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wrecklwj · 1 year

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MXTX Diaspora May 2023 is drawing to a close, so here are some personal reflections

As some of you may know, MXTX Diaspora May was originally started by Frost in 2021 as a means of elevating Chinese diaspora creators in fandom. At the time the event was set up, the climate in fandom was truly a hostile one, with Chinese diaspora creators routinely facing discrimination and marginalization. Adding to that were a slew of vicious hate crimes against Asian diaspora people in real life.

May is AAPI Heritage month in the US, and thus it was chosen as the posting month for the event. In other words, it was a time for us to come together, to heal, and above all, to let our voices be heard.

Since 2021, the scope of MXTX Diaspora May has evolved. Instead of solely focusing on MDZS, we now spotlight fanworks for all of MXTX’s novels. More importantly, MXTX Diaspora May has gone international in welcoming the participation of Chinese diaspora creators from not just the US, but all around the world (like me)!

So, why is MXTX Diaspora May so meaningful to me?

At the time that Frost invited me to be a part of the mod team, I was honestly struggling to find a place in MDZS fandom. I was frequently spoken over, treated as an expendable resource for cultural information, and on the receiving end of comments that contained racist microaggressions (and sometimes, outright aggression). Dealing with these interactions was exhausting, as well as grappling with the constant feeling that I had no real right to be in the English-speaking fandom. I still feel like this, even today — works where I (subconsciously or otherwise) downplay my identity as a member of the Chinese diaspora are always substantially more well-received than works where I do not. In other words, as some commenters (helpfully) pointed out to me, it was exhausting and difficult to get into the stories I told and the viewpoints I presented, especially if they contained too many cultural markers and language code-switches.

Being part of MXTX Diaspora May changed everything for me. Creating and interacting in this space that belonged to us, that was built solely for the purpose of elevating voices like mine — it meant that for once, I could tell the stories I wanted to tell, to the likeminded people I wanted to reach, without needing to downplay, apologize, or make excuses for just how unpalatable they might be.

Personal revelations aside and back to the culture-building aspect — I truly believe that the path to disempowering racist structures in fandom (and by extension, in real life as well) lies in changing the fundamental mindsets and worldviews of people. And to achieve that, we all have to relearn the ways in which we think, feel, and operate. MXTX Diaspora May is built on this very principle — the belief that through giving a platform to marginalized voices and actively encouraging open dialogue and appreciation, we can connect with each other over our shared experiences and gradually influence the perception that others outside our immediate circle have over our culture and language. It is an active, inclusive, and sustainable way of dismantling preconceived notions and habits that allow racism to flourish in fandom.

At the same time, it is also worth acknowledging that there is also a limit to how much power we place in institutions to do the work for us. Sit with the discomfort and the exhaustion, question our preconceived notions, and challenge our hearts — and I am optimistic that as things change at the individual level, the associated structures and systems will naturally follow.

So, where should we start?

There are so many ways we can be a part of the movement to dismantle systemic racism against members of the Chinese diaspora in MXTX fandom. One of the most actionable ways would be to boost and consume works by Chinese diaspora creators. And if we’re reading, listening to, or looking at something that doesn’t immediately appeal to us, and especially if we find ourselves struggling to comprehend or relate — ask ourselves honestly if it is a failing on the part of the creator, or just our own unfamiliarity with the context of the work, and/or implicit biases coming into play. Take our time to realize it for what it is, and then decide from there whether to move on, or move ahead.

MXTX is a Chinese writer, and her works are an extension and reflection of her culture and upbringing. It is impossible to separate her identity and belonging from the stories she writes. It’s exactly the same for us Chinese diaspora creators. Wherever we are in the world, however we were raised, and whatever pieces of ourselves that we choose to share in our works — I hope that we will continue to find our peace, our pride, and our homecoming whenever we do.

Resources

MXTX Diaspora May collection (2023, 2022, 2021)

Danmei Diaspora Creatives collection (showcases work by Chinese diaspora creators across a myriad of danmei fandoms including MXTX; not affiliated with MXTX Diaspora May)

Directory of MDZS fics and podfics by Chinese diaspora writers that are focused on the modern diaspora experience, compiled by G (not affiliated with MXTX Diaspora May)

#MXTX Diaspora May #own voices #Chinese diaspora #danmei fandom thoughts #Racism in fandom

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wangxianficfinder · 1 year

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In the mood for...

