read aloud with Taiwanese pronunciation, but the more natural way to translate and write that sentence is 彼个查某真媠, which is very hard to parse in Mandarin.

How many people speak Taiwanese?

This is a shockingly hard question to answer! Taiwanese is often considered endangered, though it is in a much more stable position than languages such as Hakka and Taiwanese indigenous languages. One common estimate is that 70% of people in Taiwan speak Taiwanese. The 2020 census listed Taiwanese as the primary language of 32% Taiwan's population and the secondary language of 54% of Taiwan's population. This would add up to over 80%, which may seem high, but many people are partial or non-fluent speakers of Taiwanese.

What are the dialects of Taiwanese?

The prestige dialect of Taiwanese is the variety spoken in Kaohsiung and Tainan, which has a mixture of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou features. The Taiwanese spoken in coastal Taiwan, Penghu and Taipei tends to have more Quanzhou features, while the Taiwanese spoken in inland central Taiwan and Yilan tends to have more Zhangzhou features. However, Taiwanese dialectology is complicated, and some people have argued for other forms of classification. The Southern and Taipei dialects are going to be most relevant and salient to most learners.

Why should I learn Taiwanese?

Taiwanese is definitely worth learning if you're planning to spend a significant amount of time in Taiwan, especially central/southern or rural Taiwan. In my experience, I almost never needed Taiwanese to get around in Taiwan, but studying even just a little helped me form relationships with the people around me. Taiwanese has impacted the way that people in Taiwan speak Mandarin, and is commonly seen in culture and politics. Taiwanese-language culture includes traditional art forms like 布袋戲 pòo-tē-hì puppet theater or 歌仔戲 kua-á-hì opera, and modern music, literature and entertainment.

What resources are available for learning Taiwanese?

At some point, I'll make a full post about resources for Taiwanese. But for now, I'll mention that Bite-Size Taiwanese makes some easily accessible resources. There are textbooks out there in both English and Mandarin, as well as books in/about Taiwanese that can be purchased from books.com.tw and shipped internationally. Most language learning apps don't have Taiwanese, but glossika does. Unfortunately, most of these materials assume some knowledge of (but not necessarily total fluency in) Mandarin. There are also podcasts, youtube videos, music, tv/movies, literature, and more materials made for native speakers of Taiwanese that can serve as learning materials.

[communist-ojou-sama]

There's a really funny thing I see where USians will be outraged when the PRC says "What goes on in Xinjiang/Hong Kong/Taiwan is an internal affair that isn't for Westerners to comment on" and they'll say that it's a completely ridiculous thing to say, but when they imagine the world and decide which camps are "the good guys" and which are "the bad guys", the US' treatment if black and indigenous people never weigh into the assessment. You see people say that the PRC is more evil than the US but when pushed to demonstrate with evidence that what's going on in Xinjiang is anywhere near as bad as how the US currently treats black people they're empty-handed. They bleat about the Tyranny of the Soviet Union but when you ask if they'd rather live in the Soviet Union or be black in the Jim Crow south they act as if it isn't a fair thing to bring up? Why? Do you believe black and indigenous people are people are not? And if not, how could you possibly think any countries except perhaps Nazi Germany and the Zionist Enemy are any more morally bankrupt?

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - I Still On1y Care About...

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

Sept 2024 Week 1

Ongoing Series - Thai

Monster Next Door (Thai Thurs Gaga ) eps 7 of 12 - Deeeelightful. They are so damn cute + a nice kiss! The rise of the green flag semes continues. I like it when Diew flirts and shows that he does have some experience in a relationship, and he can/will flex his power. Props to God for being a man who remembers to TAKE HIS DRINK with him. 

Addicted Heroin (Thai Tues WeTV) ep 4 of 10 - Yep I still like it and all its toxicity. It’s fun to see how closely it follows the original. Now I really can’t wait to see how this one ends. Since this time around we get an actual ending.

