#chinese diaspora thoughts
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Gentle reminder — if you are someone who reads cultural meta written by Chinese fans on your fave danmei novels, please remember our culture isn’t a monolith. Some of us have differing interpretations of the text. This is all relative to upbringing, lived experience/exposure, knowledge, research, personality etc. Another Chinese fan might see themes and markers in a different way I do, and that’s okay.
What’s not okay is to pit one person’s meta against another’s, especially if you are not part of the culture. Like “so-and-so said this, and it explains very well why what you wrote is wrong”. Or worse “so-and-so said this and it contradicts yours, but i think they’re right because they are 2nd gen/have grown up on the mainland whereas you are 4th gen/grown up diaspora”.
Please don’t do this. We all have different reasons for writing cultural meta. Some of us do it out of love for the text, some out of love for the community, and some just to get our thoughts out and help us connect with/better understand our heritage in our own ways. This isn’t an academic setting. There is no dissertation defence.
It’s legit disturbing that so many non-cn fans view cultural meta as a commodity to be critiqued or compared, or to be sharpened into weapons for bashing others.
#crossposted from twitter as im temporarily locked there#chinese diaspora#chinese diaspora thoughts#cultural meta#a meta post about meta?
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oop okay deleted that headcanon post i can't be perceived. but for the record i have Thoughts abt mixed 2nd gen chinese diaspora tim and the way being mixed and 2nd gen plays into his overall identity issues and his compartmentalization habits and his relationship with his white dad. much 2 think about
#rimi talks#i can't talk too openly about mixed kid feelings. don't look at me#i'm not even chinese diaspora im desi diaspora dskdhj but like. man. mixed diaspora kid feelings...#duck if you see this post you have to tell me so i can ramble my tim thoughts to you btw#mixed diaspora tim AND hes transgender btw.
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for modern AU fics - what chinese media did diaspora consume?
making this post because some of us in the diaspora server were having a chat about what Chinese media "Diaspora Chinese" watched in the 90's - 2000's (and even sooner than that) while not having access to satellite chinese media or streaming services - this is in the context of writing modern AU fics based off Chinese media/novels (so your main character's grandpa or uncle is not, in fact, watching an episode of Friends or Shortland Street or something as flavour text because sorry what the hell-)
We generally watched a lot of stuff on VCDs, including bootlegged and non-bootlegged movies, shows, anime/donghua. My household had a whole VCD album of this, and a lot of VCDs (even if they were pirated editions) would have a fancy hardcover box with a magnetic clasp and some artwork representing the show on it.
All of this is Mandarin - so not TVB stuff, because I'm from Northern China and I don't know any cantonese - but Canto friends, please feel free to add to the list! This is mostly stuff my parents liked to watch, or I liked to watch with them, with the exception of a few which I mainly watched with friends/cousins when I was maybe (in most cases) eleven/twelve years old onwards. This is a pretty personal list, meant to give people general idea of a possible "ballpark" of sorts, and by no means exhaustive.
Now, for the list of shows which I can confirm I had or someone I know had on VCD or some kind of offline media format lol (I'll try add release year stamps and links to the EN wikipedia where possible):
Period dramas (mostly Qing Dynasty stuff):
Huan Zhu Gege 还珠格格 (1998, April-) This is a classic, so many memes come from this show; hugely popular series, basically cemented Zhang Tie Lin's face as the face of the Qing Emperor for about a decade.
Tie Chi Tong Ya Ji Xiao Lan 铁齿铜牙纪晓岚 (2002-2010) - I loved this show as a kid and watched all four seasons on repeat with family... The "trio" in this show are well known and loved.
Amazing Detective Di Ren Jie / 神探狄仁杰 (2004) A very popular and addictive show.
Ok now the Big Four:
Romance of 3 kingdoms 1994 / 三国演义 (1994) - a classic that has had many remakes, my older cousin would play this on repeat...
Hong Lou Meng/红楼梦 （1987） - another classic with many remakes, but I think the most recognised by the public one is the 1987 one.
Journey to the West / 西游记 live action (1986) - I think the 1986 version of the live action is the most recognised one.
*Shui Hu Zhuan / 水浒传 (1998) - I am not too familliar with the live action of this one in my household tbh bc my mum doesn't like it lol (she keeps saying it's too depressing) but I'm sure it's up there with the rest of the big four, if anyone has an opinion on this one please let me know!
Modern setting shows:
My dad loved all the Sun Honglei (孙红雷 - actor name) stuff, iirc it was a lot of MinGuo period espionage stuff, your shanghai 1920's sxc aesthetic. This actor has been around since 1999? Qian Fu （潜伏）was very famous, and Ren Jian Zheng Dao Shi Cang Sang （人间正道是沧桑）。 These were around '08 and '09.
Chuang Guan Dong - 闯关东 (2008) (Baidu link, sorry - couldn't get an EN wikipedia one). This show was huge when it was airing, everyone was watching it. I was pretty young but even I watched it and got invested ... and I thought it was such an "old person" show at the time lmao.
Xiao Bing Zhang Ga / 小兵张嘎 （2004） (sorry, again Baidu link) - yo, anti-japanese war movies set between 1937-1945 were crazy popular - this is one of them and was very popular):
Donghua/Anime (all the stuff kid me watched and some which I didn't but were popular):
喜羊羊与灰太狼 (2005-)
Calabash Brothers / 葫芦兄弟 （1986-1987）
Black Cat Detective / Hei Mao Jing Zhang 黑猫警长 （1984-2010）
Lan Mao Tao Qi 3000 Wen 蓝蓝猫淘气3000问 AKA 蓝猫 (blue cat) (October 1999 - Present)
Legend of Ne Zha 哪吒传奇 (2003)
Journey to the West/Xi You Ji 西游记 This was truly the Donghua I grew up on from when I was a bb, the OP song and ED song are classic bangers all kids know.
Slam Dunk/ 灌篮高手 - People truly watched a lot of anime that may or may not have been terribly dubbed into mando (possibly canto too). Late 80s and 90s kids were all over this, and Dragon Ball, Crayon Shinchan (labixiaoxin).
Taiwanese Dramas:
This is mid-late 2000's, I would be remiss to not talk about the Taiwanese dramas of this era. Mike He, Rainie Yang, Wu Zun (amongst many, many others) were huge. Stuff like Dou Niu Yao Bu Yao, it started with a kiss, Hua Yang Shao Nv (Taiwanese version of Hana Kimi) were all pretty popular. Not sure if these shows all hold up in 2023, but boy were they popular at the time.
Note about CNY:
For CNY, people would try to tune into 春节联欢晚会 (the CCTV official CNY show) at that One Friend Who Had China Satellite TV's house. Zhao Ben Shan / 赵本山 was a comedy staple, and the show would often feature people from the music industry to perform. Eventually these people became more and more relevant to my gen and Jay Chou etc started appearing.
Last but not least Xian Jiaaaan 仙剑:
In 2005 I was all over 仙剑奇侠传 (Chinese Paladin), based off the video game. This show was crazy popular and probably sent me and a whole lot of other kids into Xianxia / Wuxia hell (and Hu Ge hell, and later I came back to love Liu Yifei). Thank you. The OST is a true banger.