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1. hi! i love your recs and have read quite a lot of them. i don't care how long this takes, but can you please find me some Dom! And or top!wwx X sub! and or bottom twin jades of lan? ive rea a couple on ao3 but i fell like there should be more fics like this. Thanks in advance! @loverofloki1500

Dom wwx comp

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2. Iitmf some wangxian time travel fix-it but the one who time travels isn't WWX!

Lessons relearned by Iamnotawriter (T, 44k, WangXian, LQR & WWX, Not Madam Yu Friendly, Time Travel Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inventor WWX, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, No Golden Core Transfer, YZY Bashing)

Never Again by Hauntcats (T, 67k, WangXian, WQ & WN & WWX, Canon Divergence, Angst, Golden Core Transfer Fix-It, Time Travel Fix-it, Not JC Friendly, Dark, BAMF WWX, mentions of abuse, Canon JC traits, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Cw for character death)

Sami's Same Moon Shines series hits on these, depending on the variation. The primary series is WWX time travel, but they have several variations where other characters (JWY & LWJ together and by themselves, JYL by herself) travel back to the time of their birth and change what they can. Several of the stories include ace depictions of JWY, LXC, and WQ. (Link in #10)

❤️ Tragedy is Not the End by Hobbsy3 (T, 358k, wangxian, Time Travel, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Golden Core Reveal, Canon Divergence from Qiongqi Pass, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Yunmeng sibling bonding, good dad wwx, good dad lwj, JZX Lives, JYL Lives, Junior Quartet Dynamics) (link in #4)

Would You Come Home? by s6115 (Not rated, 46k, WangXian, Junior Quartet Centric, Time Travel Fix-It, Canon Divergence, Junior Quartet Dynamics) for what loose definition of Time travel is achieved

❤️ nevermore, nevermore by agloeian (T, 120k, lan sizhui & everyone, wangxian, canon divergence, time travel fix-it, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst w/ happy ending) a /Sizhui!!!/ time travel fic

Lynchpin by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 103k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Time Travel, Fix-It, Lynchpin [PODFIC] by Opalsong) Jiang Cheng time travels

With Surgical Precision by metisket (T, 20k, WQ & WN, WQ & WWX, WangXian, Time Travel, Families of Choice, sibling bonding through murder, Z chirurgiczną precyzją (podfik) by tehanu, [PODFIC] With Surgical Precision by Gwogobo, With Surgical Precision [PODFIC] by Opalsong) Wen Qing time travels

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3. Hi!! this might be a frustratingly vague request but I really really have been in the mood for this specific type of fic and it’s hard to filter for… for the next itmf post would you guys be able to recommend fics that give heart-squeezies? Not limited to this type ofc, but for example like the kind of fic where there’s a temporarily unrequited love or a miscommunication of some sort between wangxian that makes your chest squeeze? If it’s too vague don’t worry about it! sorry!! i should mention wwx pov would be preferred if the prev ask gets added! Thanks for running all this! @sortablue

Your Heart, My Table by Spodumene (G, 30k, WangXian, Modern AU, Canada, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Family Dynamics, Parent Death, Supporting Character Death, Chinese New Year, Comfort Food, food is love, Getting Together, food as a love language) ..if the requestor likes this then I would recommend this author for feelz!!

Common love isn't for us by feyburner (M, 7k, WangXian, Modern AU, Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Making Out, Misunderstandings, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Common love isn't for us [podfic] by someplacelikebolivia)

the soft animal of your body by sysrae (T, 15k, WangXian, Modern with Magic, modern culitvation, Golden Core Reveal, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Animal Transformation, Shapeshifting, Sort Of, Getting Together, Confessions)

Themes and Variations in F# Major by defractum (nyargles) (E, 18k, WangXian, Modern AU, Classical Music, Getting Together, POV Alternating, Long-Distance Friendship, [Podfic] Themes and Variations in F# Major by PandaReads (DrPanda99))

Many happy returns. by orange_crushed (E, 25k, WangXian, Modern AU, Mistaken Identity, Misunderstandings, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Past Suicide of a Parent, References to Depression, Anxiety, Therapy, References to Anti-Depressant Medications, Escort Service, Loneliness, Everybody’s Abandonment Issues, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Moving In Together, Oral Sex, Penetrative Sex, Hopeful Ending, Recovery, References to Escorting/Sex Work but No Actual Escorting/Sex Work)

should i fly to los angeles (find my asshole brother) by belovedmuerto (T, 7k, JC & WWX, WangXian, Modern AU, JC POV) locked to ao3 users

when I look over my shoulder by cafecliche (T, 10k, WangXian, Modern AU, exorcist LWJ, medium wwx, vague The Conjuring AU, some horror elements, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort)