Battle of the Writers (Sun YT) ep 6 of 12 - How did they know that what I wanted more than anything was a side couple = spoiled prince + demon lord? How clever they are to give them to me. Meanwhile, in a shocking twist, the leads have known each other since childhood. Because why be original? 

I Saw You in My Dream (Weds Gaga) ep 8 of 12 - Oh it’s very cute. I love Ing. I love that Ai was honest with his bestie. Best friend's older brother trope is a go! Also good kisses all round. 

Kidnap (Fri YT) ep 1 of 12 - Ohm has his shirt off less than 5 min in. I guess GMMTV is learning what we want. My boy Title is the creep character again. I’m assuming that’s why GMMTV brought him on board at this juncture. Sigh. New boy, Q, looks like Mek’s younger brother. Ultimately? I'm not convinced on this one. It is doing what it says on the tin, but nothing more than that. I’m not wild about it, but I will keep watching.

The Trainee (Sun YT) ep 10 of 12 - The more OffGun BLs, the more time they spend communicating as characters in those BLs. It’s kind of charming. They've become the pair that advocates for communication in relationships. I like it as evolution for their brand. Flirting via the printer was very fun. Especially as the Thai script is so beautiful.

Live in Love (Sun Gaga) ep 1 of 5 - I guess this is a lockdown narrative? Odd choice. A lot of familiar faces but from more minor rolls. Is this from the Destiny Seeker people? It feels like that. It’s a bigger cast than I was expecting, and a sort of classic university BL of the kind star Hunter produces. Or the end of love people. Pretty classic Thai pulp stuff. I’m mildly enjoying it. Hali is too hot to be the dorky second lead. Nice to see Boat back on my screen. However, it is… what’s the word I am looking for? Oh yes. Boring. Plus singing. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The On1y One (Taiwan Thurs Gaga) eps 5-6 of 12 - I entirely lost my mind over this show this week. Fuck me it's so good. The delicacy sends me. I keep expecting it to be clumsy and then is just isn't - it's so subtle and it demands we pay such close attention. I feel like I'm holding my breath the whole time I'm watching.

Cliff's notes on these 2 eps as follows:

The pure unadulterated tsundere of it all.

The awesome angst, it aches.

The series of repercussions after the fight was pacing genius.

The brilliant juxtaposition of "the kid who self isolates too easily" versus "the one who has been forced into isolation" meets both of them being smart enough to know why they react out of hurt, but neither can stop doing it.

Baby’s reaction to learning he’s going to be left behind = to instantly make plans to do the leaving in the future hurts my heart in the best possible way.

"Maybe what we call eternity is just persistence."

Maybe one boy simply deciding to be another boy's rock is romance. 

Production better nail the second half of this show! It better be the world against them from here on out or the audience is gonna riot.

And by "audience" I mean me.

Sugar Dog Life (Japan Sun grey) ep 5 of 10 - Oh noes! Poor baby boy!!! My heart hurts. But also gah so cute and next week they shack up together! Hooray! 

I Hear the Sunspot AKA Hidamari ga Kikoeru (Japan Weds Gaga) ep 11 - too much time spent on the girl again. I don’t need excuses for why she’s a bitch. So can we talk about Taichi instead? It’s such a good characterization, this boy who understands everything about other people but doesn’t notice anything about himself, including his own abilities of observation. The person who is special never realizes how special they are, I guess. The soundscapes are so good with this show. The moments where prod decided to be silent are so vital and so pivotal and used with such delicacy and strategy, it’s truly audio magic manipulation.  

First Note Of Love (Taiwan Mon Gaga) eps 7-8 of 12 - I loved how Orca just jumped on the stage. What a great side couple. CHARMED I TELL YOU. Orca was all… singing? Naw. I came back to fuck the manager's brains out. Anything less than that is unacceptable. 