#cnovel#mdzs#cdrama#chinese diaspora#danmei#not a lot of jinyong wuxia shows here so people who have opinions please chime in!#whew that was more than i thought#music could do with another post#but i dont know too much about my dads music i was just a 2000s cpop nerd#also this doesnt cover movies either#please no lan qiren watching friends#this breaks me out of my immersion immediately unless there was a specific reason why shufu is watching friends#not even sure how to tag this#late 2000s you could pretty much stream and download stuff i think i did that for bbjx when it came out#even tho my parents hated The Internet i managed#feel free to add more to this in a post or tags or whatever
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not so live reaction to ga-ming gameplay video leaks
GOD!!!!!!!!!! i swear i dont think they've made a 4* with so much love and thought since like. probably yun jin. i think most ppl are stunned but like MAN. his idles???? the 10 sec of fully animated lion dance? it changes color and instantly reminds me of hong kong neon lights (his burst too tbh)?? THE BACKGROUND DRUMS IN HIS IDLE???? you can see in his normal attack sequence a very short plum blossom pole pops up and he steps on it, and like AAA idk. his animations. :') they really put so much effort into him I wouldn't be surprised if we got an entire yun jin opera animation w him too.
have more to say about how people weren't super happy about the removal of the white elements in his design, from the concept art, but i think the more i look at his design—he has a real/modern style name, is youthful, has neon effects, lively animation, everything matches up to create a very young adult character, a lot more modern than some of the liyue designs, it's nice. it's a cohesive design that actually hints at what his personality is like and what he does and that's a success i think.
there was a bilibili comment wayyy early on (before this leak flood), reacting to the disappointment about his leaked final design, basically saying, "lion dance is still a job, he probably wouldn't wear his uniform all the time even when off duty, and that's why his design seems to have less lion dance elements and looks more casual" etc. looking at ga-ming now that everything's released via leaks, this was def what they were going for. like you can tell that he's a vanguard, that's his full time job, which translates into the primarily black design, but you can also clearly tell he's a lion dancer as a side hustle. idk it's really nice :') i dont have much else to say, besides i think they probably nailed his design as best they could
#now if mihoyo could stop nationalpridemaxxing and put as much thought into other nations 4* as him. maybe theyd be a better game overall#but this is a win regardless#i did not intend to type this much but it just Happened.#last couple comments. he is so canto it's CRAZY. apparently his cn intro has a couple freq used canto phrases that i didn't pick up on#specifically. mighty mythical beasts in cn is 威水舞兽 and the first 2 is v common canto phrasing. and his last intro line talking about#why not enjoy a bit more tea. is somehow a pun or internet meme? unsure about this one but someone commented on it and i was like huh#anyways. those two + his special dish + everything else idk. im going crazy. congrats to all southern chinese people especially diaspora#genshin leaks#ramblings!#ga-ming#gaming genshin#嘉明
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I think it's nice, sure, that people who aren't Chinese are interested in a Chinese classic...
BUT it's really fucking off-putting that a non-chinese westerner who has only casual knowledge on the literature or its contexts and next to no knowledge about wider Chinese culture is running the discussion & making commentary on it. answering questions confidently... sometimes incorrectly.
i think i'd have less issues with it if it was like clearly funny (yknow the type of humor on this web site where "people can just say anything") but no they're entirely straight serious about it.
also placing social context & commenting on it in terms of modern-day standards ,... and not like literally what other coeval societies (contemporaries like romans or w/e) were doing. great we have more racist 'look what these backwards people were doing. their social practices were so uniquely barbaric' good job stop reading this novel from my culture. :) now.
to be fair sometimes they do say 'hey i dont know this. does any chinese person know & want to share'. well, maybe just my personal opinion but looking at the lack of responses... maybe you've already lost their attention... anyway they don't always ask for help. there's been plenty of times where they answer confidently and they're just WRONG.
#i actually followed for a while and answered some questions. tbh I thought they were chinese diaspora at the beginning#but they revealed later that they were just a european who had interest in [chinese classic] but weren't familiar with chinese culture#so yeah. ive seen enough and unfollowed#i wrote this months ago (clearing out posts that ended up in my drafts today)... im checking their blog again and#I'm still seeing bad quality info or straight up uninformed info about chinese history/culture again. smh#''ancient Chinese people didn’t like the sea very much so they didnt explore'' hmmmmmmmm dunning kruger#zheng he would like a word. also everyone who was affected by 倭寇 pirates
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As chinese indonesian, reading the dear readers part of dial a for aunties literally made me fucking tear up 🥲
Like what the fuck, why is this kinda relatable even though I wasn’t even born in the 90s *sobbing 🙃
#jesse q sutanto#dial a for aunties#dafd#books#Chinese Indonesia#indonesian#chinese#asian diaspora#immigration#sobbing#random thoughts#finally starting a book
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O you found Girl Giant and the Monkey King and nervous nebula's art! Its such a good book, a very underrated version of the great sage. ^-^
the artwork in the book is just amazing. I would stare at it for hours.
YEAH @nervous-nebula's artwork for this book is so fun & the illustrations themselves are great & while I just started the book I'm enjoying its portrayal of the Monkey King so far & am excited at the prospect of a Great Sage in a work for children who's genuinely complex, fun, frustrating, but who's very proactive with sympathetic goals. Also Thom Ngho is a pretty cool little girl who seems to be off on a great adventure of not just self-acceptance but in learning about how power both physical, social, and political should and should not be wielded!
#ask answered#girl giant and the monkey king#it was pretty cool too to get a glimpse as to how the monkey king is thought of in vietnam!#between this book and american borne chinese#you can get a glimpse as to how the monkey king is a very important literary figure for many people in the asian diaspora#to contemplate everything from heritage to the struggles of day to day living in countries often hostile to their communities
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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!
#mxtx diaspora may#chinese diaspora#sino diaspora#mdzs#tgcf#svsss#mo dao zu shi#tian guan ci fu#heaven official's blessing#the grandmaster of demonic cultivation#the untamed#cql#chen qing ling#ren zha fanpai zijiu xitong#魔道祖师#天官赐福#人渣反派自救系统#墨香铜臭#mxtx event#mxtx#mdzs event#tgcf event#svsss event#fandom event#fanfic#podfic#fanart#chinese diaspora event#scum villain's self saving system
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once again i am feeling some way about sensitivity reading & answering DMs on cultural questions in fandom in general.
far too many people have this idea that “it’s just a couple of straightforward questions about terms of address or names or things in that time period; it shouldn’t take long”. yeah it doesn’t work quite like that. first of all, the questions are never as straightforward or as simple as people think. there’s often a lot of context behind them — not just the answers but the questions themselves. (i’m not going to go into the need for research here — whenever people ask me questions like these i usually give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve already tried doing their own research and come up with nothing — but it doesn’t negate the fact that i would need to do an additional round of research to make sure i answer the question correctly and not have any mistakes i make taken as gospel by others).
all of this Takes Time. time which people don’t realize. and there’s the emotional aspect of it too, particularly if the person asking is a complete stranger who has never bothered to get to know me or establish common ground first. the cost to me is high — i’m giving up my time and energy to someone i barely know, and therefore barely trust. having a complete stranger approach me just reinforces the idea that my only worth to fandom is not as a friend or creator or even a human being, but as a cultural help machine: something that automatically generates academic answers when people type questions into it. and then there’s the issue with turning people down — some of them really can’t take no for an answer, like “cmon it’s just a couple of small things, you could just do it”. and all of a sudden i’m seen as selfish, standoffish etc. if i refuse.
say that i decide to help and answer correctly. what then, would the same person approach me again and again for help in the future? there’s a high chance that they would. “oh jing was so helpful last time so let me ask them again.” and now this person permanently sees me as a dictionary or a resource.