Bunny Baby by deliciousblizzardshark (T, 9k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, LWJ Has Feelings, Soft WangXian, Gender-Nonconforming LWJ, Protective WWX, Bad Parent LQR, Fluff and Humor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, POV WWX, Autistic LWJ, [Podfic of] Bunny Baby by frostedhearth)

the boy who loves you by queen_gee (T, 10k, WangXian, Modern AU, Roommates, omg they were roommates, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Love Letters, Fluff, Romance)

one good thing by Yuu_chi (T, 26k, WangXian, Modern AU, Ghost WWX, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending)

play your love songs all night long by AlfAlfAlfAlfAlf, tardigradeschool (E, 17k, WangXian, Modern AU, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, Light Angst, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, One Big Happy Family, Sharing a Bed, (platonically for 13 years), Therapy, in the grand tradition of the untamed most of this is flashback, Pegging, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Romantic Comedy, Misunderstandings)

so take my hand (take my whole life too) by cicer (E, 92k, WangXian, Modern AU, Accidental Baby Acquisition, oh my god they were roommates, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, this fic is not about trauma, it's about the yearning, slowburn)

r/relationships by vespertineflora (T, 8k, WangXian, Modern AU, Social Media, Viral Reddit Post, Pining, Crushes, Friends to Lovers, Awkward Flirting, Romantic Gestures, Romantic Comedy, Love Confessions, Kissing, Happy Ending, r/relationships [podfic] by someplacelikebolivia)

It’s Over Isn’t It by Theladyofravenclaw (T, 68k, WangXian, LWJ/OMC, Oblivious WWX, Jealous WWX, One-Sided Attraction, Canon Divergence, it says LWJ and another character but it’s all one sided, we got a love triangle baby, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort)

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4. hey, do you know any time travel fics in which the juniors (all or any one of them) travel to the past? its kinda hard to find any

Would You Come Home? by s6115 (Not rated, 46k, WangXian, Junior Quartet Centric, Time Travel Fix-It, Canon Divergence, Junior Quartet Dynamics) for what loose definition of Time travel is achieved (link in #2)

❤️ nevermore, nevermore by agloeian (T, 120k, lan sizhui & everyone, wangxian, canon divergence, time travel fix-it, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst w/ happy ending) a /Sizhui!!!/ time travel fic (link in #2)

And They Lived Happily Ever After... by Morgana_avalon (G, 51k, WangXian, Zhuiling, Time Travel Fix-It, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, Canon Related, set before the ambush happens at Qiongqi Path, Canon Divergence, Bunnies, Good brother JC, Good JZX, CQL Verse)

无别无离 | Without Farewells, Without Parting by dragongirlG (M, 30k, Junior Quartet, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Fix-It of Sorts, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, POV Alternating, Jin Ling's Hundredth Day Celebration, qiongqi path, Family Feels, Hopeful Ending)

Butterfly Effect by EHyde (G, 29k, Zhuiling, background WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Time Travel Break-it)

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5. for the next itmf, wangxian fics that take place post resurrection but not necessarily post canon? canon divergence totally fine but not necessary! thank y’all!

Love Song In Reverse by timetoboldlygo (T, 237k, WangXian, Amnesia, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Falling In Love, Slow Burn, agressively mixing and matching novel and cql canon, No Homophobia, Mentions of Starvation, Parental WWX)

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6. Does anyone have a collection/recs for Wangxian adopting Mo Xuanyu? AU or modern or anything at all! I’ve read four-ish fic and can’t find a common tag to get more; the poor boy deserves the best gay dads out there. @tealeyedquatre

Not-so-accidental teenager acquisition by Zamietka (T, 10k, WangXian, MXY & WWX, Modern AU, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, MXY Needs a Hug, MXY Deserves Better, Rabbits, Painter WWX, Sickfic, Adoption, Mental Health Issues)

a thousand fragile and unprovable things by theLoyalRoyalGuard (G, 5k, WangXian, MXY & LWJ, MXY & WWX, Modern AU, Trans MXY, MXY Deserves Happiness, Best Dads Wangxian, Handwaving The Legal System With The Power of LWJ, A little bit of angst, mostly soft, Happy Ending, Gender Happiness, Let LWJ Wear Skirts Agenda, Additional Warnings In Author's Note)

silk linked together by theLoyalRoyalGuard (G, 6k, MXY & LWJ, WangXian, Modern AU, Autistic LWJ, Cellist LWJ, LWJ Runs A Rabbit Rescue, MXY Deserves Happiness, Fluff)