Takara's Treasure AKA Takara No Vidro (Japan Mon Gaga) ep 10 fin - Essentially this was a growth story for Takara and an exercise in patience while the two of them learned each other’s quirks and languages. It was also an exercise in patience for me... who doesn’t like the power differential of a weaker younger character having to do all the pursuing while constantly feeling like he is inferior to the older popular hot character. I know this was a BL that was definitely for some people, since plenty liked it way more than I did, but I didn’t like it very much even though there’s nothing objectively wrong with it. It simply wasn’t to my personal taste. 7/10 

Seoul Blues (Korea Fri? YouTube) ep 5-6 of 8 - Enter an ex or something? Well he certainly has a type. Bah. This whole series seems to be mainly about cheating. It’s very annoying because they are all so pretty. 

Happy of the End (Japan Tues Gaga) - Based on a manga, longer than usual run time. A boy is disowned for being gay, dumped by his boyfriend, and ends up in a dysfunctional co-dependant relationship with his would-be kidnapper. We were due for another messy JBL. Messy gay pain here we go.

Oh it’s exactly what I expected. Do I like it? No I do not. And ya know what? There is plenty airing. I have a bad feeling about this one. DNF 

It's airing but...

4 Minutes (Sat Gaga) eps 1-6 of 8 - Gaga picked this one up so we can watch it there. I'm waiting until the end, it seems angsty and confusing and full of awful people being awful. But also... high heat and I'm shallow. So we shall see which devil wins (and how it ends).

The Hidden Moon (Sat ????) ep 1 of 10 - This is a supernatural romance (my ghost boyfriend trope) ‘เดือนพราง’ by Violet Rain (I Feel You Linger)... A Bangkok writer is hired to write an article about an old mansion in Chiang Mai which is being converted into a café. He gets into an accident and nearly dies on his way there. After that, he sees the ghosts of people who died at the mansion, one boy catches his attention. Was substantially recast. Couldn't find it. Didn't really look.

In case you missed it

Meet You at the Blossom (China) - I'm eating crow, binging the fucker, and live blogging. It's just taking me some time. This isn't really a bingable show, not for me anyway. It's A LOT to take all at once. No new one this week.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Plus:

9/9 Jack & Joker (Thai Mon IQIYI) 12 eps? - Be gay YinWar, do crimes. Dehup gives us Yin, War, Mark and a few other familiar faces in a Leverage sitch, only queerer.

9/14 Love Sick 2024 (Thai Sat ????) ?? eps - Remake of the original. I'm scared too.

9/15 Bad Guy My Boss (Thai Sun Gaga) 10 eps - Assistant to a player boss who is in love with that boss decides to quit to save himself. The boss then makes a move. (A gay What's up with Secretary Kim?)

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

Coming SEPTEMBER 2024:

9/17 Love is Like a Poison AKA Doku Koi: Doku mo Sugireba Koi to Naru (Japan Tues Netflix?) 10 eps - Lawyer and a con artist meet at a bar, pair up, fall in love.

9/28 Teenager Judge (Vietnam Sat YouTube) ?? eps - oh I don't know just Ba Vinh doing his thing with pretty boys again.

9/? The Time of Fever (Korea iQIYI) 6 eps - HoTae & DongHee are back! Side couple from Unintentional Love Story, same actors, same character names I an WILD for this.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Not sure what this is from but I capped it for a reason so, shrug.

The scent trope AND the childhood crush trope? I see you suckering me into one trope because I like the other. Clever, Battle. Very clever.

(Last week)

Streaming services are listed by how I (usually) watch, which is with a USA based IP, and often offset by a day because time zones are a pain.