(to be clear, i don’t feel this way when friends or mutuals DM to ask for help, because we usually already appreciate other things about each other and have other things to talk about besides cultural questions.)
and don’t get me started on what i could possibly help with! i often get tagged to do sensitivity reading for modern fics. but so many of them are set in the US like 😐 even if i had the time or was taking sensitivity reading commissions, i’m not based in the US, and i don’t know anything about being chinese diaspora there. i wouldn’t presume or be able to speak over people who are!
anyway this is all just to say, please make sure you know someone decently well, especially about what they can and are willing to help with, before asking them cultural help questions. and please appreciate that a lot of time usually goes into giving answers (and packaging them for clarity), and the complexity is best determined by the answerer, not the asker. and if you don’t have a single person to ask, consider throwing your question to the void in a cultural help channel in a discord server where people can take their time to choose whether to respond or not, instead of pinging or DMing strangers. i promise you, it’ll go a very long way.
#chinese diaspora thoughts#some thoughts about being cn diaspora in fandom#diaspora thoughts#chinese diaspora#cultural help
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Kindred Spirits 知音: "The One Who Truly Understands Your Songs"
For #AroWeek, I want to talk about the Chinese term 知音 (pronounced zhīyīn in Mandarin), which has influenced my thinking about queerplatonic relationships.
zhī 知: to know, knowing
yīn 音: music, sound
literally, a zhīyīn is someone who "truly understands your songs"
the term zhīyīn comes from a story about finding a kindred spirit through music.
There are many versions of the story. Here's one version:
One day, the musician Yu Boya was playing a qin (see image) in the wilderness, when he met Zhong Ziqi.
When Boya played one song, Ziqi immediately understood it and described it as reflecting the mood of soaring mountains (高山). When Boya played another song, Ziqi also comprehended immediately and described it as creating the mood of flowing waters (流水).
Ziqi could understand all of Boya's songs. When Ziqi passed away, Boya felt so distressed that he destroyed his qin and never played it again. Boya thought of Ziqi as a "zhīyīn," and that term continues to be widely used to this day.
In a modern context, the term of "zhīyīn" is often translated into English as a soulmate, a kindred spirit, or a very close friend, but at its core, it's a term that refers to a type of intensely emotional, spiritual, and platonic connection with someone.
The original songs played by Boya have been long lost to the passage of time, but musicians and composers have tried to imagine what the songs might have sounded like.
There's even a recording of "Flowing Waters" (流水) included on the Voyager Golden Record, symbolically helping humankind search for a zhīyīn as it drifts around in outer space.
youtube
For me, as an aspec (demiromantic, biromantic, and asexual) Sino diaspora femme, the idea of zhīyīn offers me a way to think about the concept of queerplatonic relationships, given that it's very similar to the idea of a soulmate but without the necessary romantic connotations of the word in English.
The concept of zhīyīn is explored again and again in various Sinophone literature and popular media, from wuxia and xianxia c-dramas to poetry that alludes explicitly or indirectly to zhīyīn.
Folks who follow my work as a translator might know that I have been translating poems by Qiu Jin (1875-1907), one of China's most renowned feminist poets. She frequently wrote about her longing for a zhīyīn.
Some of my translations:
https://chinachannel.lareviewofbooks.org/2021/02/12/qiu-jin/
The concept of zhiyin also features prominently in my upcoming book of poetry translations, The Lantern and the Night Moths. I originally wrote this thread for Twitter but wanted to bring it here for #AroWeek.
Alloromantic folks, please take a moment to learn more about #AroWeek and support arospec creators. If you are arospec and found me via this tweet, please feel free to say hi!
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Hi Wawa. I'm SEA diaspora Chinese and like many east asians I'm lactose intolerant. Not that I knew what that was until I was like 17. When I told my parents hey it's not normal for dairy to make you feel like that, they just said but milk is supposed to do that.
A mainland Chinese friend also said oh yeah my parents think milk is healthy because it makes you 'expel' all the bad stuff in your body.
So is this milk is a delicious cleansing tonic belief common among Chinese people?
Psh I've never heard anything about milk as a cleansing power lol. My parents didn't even really eat straight up dairy before immigrating to the U.S, and you'll find that dairy products have not really become more widespread in China until recently. Something like 90% of East Asians develop lactose intolerance in adulthood (that's what happened to me; I became lactose intolerant in my teenage years after like two years of not really eating dairy).
My parents are also lactose intolerant but neither of them were under the impression that dairy was a colon cleanser or anything lol. It was more like "oh milk is healthy for you.... but watch out!", like in a "yah brazil nuts are tasty but if you eat a lot, all your hair will fall out and you might die" type thing. After I figured out what lactose intolerance was, I forcibly switched my mom over to lactose free milk and make her take lactaid for heavy creams. I think even a lot of Americans don't really know that dairy is not ~just supposed to~ make you bloat and vomit or get diarrhea or something (the same can be said about a lot of other food sensitivities like toward fructans, allium, gluten etc).
Anyway, to ramble a little more, in my experience, back just a couple of years ago, even sliced cheese was pretty hard to find at a Chinese store, and it was like a tiny expensive little pack in the foreign foods section at a big supermarket. Chinese people generally eat fermented dairy products like suannai (yogurt drink), or soy/grain milks. My parent's generation (1950s ish) didn't have dairy growing up and a lot of my older relatives think it's nasty/rank/sour and is the reason white people smell weird. The people I've seen nowadays seem more aware of lactose intolerance (i.e, "this is an adverse side effect" vs "that's just what happens") and the correlation between consuming a lot of dairy and sitting on the toilet for like an hour lol. I don't think it's really thought of as healthy BECAUSE it makes you empty your bowels. It's the bone health myth that Big Dairy pedals.
#text#answered ask#i think my mom did mention she tried like some kind of milk based product from one of her tibetan roommates when she was in yunnan#or something#but then she didn't have it until she moved to the u.s and she thought it was gross for a really long time#panickingstudent2
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feeling ??? about ga-ming's mando with a canto accent
#a selection of the feelings: i think the reactions of diaspora s chiners are valid to want like. more canto / canto pronunciation of gaming#however it's unlikely to happen imo esp bc i think mainlander s chinese are already ok with how his accent sounds#however it should happen because the regionalism politics are real and like mando standardization etcetc etc etc if you know you know#however it's also gonna be out of character if they make him speak full on canto bc unintelligibility idk#but their english translation is already like that so??#also i dont really expect much from mihoyo after sum.eru and whatever leaks are saying about fire nation nat.lan#i also think that holding this company; who makes everyone have erhuayin despite liyue being a harbor; to the standard that re#regional dialects are going to be fully incorporated especially from a representation standpoint is kinda unrealistic#but also its valid to want the rep idk. especially for diaspo and i dont blame anyone for feeling disappointed#and i also think they should do it because it's not even a censorship issue other games have canto lion dance charas#anyways thoughts do be clattering around in my head rn#ramblings!#this might turn into a delete later if im feeling clearheaded enough after a while
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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
#ask#answer#fandom event#signal boost#mdzs#mxtx#mo dao zu shi#the untamed#the grandmaster of demonic cultivation#wangxian#qin su week 2024#qin su#zhanchengxian event#zhanchengxian#mxtx diaspora may#mxtx monsterfucker week#sweet & spicy wen ning day#March 2024
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Since people expressed interest in the comments about the music I used to write my current fic, I wanted to share some of what I explored to write it. I don't think that you need to know this canon or have read this fic to read this post, though I do spend a bit of time talking about how canon influenced the choices I made. Anyone who has been following this fic knows that it was supposed to be porn, and largely, it really still is for the most part a fic about sex. But I did do a lot of research on music with which I'm frankly not very familiar, and the process was really rewarding.