Seasons of Love Series by Sweetlittlevampire (T, 60k, WangXian, NieLan, Modern AU, Romance, Getting to Know Each Other, Getting Together, Happy Ending, LWJ Loves Rabbits, Farm/Ranch, Cottagecore Wangxian, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Weddings, Asexual JC, Demisexual LWJ, Scheming NHS, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Angst, Family Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Pet Death, Heart Disease) particularly part 3, Winter Lights, that's where we get Mo Xuanyu

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7. im looking for some trophy wife/milf wwx preferably in canon setting. thank you!!

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8. I'm in the mood for... A modern AU where wangxian are police detectives. Maybe in the homicide division? And they have to solve a case together. Or something along those lines @ranfused4ever

🧡 CSI: Gusu Edition Series by Stratisphyre (M, 39k, WangXian, WWX & LQR, Modern with Magic AU, College AU, Golden Core Reveal, Single parent WWX, Good Uncle LQR, Hospitalization, Allusions to violence and murder)

Good For Betting by ana_cp (E, 16k, WangXian, Modern AU, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV) Fusion, fake date, Police, Getting Together, Fluff and Smut, Humor, Oblivious WWX, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Co-workers, Police Officer WWX, Police Officer LWJ, POV Alternating, Blow Jobs, Top WWX, Bottom LWJ, Horny WWX)

99th precinct by bichen (T, 4k, WangXian, Modern AU, Inspired by Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Episode: s01e13 The Bet, Co-workers, Attempt at Humor, First Dates, Getting Together)

As You've Always Been by feralhypertext (G, 18k, WangXian, Modern AU, WWX and JC are cops, LWJ is a lawyer who can talk to ghosts, together they solve crime, Slow Burn)

Make My Wish Come True by justpeace (T, 9k, wangxian, f/f, modern cultivation, gender changes, case fic, fake/pretend relationship, Christmas, sharing a bed, getting together)

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9. Hellohello i was wondering if any of you knew of any fics that went along the lines of wwx reproaching jwy bc he knew who lived in the burial mounds, something like wwx (knowing exactly that a-yuan is lsz) asking jwy what happened to the little kid that lived there (bonus points if wwx directly asks what happened to his son/what did jwy do to his son)

I dont think i've ever seen anything like this in fics but i thought i'd ask in case anyone knew of anything like it (i am also feeling petty and in the mood for jwy facing the masacre that was the siege)

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10. in the mood for aspec themed fics! acespec arospec, aplspec, go wild!

it's always open by ScarlettStorm (E, 60k, WangXian, Modern AU, no magic, vague north american setting, First Time, Getting Together, Pining while fucking, Some angst, Happy Ending, lwj FUCKS, Sexual exploration, demi wwx, not that he knows that yet, Kissing, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, confused but enthusiastic consent, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Switch rights)

Oh no… I fell for my gym bro?! by MusicMe_tc (T, 10k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, and they were gym bros, Acespec WangXian, Demisexual LWJ, Demisexual WWX, Feelings Realization, 5+1 Things, Fluff, First Love, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Getting Together, Happy Ending)

reports of my heterosexuality may have been exaggerated by sysrae (E, 8k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, Getting Together, straight boy lwj, disaster gay wwx, demisexual lwj, the mildest of kink explorations, Heteronormativity, Hockey player WWX, wwx in drag)

Words from the heart by MusicMe_tc (G, 6k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, Secret Identity, Love Letters, Epistolary (kind of), Fluff, First Love, First Kiss, Asexual WWX, Demisexual LWJ, Love Confessions, Getting Together, Happy Ending)

yeah theyre just bros thanks for asking by victortor (T, 10k, WangXian, Modern AU, Intimacy, Aromantic Character, Established Relationship, Communication) the most tender, sweet, loving, softly heartwrenching fic ever, with aro wwx

defective. by Anonymous (T, 1k, WangXian, Modern AU, Aromantic WWX, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, One-Sided WangXian, Internalized Arophobia, Neopronouns, Self-Hatred, Heartbreak, Guilt)

some ace!LXC -

Twelve Moons and a Fortnight by stiltonbasket (M, 290k, WangXian, Humor, Slow Burn, Post-Canon Fix-It, Long-Distance Relationship, Epistolary, Love Letters, Family Feels, a-qing lives, teenage romance, Adoption, Romantic Comedy, Happy Ending, Weddings, Case Fic, Parenthood, Politics) the 12 Moons and a Fortnight verse with platonic Xichen/Mingjue