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

Sigh, Tumblr in its infinite wisdom doesn't like too many at-ings.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

ok so let me preface this by saying that i am chinese and am not trying to argue china bad, but i guess like, why is tibetan independence considered Balkan-zing china? Like this isn't some case of like old ass territory that was conquored by china a long time ago and now they've integrated with the rest of china, The PRC literally annexed Tibet in 1951. Shouldn't it be considered a good thing for Tibet to get independence? I'm not trying to gotcha you or anything i just don't understand why

Before Tibet was liberated by the PRC Tibet was a feudal theocracy run by monk kings and manor lords who would chop the hands of their tenants for owing debt. Almost all Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region speak their own language, go to classes taught in their language, continue their distinct cultural practices as one of the officially recognized ethnic groups of China, and have been lifted out of extreme poverty by the PRC's socialist development. The Dalai Lama is literally a hereditary feudal ruler (and p*do) who once owned child slaves whose entire purpose is to be a CIA-supported mascot for the supposed "peaceful, tranquil" independent Tibet that most credulous Westerners who are not familiar with the region's history have in their minds. The only reason you'd want Tibet to be "independent" is if you've casually swallowed State Dept. narratives about "China oppressing Tibet" your whole life, which I don't mean as an insult since that's the situation most people in the West (including me until a few years ago) find themselves in. And the reason why the US and its allies want Tibet to become "independent" along with Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is precisely to weaken China and separate it into smaller states it can dominate through neocolonialism. In terms of comparing it to Palestine, you may notice the difference in that China hasn't built a giant wall around Tibet that it keeps Tibetans locked inside.

[olderthannetfic]

Dear US Americans,

Please stop getting angry at me, a Taiwanese, for saying a Taiwanese character can read Chinese. I don't know how to explain this but the alphabet doesn't shift so radically from the mainland that we can't read it. "Taiwan isn't China!" And the US isn't England but you read the English language. You're not Roman but you read the Roman alphabet. Am I calling you Roman when I say that? No. You're not stupid. Your civilization put humans on the moon. Think a little!

Love, A very tired fanfic author

--

Ahahaha. Oh god. I mean, it makes sense in terms of how people talk about Taiwan in English in the US, but... people, please.

Also, traditional characters 5eva! Boo, simplified, boo.

[respectthepetty]

Interesting to have you thoughts on WHY we love the pain and angst in the Unknown series? and we are not getting the ick instead?

I’m trying to explain it to people without just saying “because they do it so well” you know?

Anon, I can't tell you why YOU like Unknown or why anyone else likes it, but I can tell you why I like it since therapy has shown me the beauty of introspection.

I'm a kinky queer who trusts Taiwan.

And just like kink, this show isn't ONLY about the pain and the angst.

Note that I'm not writing about this in a sexual way nor am I writing that this show is kinky. No. I'm writing that I like it because it resonates with me, a queer kinkster.

And by "ick," I think you mean the brothers-not-brothers plot since that ties into the pain and angst aspect.

Not to get too psychological or philosophical, but the pain of the show gives me pleasure. Especially because I know the pain won't last. There is an end point; therefore, there is a release. And once the show is over, I won't be left with this horrible scar of unhappiness but I might be left with some bruises that remind me the pain was worth it for the happy ending.

Also, much like being queer and kinky, this plot is a taboo subject.

And I like that!

The show is treating the subject with respect. The show has established that Yuan and Qian ARE brothers. They call each other "brother," they have their little sister, and the world sees them as brothers.

Yet they aren't blood-related, which is a point that San Pang mentioned when he told Lili not to get too close to Yuan, and people were upset that he said it, but it is the same argument people use to excuse Yuan's feelings for his brother.

And just like kink, the show makes me think about that grey area of life between consenting adults because nothing is ever black and white. Yuan asked San Pang what was wrong with him loving Qian, and we will see the fallout from San Pang dating Lili when he has openly considered Qian family. People have questioned what is different between the two relationships, and the show will question it as well.

This show is asking the audience to reflect, so I feel safe with this show punishing me with so much pain which is a big aspect of kink. I wouldn't tolerate pain from a show I don't feel safe with (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at your ass!). I trust the show to deal with this taboo subject with respect because Taiwanese BLs have consistently dealt with this subject with respect. As much as people hated HIStory 4: Close to You, it didn't shy away from the brothers plot or the sexual assault. Both were treated seriously within the show.

And it did the same with Kiseki: Dear to Me.