The fic is Time Signature, if you're interested. This post has a lot about music, electronic music, Chinese music, and music theory, as well as some links to music that interests me and inspired portions of the fic. I don't expect anyone to read anything this long, but it was nice to write it.
Canon. One of my favorite things about both book and drama canon is how in synch WWX/LWJ are cultivation-wise. It’s not just that they can predict the talisman the other will use or the seal the other will cast; they also have the same hunches solving mysteries, the same instincts protecting others, the same ideas about where to go. When writing an AU, it’s important to me to show that synchronization (beyond physical attraction and sex), mostly because I think it’s hot.
In canon, however, WWX revolutionizes cultivation, inventing a whole new method when no one ever thought that possible. I also think this is hot. I also think it’s hot if LWJ thinks it’s hot. Look, canonically, LWJ disapproves of demonic cultivation because it will injure WWX’s spirit and body, but imo there is a reason LWJ is so into WWX, and it’s not just because WWX bugs him. It’s not even just because WWX is really cute and happy and exuberant and everything that’s the opposite of his upbringing. I also like to think that it’s because WWX is a fucking genius, and LWJ doesn't mind the idea of upending tradition and the entire cultivation world as much as it really seems at first that he would; he just struggles with anything that could hurt WWX. So anyway, WWX being revolutionary, in basically a technological sense, is important to me.
Wangxian both play music canonically. LWJ’s playing is noted to be particularly powerful, and WWX’s chosen music is at least one part of his revolutionary cultivation method. Additionally, the song LWJ writes for them is an important plot point. It makes sense that in a modern AU, music is a point of connection, so that is what I chose for their careers.
The final point about canon I want to make in connection to the music for this fic is that this is a Chinese canon with Chinese characters set in China. I don’t think it’s wrong to write AUs set in the west. I have done so, and I think there is value in examining a Chinese canon that has become very popular in the west through the lens of the Chinese diaspora. But I also think that there is a lot of value in a western person such as myself trying to learn and understand the cultural context for a canon that I really like, even if I sometimes get it wrong.
I had decided to set this fic in China because I thought the setting would not strongly feature, which would give me an easy “in” to write something set in a place I don’t know much about. Directly after choosing the setting I chose their careers, which made me realize I needed to do a lot more research—both about the careers but also about the setting--than a fic that was supposed to be mainly porn should have really required.
Music genre choice. Lots of AUs I’ve read have Wangxian’s mutual interest be that they both play western classical instruments. This baffles me, but it’s what I’ve seen, so I loosely started there—ie, I spent some time thinking about what would be revolutionary in western instrumental music, which entailed doing some research on contemporary classical music. There are obviously pioneers in any music genre, folks doing new things, but it turned out I just did not know enough about this genre to really understand what would be truly avant-garde.
I took a step back and thought about the instrumental music I have personally heard that feels really new and different, and Philip Glass was the first thing that came to mind. I first heard of Philip Glass when I saw The Hours, for which he wrote the soundtrack. I still think that soundtrack is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and I did use it as inspiration for music in this fic, particularly LWJ’s. More on that later.
Philip Glass is great, but for all his eastern minimalist influences, he is a strong figure in the western paradigm. I did some research on Chinese contemporary instrumental music, but most of what I found had a really western flavor. I think there are two reasons for this—one is that I am in the west searching for articles in English; for all that we like to imagine the internet is universal, search algorithms and search history is actually making it far harder than it used to be to find material with which you are completely unfamiliar. Secondly, western music did in fact have a notable impact on Chinese music, which is fine, it’s still Chinese, but I worried about everything I wrote just sounding like it was about western classical, which is a concern of mine I’ll address more later.
Since I wasn’t finding what I wanted, particularly for WWX, in the “art music” (aka, lowercase “c” classical music, which Wikipedia says is also known as “cultivated music, serious music, or canonical music”—ie, instrumental music with strings, winds, percussion) scene, I realized I needed to examine the other contemporary music, by which I mean everything else. Since I am most familiar with rock, Radiohead immediately came to mind, but Radiohead is a band, and there are lyrics. Though the lyrics are not where the meaning of Radiohead songs lie (the vocals are treated as largely instrumental), if there were lyrics, I’d need to write about them, and I didn’t want to. More importantly, Radiohead is singular in what they do, which makes them difficult to categorize, and this makes them difficult to describe textually. You can say that Radiohead revolutionized rock, or even reinvented it, but that is not really addressing how fundamentally avant-gardeRadiohead is. Describing how revolutionary Radiohead is on paper really is just saying “but they’re different!” over and over again.
What I needed for WWX was a music genre that was revolutionary, an entire school of music that felt cutting edge and frankly, unfamiliar, and for that, I realized I needed my brother.
Some stories about my family. My brother is a music artist who creates electronic music. If you want to understand why it took me this long to get to my brother in this thought process, you should understand a few things about him. First, I love him a lot, but we’re not very close. Second, my brother is probably the quietest person I know—like, idk, LWJ levels of non-talking. Last, I do not understand my brother’s music. I’ve tried! I listened to it a lot! But when I didn’t understand, I asked questions, and my brother cannot explain any of it. He’s an expressive guy! Just not verbally, and as a very verbal person, I have a tough time when people cannot use their words. Like, even asking him what type of music he plays, he’ll say something like, “It’s complicated.” (This is a lie. He’ll look at me and say, “Type?” And I’ll try to explain what I mean. And he’ll say, “I don’t know.” And if I said, “Okay, but if you had to label it?” He’d laugh and say, “Why?” And if I said, “So I can better understand your music,” he’d think for a long time, then look very frustrated, and laugh, and say, “I don’t know?” I think we’ve literally had this exact conversation).
Anyway, possibly through one of these type of exchanges, where I’m grilling him like a school marm and he’s acting like I’m making him take a standardized test he hates (I’m his little sister. Would it be easier to subject him to these horrors if he was my little brother?), I learned that one of my brother’s influences is Aphex Twin. My brother loves Aphex Twin. I . . . don’t. I’ve listened to a lot of him (in order to understand my brother better); I do not like it, and I do not understand it. My brother talks about Aphex Twin like he’s a genius (if and when my brother talks at all). Now, my brother is a very smart guy; it’s not that I didn’t believe him when he said Aphex Twin was a genius, but he also gets . . . swept up by things, and as previously discussed, he doesn’t talk a lot, so I didn’t really understand what my brother meant by this. It took hearing about Aphex Twin randomly, in a couple other places, for me to realize Aphex Twin is a Big Deal. When I looked up Aphex Twin at some point in order to better understand the music my brother makes, I found that Aphex Twin is considered by many to be a genius and also a pioneer. Apologies to all of you who already knew that about Aphex Twin.
Sidenote, my brother’s wife is also a musician, though not professionally. She could have been, considering that she was ranked as one of the top flute players in Texas, and Texas is fucking huge. But no, professionally, my sister-in-law is in cognitive science and linguistics, which you may remember was the career LWJ had in Say More (my fiancée is also a linguist. I also know a few other linguists. My life is convenient for my Wangxian AUs, I gotta say). I mention my sister-in-law because my sister-in-law has enough musical acuity to also recognize that both my brother and Aphex Twin are geniuses, which really helped me to understand that even though I’m not really into this music at all, it really is a Big Deal.
So, I researched Aphex Twin and also went to my brother’s website for his music to find out what the hell this type of music is called, and it turns out there’s not a good name. IDM, which stands for intelligent dance music, is a label Aphex Twin himself famously does not like, and my brother labeled his own music as “acid, techno, house, electro.” Wikipedia said that Aphex Twin is known for techno, ambient, and jungle.
Anyway, into this confusing morass of electronic revolutionary music is where I decided to plunk Wei Ying.