冥婚 by stiltonbasket (Not Rated, 1k, NieLan, LXC & NHS, Canon Divergence, Ghost Marriage, with a sweet side of bodysharing, Hopeful Ending, Asexual LXC)

a different kind of mandarin duck. by Aphoride (M, 7k, LXC & LWJ, LXC & NMJ, LXC & JGY, LXC / Others, Asexuality, Asexual LXC, LGBTQ Themes, Matchmaking, But It's Not Really About The Matchmaking, The Trials of Dating While Ace, Supportive NMJ, One-Sided XiYao, References to Sex Work, Family Feels, Friendship, lots of fluff, Canon-adjacent, i think??)

civets that live in your ceiling are not pets that you give names like yao by The_Storybooker (G, 1k, XiYao, Asexual LXC, Civet MY, Cute, Fluff and Humor, Animals)

Best of My Love by Justkeeptrekkin, little-smartass (Linxcat) (M, 41k, XiYao, Modern AU, Asexuality, Asexual Character, In which MY is sex favourable ace, single dad MY, coming to terms with asexuality, Romantic Comedy, Fluff, Smut, (ace friendly))

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11. ITMF A) Some good Jiang sibling fics where lwj doesn't have to live in yunmeng. Like whenever i read twin prides of yunmeng feels, in the end it's always lwj coming to live into Jiang household. I just want some good Jiang Cheng giving away his brother. Can be in marriage i don't care.

B) wwx due to being depressed turns into a perfect Lan or him being not depressed but still being a perfect Lan. @whateverweilanlovechild

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12. Could you recommend fics where WWX Came Back Wrong from being dropped into the Burial Mound (or direct me to the correct tag)? thanks a lot!

You are what you eat by deliciousblizzardshark (E, 17k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Eldritch WWX, Horny LWJ, Body Horror, Possessionof a sort, Cannibalism, kind of, Mild Gore, Teeth, Fluff and Humor, Smut, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Monster sex, Switching, Light BDSM, Rimming, Self-Lubrication, Seriousness treated Crackily, Implied/Referenced Torture, Dead WWX) the Eldritch!wwx tag might be helpful

Imperfect Memory by xantissa (E, 61k, WangXian, dub con, Dark Fantasy, double identity porn, sub!LWJ, Drama, Forced Orgasm, tiny bit of blood play, Prostate Massage, D/s themes Falling In Love, Bunnies, mature LWJ, Magic, multiple OC characters, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Porn, Identity Porn, Dubious Consent, Trust, Happy Ending, Falling In Love Again, Angst and Hurt/Comfort) the actual yllz!wwx tag with Top WWX usually has him back as a more malevolent being (think resentacles lol)

through carrion glass, the stars by tombenough_and_continent (T, 13k, XXC/SL, XXC & LWJ, XXC & WWX, canon divergence, role reversal, major character death, sunshot campaign)

underneath your skin by tardigradeschool (T, 2k, WIP, WangXian, Hurt No Comfort, Sentient Burial Mounds, Pining, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Body Horror, Sunshot Campaign, Angst, wangxian is tagged but this is not romantic, no happy ending)

to creep in those empty spaces by Anonymous (E, 51k, WIP, WangXian, Mpreg, Miscarriage, Body Horror, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, False Pregnancy, Discussion of Abortion, Medical Trauma, Ghosts, Recovery, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eventual Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, main pairing is consensual, Blood and Violence, Gore, Past Child Abuse, WWX Has PTSD, Sunshot Campaign, not for jc fans, not friendly to the cultivation world in general, Rewrite in progress!, this will stay up for posterity)

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13. are there any naruto crossovers/fusions???? just imagining wwx interacting with sasuke, two people who are always being injusticed and fighting for the justice of a genocide (the wen remains and the uchiha clan, everyone?) for crimes they actually didn't commit or were the whole bloodline being punished for the crimes of one person with the same name ??