And the other Taiwanese BLs it's been used in.

So I've never had the ick factor that others have regarding this particular subject or been bothered by the level of pain it brings, but perhaps Addicted toughened me up because the way China dishes out sad "bromances" due to censorship, I suspect there is a connection there between the "brothers" to lovers plot that transfers into Taiwanese dramas.

Because if you have to hide love behind a wall of being "bros," it makes sense that it would 1) be painful, and 2) be queer-coded since a happy ending wouldn't be realistic.

And yet Taiwan continues to deliver a happy ending with this type of plot.

So yeah, I like the pleasure that will come with all this pain. I like that it leans into historical and cultural queer coding while being explicitly queer. And I like that it's Taiwanese handling it.

That's why I like it.

But, once again, I have no idea why others do.

[theside-b]

There a few things people need to know before criticizing The On1y One:

It's based on a chinese novel, not taiwanese. It may seem like a small detail, but it isn't.

This was supposed to be adapted in mainland China, but due censorship production went to Taiwan to avoid interference.

Liu Dong (Eric Zayn) casting did come under fire prior to release due his age, he is 30. Him being on the show was actually a demand from one of the financial backers.

Liu most likely would've been casted if the show remained in mainland China, where he resides. And because he lives there he cannot promote the show with his partner. So you probably won't see him beside Jiang any time soon.

He is actually at risk of suffering retaliation from chinese government by staying there and working on this show.

From the get go director Liu Kuang Hui made it clear that show and book would be different from one another. Want what you get in the novel? Stick to it, because the show won't be a word by word adaptation.

Again, since production started on mainland China what we get probably was adapted to avoid problems with their government, so you can put that on their never ending homophobic tab.

So there you have it, hopefully this helps clear a few things up.

[elaine19day]

To those who are confused as to where and how to buy OldXian's new artbook and merchandise, let me try to break it down for you.

A few days ago, OldXian announced the pre-sale of their new artbook which comes in two versions.

Variant A (regular) includes: - the new artbook - a poster - 2x postcards

Variant B (deluxe edition) includes: - the new artbook - a poster - 2x postcards - 4x buttons - a shishiki board - a sticker sheet - a 24 page booklet

Furthermore there's two new acrylic standees which can be purchased separately. A tianshan and a zhanyi version.

The cost of these items is as follows: Artbook (version A): 89 Yuan [roughly: 13 USD | 12 Euro | 10 GBP] Artbook (version B): 189 Yuan [roughly: 27 USD | 25 Euro 21 GBP] Acrylic Standee: 49 Yuan (each) [roughly: 7 USD | 7 Euro | 6 GBP]

All of these items are available for purchase in their taobao store now, under this link: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?ft=t&id=786971367604

But if you have trouble creating a taobao account or your country isn't on the (very short) taobao shipping list [China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand] then you have several other options to get your hands on these new items.

1. You could use aliexpress, koonbooks or any other China-based shopping app/website to buy these things from a 3rd party seller.

Now, keep in mind that these sellers obviously want to make a profit, so you will pay more than in the original taobao shop. However, on the plus side, they usually offer free shipping, which is nice considering that items like artbooks are heavy and shipping costs are based on weight, so if you pay over, some of that money also goes towards covering the shipping costs, which is not bad.

The risk of ordering with such a website is obviously that the independent seller could turn out to be a scammer and keep your money and not send you the goods. I have no idea about koonbook's policies, however in the case of aliexpress you are at least protected by such practices and should you not receive what you paid for, you will be refunded and get your money back.

Also keep in mind that the artbook and merch is still in production at this point! But Old Xian said the merch will be shipped out BEFORE May 20th. That's less than 4 weeks from now.

That being said - in some cases the merch will be cheaper on aliexpress after official ship-out, because there will be more people offering it, competing for best prices.

However there's obviously also a risk that the deluxe edition will sell out before that or that these re-sellers only ship the artbook itself with none of the extras.