Electronic music. Note for this section that I know nothing about electronic music. I’m writing this post partly to document the journey of discovery I went on to write this porn. I’m not really trying to educate anyone so much as I’m trying to provide insight as to what I researched for this fic and what the references are, in case the fic interested you.
When you really get down to it, music made with electronics has as many genres and styes as music made with more traditional instruments, and the labels are just as confusing (see this Wikipedia list of electronic music genres). For instance, “electronica” just means music made with electronics to some people, but to others it’s more specific. You’ve also got a bunch of other terms: ambient, EDM, techno, house, IDM.
This is all based on what I learned from Wikipedia, but here are some loose definitions as I understand them: There’s ambient, which is really made for background listening, and then there’s EDM (electronic dance music), which is made for active listening—ie, dancing. Within EDM you have lots of genres, such as techno; techno is usually characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, and house, which . . . is also characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, but the tempo is different. From what I can gather, house is also a bigger tent than techno; ie, many different genres and styles can be house, but techno is more often just techno. (Note that part of the reason all of this terminology has so much overlap is that it originated in different places; techno was invented in Berlin, house in Chicago.) Meanwhile, the list of genres of house is so big that it also has its own Wikipedia page, which is almost as large as the list of electronic music genres.
Note that there is such a thing as “house ambient”, which explodes the entire concept of ambient vs EDM. To aid in that explosion, IDM is described on Wikipedia as including styles such as ambient techo, and “is regarded as better suited to home listening rather than dancing.” What stands out about IDM, and the reason it is featured in the fic, is that it’s known for being experimental. (I’ll add that it emerged in the 90s, which isn’t great for my fic. Whatever WWX is doing, he is on the edge, and 90s music already old to him, even if he’s Aphex Twin’s biggest fan! But alas, my research could not tell me what is happening right now, because you really have to be involved in The Scene to understand what’s new. By the time it’s documented, it’s already really a little old.)
If you are researching electronic music and how it is revolutionary, you’re probably going to get into its evolution and history, since this is a new style of music. And if you are looking into the origins of this kind of music, you’re going to find Brian Eno. And if you’re looking into Brian Eno, you’re going to find minimalism.
Minimalism. Brian Eno is an extremely famous dude. I’d probably heard of him before, but I am very good with big concepts and pretty bad with details, so because I didn’t know anything about the bigger concepts behind ambient/electronic music/minimalism, I never paid attention. Now I’m hearing about him literally everywhere, which is funny, since it’s not like he’s new news. Ezra Klein was literally waxing poetic about Music for Airports just a month ago.
Eno is famous for his pioneering work in ambient music and electronic music, and, as one might expect, electronic ambient. Eno was always doing experimental, avant-garde stuff, and early on he embraced a minimal style. He later coined the term “ambient music.”
What’s interesting about this is that around the same time as Eno was doing this in later 1960s/early 1970s, a new kind of art music was being born in classical circles. This is the capital “M” Minimal music, for which—you guessed it—Philip Glass is really famous. And when you look at Philip Glass’s influences, he was deeply influenced by the minimalism of eastern music, especially Indian and Tibetan music. I couldn’t really find anything saying that Brian Eno was directly influenced by traditional eastern music, but Eno is definitely a fan of Glass and vice versa; they really build on each other.
This ended up just being a very cool intersection for the fic that I didn’t plan. I didn’t end up using it very much, but I must say I was stupidly pleased that the kind of music I was looking into for both of these characters has such deep roots in eastern music traditions. So now let’s talk a little bit about eastern music, specifically Chinese music, since that’s where this fic is based.
Chinese music. I did read a bit about Chinese music for this fic, and I have to say that I still don’t know a lot about it. As stated above, I’m in the west, using my western search techniques, looking for primarily articles in English (though I get Google to translate some things). I also just have a western understanding of music and music history, and it turns out, surprise, different cultures are different, and my entire paradigm for understanding music does not really apply to music from other cultures.
I, and many of us, want music to be a universal language, something that can move through all barriers and touch us in our souls. And it is! I have listened to and loved music not from my culture! But thinking of music as something intrinsically universal and therefore immediately moving to everyone really collapses the rich history of musical tradition all cultures have. Music really is like a language, in that it is built on the culture that creates it; it has its own internal logic; it has style and meaning that depend on the history of that tradition and the understanding of its audience. The brief reading I’m going to do to write some porn will not give me to understand the deep and rich tradition of Chinese music, but also, frankly, even if I turned all my efforts and career to learning and understanding this right now, I still would not have the best comprehension. I don’t even comprehend western music, and I grew up with it. So, forgive me for the paucity of my understanding and knowledge, and please correct me if I make mistakes.
When I think about Chinese music that I know about, I think of two things: modern and traditional. The modern stuff I’m thinking of is stuff like C-pop, but also the things you might hear on the soundtrack for a drama or movie. To me, none of this music sounds that different than western pop or western soundtracks. There are a few reasons for this: one, there are tons of Chinese music that is not reaching me. Two, maybe I just think it doesn’t sound that different because I can only really process what I recognize. Three, in a similar vein, maybe I’m thinking “that sounds like what I know” when really what I know sounds like what I’m hearing. Globalization is definitely doing things to music; if you’re telling me that Asian pop is not influencing western pop right now, I’m going to think you’re crazy, considering the influence and popularity Asian pop has in the US and Europe right now. And four, western music did have an impact on Chinese music, so there’s that.
Obviously, the music genre I chose for Wei Ying falls into the modern sphere, and I certainly looked into the techno/EDM/IDM/electronic/ambient/house scene in China. Articles I found stated it took a little longer for EDM to pick up steam in China, but now it’s definitely going strong. There are some great electronic music festivals, EDM clubs, underground EDM scenes, and EDM music artists (composers and DJs!) in China. Researching these artists was pretty difficult, especially because I wanted Wangxian’s musical discussions to be highly technical, and for highly technical discussions about EDM you are wandering into some very niche spaces. I’m sure such spaces about EDM in China exist, but they’re most likely to be in Chinese.
As I’ve said, globalization is a factor when it comes to cultural difference in music, and I’d add here that because this genre of music is so new, globalization has even more influence, from what I can tell. That said, I do not want to diminish how much influence very specific locations have to do with this type of music. EDM is very tied to clubs (because of the dancing) and performance (because of deejaying, and also because of things like live coding/algorave), which is probably why we get so many granular genres of house—Chicago house is different from Detroit, just for example. Regardless, I stuck with researching a lot of western artists for both the music and musical discussions in the fic, mostly because the music is supposed to be so new and avant-garde that is should not be something overly familiar to the reader, even if they’re steeped in electronic music genres.
Then there’s traditional music.
Traditional music. Traditional music obviously had a huge influence on Chinese modern music. The influence of traditional eastern music on modern eastern music, as well as traditional eastern music itself, is what really influenced a lot of western minimalism of the 1960s and 70s (and onward). To be clear, not all “eastern” traditional music is the same. It’s just as richly diverse regionally as traditional western music, if not more so, given “the east” is fucking huge—though I will say that a lot of people think of western music as pretty monolithic, because folk is characterized as a separate tradition than classical. When you consider ancient western folk, there’s a shit ton of it, and it’s quite diverse. There is also folk music in eastern music traditions, and this is different than music that would have been played in courts and palaces, so there’s really a ton going on.