Staring into open flames by bluegrass (T, 8k, WIP, WangXian, Reincarnation, LWJ as HN, Everybody Lives/Nobody Dies, Family Bonding, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Light Angst, Team as Family, Is this what they call a..., Fix-It of Sorts, ??, Crack Treated Semi-Seriously, WWX is a Good Brother, Uchiha!WWX, age gap)

local teens responsible for massive property damage call for hokage’s removal: ‘he’s really a bad guy’ by Aminias, Rustycat16 (T, 9k, WangXian, Naruto Fusion, Fluff and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Protective JYL, Team as Family, POV Multiple, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto)-centric, Seal Master WWX, Fix-It of Sorts, Crack Treated Seriously, Hugs, Fake Marriage, BAMF Women) don't know if this actually counts, I'm just going through the WangXian tag with Naruto added to it lol

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14. ITMF angsty fic where wwx attempted suicide. Canon era. >15k if incomplete and no word limit if complete. @whateverweilanlovechild

Not Anymore by namelessname (T, 14k, WangXian, LSZ & WWX, Suicidal Thoughts, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, but they're already married, Suicide Attempt, Mental Health Issues, Established Relationship, Angst with a Happy Ending, it is a heavy angst, Emotionally Repressed, Dissociation, Illustrations(but ngl I can't draw...), LSZ is Good, Post-Canon, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia (but only mild temporary and not real), (TW:it is quite sad though), (could be triggering idk), Nightmares, Survivor Guilt, Non-Sexual Intimacy)

Silent Goodbyes Taste Bitter by Starlight1395 (Not Rated, 26k, WangXian, vent fic, Hurt/Comfort, openish ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Self-Harm, Depression, Anxiety, cloud recesses days, Angst, beginnings of Wangxian, Happy Ending, self deprecating thoughts, Mentions of past child abuse, Attempted Suicide, Panic Attacks, Blood, graphic self-harm and suicide attempt, only in second chapter tho)

总有一天; a place to hide (can’t find one near) by yiqie (E, 76k, WangXian, Modern AU, Pianist, Getting Together, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Depression, Hospitals, Overdosing, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Additional Warnings In Author's Note)

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15. I read 'My Leaves Reach Ever for the Sun' and 'Wei Wuxian, Who's That?' and was wondering if anyone knew something with a similar vibe. Cross-dressing or disguises would be preferred but anything with WWX marrying LWJ to protect the Wen would be good.

By Any Other Name by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 31k, Wangxian, Canon Divergence, Crossdressing, Misunderstandings, Identity Porn, Identity reveal) A partial match to the request - (cross-dressing and disguises, but post-resurrection WWX instead)

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16. For the next itmf can you recommend some married life wangxian fics? I'm in the mood for domestic bliss 💕

the lives of birds by bleuett (E, 15k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Fluff and Humor, Family Feels, Established Relationship, Anal Sex, Rimming, Blow Jobs)

Close Your Soft Eyes by timetoboldlygo (G, 12k, WangXian, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Married Life, Slice of Life, Domestic Fluff, Mild Hurt mostly comfort, Communication)

spaces between words (hiding the truth skillfully) by PrismaticAvocado (G, 651, WangXian, Post-Canon, Not Jiang Family Friendly, Truth Spells, Established Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Married WangXian, POV WWX)

tonight i can write the saddest lines by sarahyyy (G, 3k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Amnesia, Falling In Love, Domestic Fluff)

the mortifying ordeal of being loved by attackofthezee (noxlunate) (T, 1k, WangXian, Birthday Fluff, Praise Kink, kind of, Fluff, WWX's inability to handle nice things, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Dom/sub Undertones, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known)

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17. I’m in a mood for some Lan Xichen x Nie Huaisang (post-canon) get-together fics

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If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

#wangxian #mdzs #wangxian fic recs #i'm in the mood for a fic #the untamed #wangxian fic search #wangxianficfinder #long post

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kindlespark · 3 months

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cohortswap anon here, aouhgkdhgkdh hi

im so emo over the idea of robin getting to pick up his cantonese again, like that experience of going back to a place where nobodys going to second guess you based on your appearance or treat you differently is so ough. im curious about his adjustment period though cause from personal experience and friends experience ppl from one's home country can usually clock someone as diaspora and its kind of jarring to have that feeling of being out of place no matter which country you're in.

thank you for the fun fact and good luck on your play >:) and tell eren i said hi >:)