Here's two links where you can have a look at potential resellers, but carefully think about all the pro's and con's I gave you before you consider to buy. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006893284852.html https://koonbooks.com/products/old-xian-19-days-art-collection-3-chinese?variant=46493038674166 2.

The other option you have is using a taobao shopping agent. If you google that, you'll find dozens of websites offering their services. I myself have used parcelup, 42agent and superbuy before. Here's links to all of them: https://www.superbuy.com/ https://parcelup.com/ https://www.42agent.com/ What all of these agents have in common is that you need to create an account BEFORE you can start searching and shopping. All you need for that is a valid email address. I'll show how it works with superbuy screenshots here. After you signed up, you can copy the taobao-link I gave you earlier and paste it into the search-field.

What will come up is an embedded view of the taobao listing where you can pick which variant you want and then add it to your shopping cart.

Once you have added everything you want, click on the shopping cart and simply follow all further payment instructions.

They will also ask you if you want them to keep the original packaging or if you want them to remove anything unnecessary and repack everything in order to make it weigh less so shipping will be cheaper. It's up to you. You will then be asked to pay for items, domestic shipping (so mosspaca studios can ship the goods to your agent's warehouse) and in some cases a service fee. For example, superbuy has no service fee, however they stopped offering paypal as payment method recently so you'd need a credit card or other online methods to pay for your order and everything. Parcelup, however, still offers paypal, but they also charge service fees. (They are fairly low though, if you ask me.) So after you paid for your goods, they will order the items for you and then you'll have to wait about 4-5 weeks for them to arrive, because keep in mind - like I said earlier - everything is still in production and Old Xian aims to ship everything out before the 20th of May. There's hundreds, if not thousands of parcels arriving to all agent's warehouses every day, so it will take them a few days to sort through things after your order arrives. You need to be patient!! They will get back to you with pictures of your order, trust me. When this happens you need to look at the pics and if everything is okay, you can reply to them to proceed. You will then be presented with shipping quotes. Usually they offer more than one shipping method and some are tracked, others are untracked, some will take only a week or two until they arrive at your doorstep, others will take 6 weeks or up to two months. Choose wisely which method you want and consider what is in your budget. (Obviously fast shipping with tracking is more expensive than slow shipping without it, however personally I'd always recommend a tracked service.) Just to give you an estimate on what to expect when it comes to international shipping - parcels with that amount of merch and weight, will always cost me about 50 USD or more to ship from China to the UK, where I live. (So keep that in mind before you order. International shipping is very expensive!) But once you picked a shipping method, you pay for it (that's your 2nd payment) and once they have processed that - your goodies will be on the way to you within a few days. And that's it. Sit down, eat your food and wait patiently for it to arrive. If you have further questions, just plop them into the comments and I'll try to answer them.

[arsquare]

Hello everyone!

As I take on more projects and expand my practice, it feels prudent to write monthly newsletter posts to keep followers up to date on what projects I'm currently undertaking. So here's the update for October/November 2024!

Zines

Currently I'm participating in two zines, both of which will likely be released in November!

One is the Detective Conan Fanzine, which is dedicated to the 26 movies of the franchise. I was assigned Movie 2, and I've posted a preview below! The full illustration will be available on INPRNT after the zine releases.

The other is the Counter-Pale Resistance (@de-fanzine-cpr-pale), which is a Disco Elysium fanzine. Participants take inspiration from song lyrics to create their piece, whether it's an illustration, comic, or writing. I created an illustration of Harry and Dolores for this zine! I quite like this piece-- it will be available on INPRNT after the zine releases, and I'll also be making gold foil postcards of it. Stay tuned!

Additionally, COMPASS: A Heishin Anthology (@haidocityzines), which I did several illustrations for, has been released for free digitally! Download your copy here. There are also merch bundles remaining if you're interested.