Traditional music is what people think of when they think of eastern music being “weird,” which is something I really hate. Look, I love being weird; I think weird is cool; it’s great. But weird means unusual, and traditional music is very usual; people who say that just mean it’s unusual for them, and they should think about their words. What they’re trying to say is that traditional eastern music will sound very different for many western listeners, even though, again, we like to think of music as so universal, actually!, because it’s based on math, actually!, and math is so universal!!! The truth is that math is patterns, and patterns are things that your brain recognizes when there are familiar elements, and when there are unfamiliar elements your brain has trouble recognizing the pattern. So, again, music is a way to communicate across all kinds of boundaries, but it is not a universal translator. (But it does make you wonder . . . if Lan Zhan played Inquiry, could Aeneas answer???)
Regarding the unfamiliar math, what we’re talking about is scales. I think most people know this part. Eastern scales are based on math, just like western scales, but the frequencies are divided up differently. Among other things, traditional Chinese music did not use equal temperament, which means depending on what note you start with, the intervals for all the notes on the scale were be different. A way of thinking about this, at least as I understand it, is that a piano is even tempered. All the notes are always the same whether you’re playing in C major or B flat, because you have no control over the frequency produced when you press the key. But if you’re using just intonation—say you’re using an instrument with just a few strings—you’re adjusting the frequency of the note to match your scale. It requires extremely precise hearing and playing ability.
Notation for traditional Chinese music was really different than how I as a westerner understand it. For one thing, it didn’t include rhythm, and for another, it represented more a framework for improvisation than every single precise note. (See Gongche notation, Wikipedia.)
Authorship was also thought of pretty differently. When I googled “great Chinese composers,” the only results I was getting were twentieth century. There are some great ancient Chinese composers, but I had to do a lot of digging to find them, and trying to find someone like the Chinese equivalent of Beethoven is just the wrong approach. When you get right down to it, this really seems to be about the fundamental difference between western individualism vs eastern collectivism and community-based thinking. The individual artist is not the hero of the story. That said, the tradition of the music is very heroic. For instance, the notation allows such variation that the same piece can really build and grow through different artists, much like a story through oral tradition. Additionally, for an artist in an ensemble piece to stand out would really be quite rude; the point is not the individual talent of the musicians but the fundamental beauty of the piece. (This was a particularly hard thing to research, and I mostly found out what I laid out above from various folks answering questions in forums. The best one I found is here.)
Another thing is that harmony, as we think of it, was just not really a thing in traditional Chinese music. The focus was on a melody, which is where minimalism comes in. I’d add here that the “as we think of it” is pretty important, because the western paradigm, including western music language, is not super great at really capturing the nuance of Chinese music. I am terrible at tracking my sources when I research stuff for fic, so I was trying to find some of them now, and I came across this article, which examines the harmony that did exist, but how different it is from what we think of when we think of western harmony.
Despite the reading I did on this subject, very little about Chinese traditional music made it into the fic. I do have Lan Zhan reading a book on traditional music that he hates. This isn’t based on a book I found, but rather to show that Lan Zhan isn’t really into the idea of musical “purity,” that is, ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do with music. That said, I’m not really aware of what strictures around traditional Chinese music are like, or what the Chinese thought is on that. I am aware of how deeply restrictive western thought is regarding music theory, and that’s really where that part of the fic was coming from.
I’d originally had Lan Zhan reading a book on western music theory and very deeply hating it, but I also felt like having him read a book on western theory could reinforce the idea that he’s working within a western paradigm, when really the whole point is that this Lan Zhan very intentionally uses traditional music values. Due to his inspiration from Wei Ying, he’s breaking the norms of how that music works, but he's not necessarily making it western; he’s making it avant-garde. Basically, my inspiration was a Chinese Philip Glass, but I didn’t want to say that because as mentioned above, Glass is still western, no matter his influences. That said, Wei Ying does compare Lan Zhan to Philip Glass and also Tan Dun, who you might recognize as the guy who did the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many other very famous projects.
Tan Dun has in fact been called the Chinese Philip Glass, which is probably not very respectful to Tan Dun, who is himself an incredible (and experimental!) composer. I should note, however, that Tan Dun is Chinese American—he was born in China, but got a degree at Columbia and has lived in New York since. Also, he is particularly famous for marrying Eastern traditionalism with western style, and that really wasn’t what I wanted for Lan Zhan. I didn’t want Lan Zhan to be incredible because he was using western traditions, though he is familiar with them and can make very talented use of them. A lot of very famous Chinese modern composer are famous for that, and that music is still very Chinese. That said, I felt that if I made that Lan Zhan’s style, it would feel like I was saying Lan Zhan’s music is special because it’s western, and that was something I really wasn’t keen on.
In the end, I possibly did the fic and traditional Chinese music a disservice by having Lan Zhan read his book and hate on it. One of the whole reasons western music theory sucks is it can be pretty racist, and that’s what I was trying to avoid, but by conflating my rage at western music theory with eastern, I didn’t really help things much. But anyway, since I’ve now mentioned it, let’s just take a slight detour to talk about what I mean by racist music theory.
Western music theory racism. There’s a scene in the movie Tár that really solidified my feelings on the subject. In it, a student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender, says they don’t really have much use for Bach because of Bach’s misogynist history. The extremely famous director, Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, lambasts the student for “cancelling” Bach because of Bach’s personal life. The student goes on to say that they really just don’t have much interest in cis male white composers, and Tár continues to lambast the student for considering things like gender and race in conjunction with the art.
My understanding of this scene was that it was demonstrating that Tár is a jerk, so full of herself that she can’t listen to other voices, and so steeped in her 18th century western ideas of genius that she’s literally silencing the music voices she’s supposed to support. That was not most people’s reading of the scene, and in retrospect, possibly not the intention of the film. It seems rather telling that not a lot is known about Bach’s misogyny or lack thereof; there are plenty of other “great” western composers that are known to be worse in terms of misogyny and abuse, and yet the film did not make this scene about them. In retrospect, maybe that scene wanted to paint this student as kind of ignorant for cancelling Bach, and Tár really puts them in their place when she describes how art is more important than the artist.
Fuck that. I certainly believe that art is more important than the artist. JK Rowling sucks; that doesn’t mean I will stop loving HP fic and the part it’s played in my life. But the ugliness of the scene is that it hinges on importance of Bach, and look here, shocker, Bach is not essential, just as JKR is not essential if you decide you don’t ever want to familiarize yourself with the literature of TERFs. Even if you want to be a musician and create or conduct music, Bach is just not essential.
He’s pretty important if you want to be a western music historian, true, but when we talk about music there are many, many music traditions that are incredibly worthwhile and important that not only weren’t created by cis white men, but also weren’t ever derived or influenced by cis white men. If you think that you need Bach to know and love and create and perform and conduct music, it’s because you’re operating in a single paradigm that has become yes, universally known, but also for that reason oppressive and imperialist. I am not saying western classical music is bad because it’s imperialist, just to be clear. Bach’s great! Hate ‘im, but I do love me some Beethoven and he was also very cis and male and white and also a complete douche! What I’m saying is that forcing this music tradition on others is deeply imperialist, and it happens all the time.
Anyway, this is really a tangent, because despite my very good intentions to write about Chinese music, as I have stated, almost everything I used for reference was western, even a lot of the stuff I listened to. Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge that that’s a little racist, even though I tried not to be. Maybe I also wanted to hate on Tár and leave you with this interesting video about white supremacy in music theory.
References. Finally, we’ve reached the part I had originally intended to post, which is why I started writing this. Below are the essays and articles I used to write this fic. They were used in three ways: 1) to describe the music (though I also listened to things, see next section), 2) to inform Lan Zhan’s critiques and Wei Ying’s ideas—though I read a lot of essays to do that, just a crazy amount considering how little of the fic is actually about that, and 3) to describe the reading material Wei Ying and Lan Zhan exchange.