Merchandise

I've been putting together a Kaishin merch bundle in the past several months to go with a polished print version of Breaking Stasis (link goes to the original version-- polished version will be uploaded at a later date), my 2021 Kaishin Secret Santa manga. There's going to be a bookmark, a memopad, and a postcard in addition to the book. I'm waiting for the last of the merch samples to arrive! When they do, I'll photograph them and open up pre-orders.

Remember this? The pages are now fully toned and I've fixed the illustrations that were bothering me...

Pre-orders will likely open on Friday, Nov. 8th, and will close before the end of the month. A more detailed announcement is coming in early November!

Additionally, I've added several prints to my INPRNT:

Commissions

Commissions are currently closed! However, you may contact me at any time via email at soharsquare@gmail.com or soharsquare on Discord to add your name to the waitlist. Folks on the waitlist will get priority when commissions open up again.

Upcoming Events

November 23rd: Tabling at KDF26 (Tainan, Taiwan)

December 10th: Lecture on creating fanzines and doujinshi, hosted by the NCKU Manga Club (Tainan, Taiwan)

December 14th-15th: Tabling at FFK17 (Kaohsiung, Taiwan)

This probably isn't relevant to most people here, but I figured I'd put this out there just in case!

CHORUS

CHORUS is my current comic project! It's a 16-chapter BIRDMEN fan manga, and we've just uploaded the last pages of ACT 2. If you liked my previous comics, please consider checking it out at @birdmenfanmanga! Most of my love at this time is going into this project.

A more extended newsletter on CHORUS can be found here.

Subscribe to the Monthly Newsletter Elsewhere

In times like this when social media websites are imploding for one reason or another, I think it's nice to have multiple bases of communication. Of course, monthly newsletters will always be posted on Tumblr, but you can also join my Community Discord for these updates as well. I have also set up an email subscription list.

Thank you all for the support thus far!

Love, Soh Arsquare. Oct. 27, 2024.

[INPRNT | Ko-fi | Commission info]

[chuunijianghuyuri]

You know, with the amount of allegorical only fantasy racism bullshit where the bravest many of these authors can get is the most generic ass "racism is bad and we should all get along" takes featuring pointy ear and cat ear discrimination alongside objectively biologically different or ontologically evil "races" or said racism being insistently being justified by the narrative via history and lore explanations, it really is appreciated that in the fantasy works that Ryukishi07 has written, yeah there's some fantasy in the discrimination, but it's based off of real discrimination in japan such as with Higurashi and the people of Hinamizawa being partly based off of a historical japanese underclass I forgot the name of that was treated as unclean, and of course very direct commentary on the japanese occupation and colonization of taiwan with Genji as the butler of a japanese man rich off of gold from world war two stolen from fascist italy, not to mention references to Unit 731 in Higurashi as well that were censored in the console release. It isn't enough to say that Ryukishi07 was ahead of his time, especially given that many fantasy writers or writers in general still dance around any commentary of actual current or even historical racism beyond allegory, with some such as shounen and seinen isekai writers doing shit like throwing sex slavery in cause they think it's hot with obviously no mention of comfort women in world war two and what that implies, but rather that Ryukishi07 is, in a way unfortunately, a cut above the rest.

[animentality]

"no shit an Asian country isn't that inclusive of trans people."

Finally, someone who recognizes that most Asian countries are homophobic and doesnt sugar coat it

idk why this is a point of contention today.

TAIWAN IS THE ONLY COUNTRY WHERE GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN ALL OF ASIA.

how am I supposed to sugarcoat it??

There are LGBT people and LGBT supporters everywhere in this fucking world, and maybe people themselves are more tolerant than their governments, but it's not like it's inaccurate to say most of Asia is homophobic.

and actual queer people in Asia could tell you that, but white people in America have decided that their act of social justice today is to harass ME for pointing an obvious thing out.

it's also bizarre because I am fucking Asian.

so calling me a racist is weird... am I a racist, white girl?

tell me more, I need your white wisdom on this subject.

not like I have a literal masters degree in anthropology and wrote a fucking masters thesis on racism and racial violence in America.

whitesplain it to me.