Music Beyond Airports – Appraising Ambient Music
This is a series of essays largely focused around Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, though there’s a lot of other stuff as well. I didn’t read everything in here, but the collection is absolutely fascinating. “Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine” is one of the “articles” Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan; meanwhile, the collection as whole is what Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying when he says he’s been reading about ambient house. Additionally, “Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music” really influenced Lan Zhan’s commentary about arpeggiation, the first time he comments on Wei Ying’s music.
Counterpoint - Tracking in the Music of Aphex Twin
I have some embarrassment about this, given that the article is about counterpoint, and as I have discussed above, eastern traditional music doesn’t really employ that in the way westerners think about it. However, it’s also pretty backwards to restrict Wei Ying to traditional eastern music, as modern Chinese music includes plenty of counterpoint, and part of the point of the fic is that Wei Ying is doing entirely new things that haven’t been done before. Well. They’ve been done by Aphex Twin, as described in this piece, which also describes the first piece that Wei Ying plays for Lan Zhan in the fic, in the car. I did lift the phrase “pedagogy of counterpoint,” and could not decide whether it was long enough or significant enough to credit in the fic.
Unequal Temperament: A Review of Aphex Twin’s SYRO
I can’t remember what I used this article for. It’s an interesting read.
Reverb Machine (the entire website)
This is the site I kept returning to over and over and over again. Most of the articles about electronic really focus on either the equipment used or chords. In the fic, Lan Zhan isn’t supposed to know much about equipment or how any of it is used, because he does not do electronic music. Also, I didn’t really want to talk much about chord progressions, because those discussions are steeped in western music theory, and I wanted it to be possible for Wei Ying to be using the kind of scales traditional Chinese music used, even if a lot of modern Chinese music does use an even-tempered 12-tone scale. However, this site has a lot, and I ended up returning to it again and again so Wei Ying could say an offhand thing about reverb, and to describe certain things.
Notably, Wei Ying’s track, sex.mp3 is loosely based around Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I haven’t even talked about Trent Reznor, but he was also someone I considered deeply when I started thinking about making Wei Ying do electronic music. In case you don’t know, Reznor was the artist behind Nine Inch Nails, but in later years he moved on to more experimental things, including movie soundtracks. Side note, movie soundtracks and video games is where a lot of these experimental artists doing either minimalism, ambient, or electronica, or a combination of all three end up, and I ended up reading a lot about video game music.
But anyway, when I saw the Social Network, I came out of it 1) admiring Aaron Sorkin and wishing I didn’t admire Aaron Sorkin because he’s kind of a douche, 2) shipping Mark and Eduardo way too much for my comfort, 3) going HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDTRACK. Turns out I was not alone in finding that soundtrack totally different and new compared to anything I have ever heard, because as it turns out, it really was—wait for it—revolutionary. I understand that I have now said that about Glass, Eno, Radiohead, and Aphex Twin, but hey, people are doing things in music. Like I get that pop and hiphop artists are revolutionizing their genres all the time, but also it is possible for music as we know it to be redefined, and it’s not just the weird shit you hear that sounds like noise (there is a place for the weird shit that sounds like noise, and Brian Eno is closer to it than any of the above mentioned; I am not dissing weird shit that sounds like noise, because it is part of how we get where we are going).
Anyway, I used this website’s essay about The Social Network’s piece, “In Motion” to describe some of the music and inform some commentary on it.
“East Meets West: A Musical Analysis of Chinese Sights and Sounds, by Yuankai BaoSounds, by Yuankai Bao” by Jiazi Shi
This was the only essay I found that really had the extremely niche technical jargon that I really wanted for the fic that was also about Chinese music. You’ll note that it’s about a Chinese composer who is, again, famous for marrying eastern and western tradition, but this was what I could find in English, and I searched a lot. You’ll note that Lan Zhan’s very specific comment about the key change is something very directly inspired by this grad school dissertation. You’ll also note that this is where I found “Flowing Stream,” including a description of the song and the lyrics.
Music. A lot of fics like this one will link you to a specific piece that the character is playing. I could not do that, because the music in my fic is very intentionally made up. As I have been saying, the whole point is that Wei Ying is pushing the boundaries, inventing music that does not exist. So is Lan Zhan, by the end. I listened to music to inspire the descriptions, but it is not what they are playing, and almost none of it is Chinese. I’d be very interested in finding some Chinese music that is working on some of the principles of minimalism and electronic that these pieces employ.
Aphex Twin – Stone In Focus
Now you’ve come to the climax—this is really the story of how I learned to love Aphex Twin. This piece makes me cry. It’s what I used to describe the piece that has the remix of Lan Zhan’s guqin piece from 12 years ago. Obviously, the guqin piece mentioned in the fic is the canonical piece, Wangxian, but I find Wangian in the drama cheesier than I want it to be, and this Aphex Twin piece doesn’t have the Wangxian part. It’s just the sad longing part before Wangxian enters, but you’ll also notice that there are no flutes! Again, this is not the piece Wei Ying wrote; it’s just what I used for the description.
I didn’t link to the YouTube video I was watching, because the video was a collection and this didn’t come on until after minute thirteen. But that video just has this very sad tunnel that looks like maybe it’s for a train, and the rain is falling, and that makes me cry as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHl4NVytGpo&t=1074s
Book featuring Ndidi O - Hold On, I'm Coming
Wait, you’re saying, this is not electronic/house/ambient at all; this is just a trick to get me to watch one of your favorite wangxian vids! You’re right! But frankly, I was not focused on the genre when describing the music; I was focused on getting the feel of it that I wanted. The opening sequence to this was what I used to describe the track they make love to. (Lan Zhan starts making out with him and kind of slowly humping him to the track with the wangxian remix, but then Lan Zhan demands he plays something else, and this is what I listened to to get the feel for it.)
This pieces is a cover, and frankly, I can’t find out much about it. But just thinking about it turns me on and makes me cry and makes me feel so much, I can’t do it too often.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “In Motion,” from soundtrack to The Social Network
As noted above, this piece inspired sex.mp3, but I will say that the article I linked above about this piece, as well as the memory of the soundtrack itself, inspired descriptions more than listening to the piece itself. In the fic, sex.mp3 is initially described as “violent.” This was because I didn’t know if the track would play a big part in the fic, and then when it did, I really had to change to both to fit the meaning and the flavor I wanted; it became “anxiety inducing,” and that’s when it became “In Motion.” “In Motion,” however, is kind of too bright and peppy to really be sex.mp3, though I will say I was trying to listen to it just to write this section of the post, and I had to turn it off. It makes me SO anxious.
Philip Glass – soundtrack to The Hours
I’m linking the whole soundtrack, because in the fic Lan Zhan writes several related pieces, which is what this soundtrack is. I can’t even recommend one piece on this soundtrack, because it’s the thing as a whole that really makes you cry, and I can’t say I listened to a specific part of it to describe Lan Zhan’s music, because I know it so well that I only have to listen to a small piece to get all of it.
Flowing Water, played by Chen Leiji
The part this played in the fic is obvious. I listened to at least five versions of Flowing Stream/Flowing Water, and this is the one that I like the best. However, like all the renditions I listened to, the piece eventually becomes pretty complex and different than I wanted for Lan Zhan. In fact, what the narration describes as “showing off technique” is what I found in all recordings of this piece. I guess if you’re going to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on YouTube you’re going to do something impressive with it, but I will say this piece is still very close to what I wanted.
I will also say that when I searched for this piece, as well as several other traditional songs, the search results had a lost of stuff that said you can listen to these pieces for tranquility and calm and meditation. I suggest listening to this one as extremely passionate and longing, and you’re going to get a lot more from it. If you resign it to the background, yeah, it’s kind of nice. If you let each note really speak to you, you’re going to really ache in a beautiful way.
Brian Eno – Ambient 1, Music for Airports
After hearing so much about Eno and Music for Airports, I was a little afraid I wouldn’t like it. After all, this isn’t really my genre, and witness how long it took me to find something I liked by Aphex Twin. However, I really needed some inspiration for the piece Wei Ying composes after Lan Zhan breaks them up, so I started listening to it.
The opening to this album is not the heartbreaking thing that the fic describes. It in fact does break my heart, but that is because there is something so sweet about it, lonely and sweet, but also perfectly fine being by itself. This piece is like a child alone in a room, figuring out blocks. This piece is like a cat on a piano, content with its nonsense noise. This piece is what it’s like to be alone and to be fine with that, to love from afar and be fine with that. It still brings me to tears, listening to it.
Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place
Apparently I did not succeed in writing all the music without Radiohead. I will say it happened because I happened to be watching a TV show that just happened to use this song right when I needed something powerful. I was already thinking about them, because my BFF was listening to a podcast about In Rainbows, which explains the children shouting “Yay!” in 15 Step. I really wanted something other than rain to get sampled in Wei Ying’s music, and my brother has specifically used his children talking or his babies crying as samples. Once Lan Zhan knows about A-Yuan, I wanted to use that idea, so I listened to 15 Step again, which is far too peppy for what I needed. But then Everything In Its Right Place came on, and it’s actually way too melancholy for what I needed, but that doesn’t really matter; I just needed to get a few notes described, so this is what I used for inspiration for what Wei Ying plays Lan Zhan after he admits to being in love with him. I will just say that re-listening to this song really does remind me of just how much Kid A means to me, but also how much it means to, like, music. There was really nothing like it at the time.
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I will end this post by saying that I am not, in fact, a "music" person. So many people need and rely on music to get them through tough times. I mostly don't care about it. I don't have a Spotify account, and I can't imagine taking the time to really curate playlists.
But one thing I can say about me and my tastes is that I'm interested in learning. I want to try new things and hear things that I haven't heard before. To be a little self-aggrandizing, I think that that's a good thing. I think it makes me a better person to work on listening to things that I'm a little unfamiliar with and learn what's great about them. I think I got to do that quite a bit writing this, even though in the end I used a lot of pieces I was familiar with to do the actual writing. I hope that maybe someone reads this and decides to listen to something new, just like I did.
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thoughts and rambling. I don't give out advice on how to write xyz bc I'm not really a professional. And also when I see threads spreading online abt how to write xyz poc. And they're often. Eh? not really right. *even if the person writing them belongs to the same marginalization*- Also often Generalizing- like for example, I once saw a thread on "how to write Muslims" with tens of thousands of notes- and one of the points listed was "stop drawing Muslim characters wearing gold / the color purple"- which is immediately. Like. Dismissive of the entirety of maritime southeast asia (the biggest Muslim populations in the entire world are southeast asian demographics.)- purple happens to be an important color of Tausug and Maranao embroidery- Muslim indigenous peoples of the southern Philippines.
another example off of the top of my head- when people say that "all Chinese people have monosyllabic surnames".. again that's not true for so many Chinese diasporas and ethnic minorities- my great grandparents- were Chinese, and their last names were Cojuangco and Angco- many Hokkien-speaking Chinese folks living in southeast asia have non-monosyllabic surnames- especially if they settled before colonialism- in the Philippines, many chinese surnames are like- Limuangco, Lacson, Yuchengco, Siongco..
No good idea how to close this rant. All I know is that I've lived for so long, it's hard to see people as terrible and purposefully insensitive over the slightest faux pas over mistakes- mainly because the people who feel authoritative over writing poc- also aren't equipped to be writing threads that become extremely widespread online and often spread the wrong ideas. Feels cliche to say, but everybody makes mistakes haha. I'm free to give.. um. Suggestions. but absolutely no word of god in this household.
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this is gonna be SO long and rambly sorry anyway i saw a post abt how babel does queer characters and it got me thinking abt why the tropes it uses would usually turn me off other stories but didn’t here
MAJOR BABEL SPOILERS //
i feel like i’d be more mad abt how robinramy ended up in babel if it marketed itself as queer lit at all or if its fans were going “WOW AMAZING QUEER REP” abt it. but no one told me any of that, so finding out they were gay was just a fun little bonus surprise to me. i get why ppl are eh abt robinramy not getting together/technically still being subtext (which i dont think is really true btw like the book literally says “robin was falling in love” but idk i guess if you were stupid you might’ve assumed that it was falling in love with oxford given how romantic some of the other language is (WHICH IS ALSO THE POINT bc i think robin’s friendship with ramy blurring into romance is why he romanticised like all his friendships/experiences in oxford BUT IM GETTING OFF-TOPIC)). i just think robin’s repression abt being gay was intrinsically tied to his attitudes on imperialism (wrt refusing to acknowledge anything that complicated his life until it was too late) and i don’t consider it a cop out or queerbait. like i genuinely don’t think robinramy could ever have gotten together without drastic alterations being made in terms of plot and character. plus i think it’s clear that kuang didn’t want to write a story with any kind of focus on romance at all, because it’s not that kind of book. there’s no successful het romance either, so it grates a lot less. the only reason romance is included at all is to show the ways in which white entitlement manifests. so the tragic way robinramy played out just made sense to me.
and i speak as someone who accidentally spoiled myself on You Know What in the middle of reading and i was like ugghh boooo dreading it the whole time expecting to roll my eyes when it happened but then when it did i was like. wow im actually not that mad LMFAO 😭😭😭 actually thematically the book sets it up so well that i believed that this was unfortunately the only way it could’ve gone. babel is about the loss and tragedy and grief that colonised people experience. it’s about the lengths people will go to to uphold empire and the lengths ppl will go to to tear it down like idk 😭 i guess it is bury your gays but it didnt bother me this time because i thought it fit thematically ❤️ i enjoy tragedy as a genre a lot and i would’ve made it gay anyway you know. thanks rf kuang for doing it for me so i didnt have to.
WHICH IS ALL TO SAY that i guess if you’re going into babel for the queer rep without appreciating that the story is fundamentally a tragedy it would feel like it’s just reusing tired tropes….. but i think the choices kuang made were rly deliberate and not in a way that feels like trauma porn or shock value. the book is fundamentally about the struggles of poc so the layer of queerness that was introduced felt like a subtle extension of the experiences of characters of colour in the book, and i enjoyed and related to it as a queer chinese person who kind of realised they had to prioritise their fight for the liberation of poc over queerness mainly because the idea of western queer liberation cannot be dissociated from imperialism and many aspects of homophobia as we know it was an export of christian european empire into our colonised countries in the first place and FUCK THIS IS A WHOLE OTHER TANGENT ABOUT HOW I THINK RAMY AS A CHARACTER IS EMBLEMATIC OF THE TENSION AND STRUGGLE THAT QUEER POC DIASPORA HAVE BETWEEN OUR IDENTITIES GODDAMNIT OK FORGET IT POST CANCELLED i just rly think babel’s handling of queer characters is fine and makes sense and i like it personally and maybe i will make a coherent analysis about it one day but that day is not today byeeeeeee
#/#//#sam speaks#byeeee ive been trying to type this post for over an hour but i give up#slashes are there bc i dont want it to show up in the main tag it’s rly incoherent and also subjective#babel#babel spoilers
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