HI ANON im so sorry this took so long for me to get to i've been soooo busy but my play just opened so im almost free!! i actually wrote a whole a response to this on mobile a week ago and then my tumblr app crashed and i lost it all so i gave up :sob:

yeah i think it's such a deliberate choice by kuang to have robin and the majority of his cohort lose their home languages and it made me feel crazy (/pos) as someone who is also chinese diaspora and is only fluent in english; my parents didn't pass down any of their chinese dialects to me (and some of them are endangered)! it clearly draws from kuang's own experience as well.

there's no way robin doesn't feel a kind of alienation even when he returns to canton and people don't look twice at him; i think he would feel that even if he could (and when he does eventually) speak cantonese. that boy's survivor's guilt is off the charts, and living/looking at the reality he tried so hard to ignore and was ultimately complicit in while living in luxury at babel would make him feel like he shouldn't even have the right to set foot in his home country anymore. but i think he would simultaneously feel the most useful while there; finally living up to ramy's expectations of him and helping however he can to smuggle silverworking practice into canton; this is him atoning for being alive and doing all the hard work that ramy told him not to run from.

robin can get by in canton with just mandarin well enough that i think it takes him a while to try speaking in cantonese again, out of a kind of guilt and embarrassment, but it does become necessary and i think robin's journey with relearning would also be a part of him learning chinese silverworking tradition; there's this really good fic i read that's an in-universe academic paper about silver-working in asia, and it's simply canon to me now. robin using chinese silver-working techniques in his work against the british empire is simply so real to me

thanks for the interest anon!! kinda got rambly here idk if this answered ur request but i never get sick of talking abt this book and this au >:)

#babel #cohortswap

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script-a-world · 7 months

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Submitted via Google Form:

I am creating a world where there have been interracial marriages since like they met and it's been thousands of years since. It's a very interconnected world now with basically no racial purity (is there a better way to say that? because that seems rooted in racist vocabulary and my world is the opposite). The only people who do not mingle are those akin to the uncontacted tribes in real life. Mainly, I'm trying to figure out how to figure out what people look like - there's only so few people out that are very mixed race, there's too many that are mixed but only specific mixes like White/Black, White/Asian, White/Hispanic. No..now, this isn't taking place on Earth but they are still human and I'm only able to come at it with how real actual people look like. No, bascially all of my world will be people who look White/Black/indigenous American/indigenous Pacific Islander/indigenous Asian/East Asian/South Asian/Hispanic/etc... Everything gets mingled, churned up in the gene pool and spit out. I'm not sure how to go from there. There are so so few actual examples that are very mixed. Also, I'm not at all an expert at looking at faces so yeah.. a lot of times I'm not even sure what I'm looking at in a racial trait. Hell, there are real life instances of let's say, looking at a Chinese and Japanese side by side, someone can tell them apart and where the differences. I still have no idea what they're looking at. Hell even someone actually Chinese couldn't tell what the differences were. Of course, I don't need to get very specific in details at all, but I have to have some sort of description that isn't well a lazy description that says nothing.

Feral: So, this ask gives me the idea that you were raised in a pretty racist culture (I can relate) and are trying really hard to leave that behind. And I want to encourage you to push into real education. Intention is not enough when it comes to shedding what we were taught, often subliminally, and consciously relearning - and that doesn’t feel good the way the color-blind approach many nascent liberals tend towards does.

It seems like you’re still caught in certain patterns of thinking, especially in the idea that eliminating racial distinction and sublimating and homogenizing is anti-racist when it’s actually kinda colonialism in a fancy new hat. And the “races” in your ask - a mixture of racial identities, ethnic identities, and very broad geopolitical groups - already have a huge genetic diversity within them and in several cases do in fact already overlap with each other.

There’s also a misunderstanding of how physical traits are genetically passed. They aren’t amalgamated like mixing blue paint and red paint and creating purple paint. Skin color, hair color, hair texture, and face and facial feature shapes and sizes don’t just meet in the middle between what the two parents have - and keep in mind that this kind of thinking is usually only applied when thinking about the children of a racially-mixed couple and not of say a white parent of Italian descent and a white parent of Scandinavian descent.

And there are traits that can seem to disappear from a family line only to pop up generations later. A more diverse gene pool will not produce a population of individuals indistinguishable from one another; there will be even more diversity of physical traits - specifically traits that we’re not accustomed to seeing together in our more racially segregated world.

Utuabzu: Something you should seriously consider is the background of your world. Is this the planet humans (or equivalent species, but let's just assume you're asking about humans) evolved on or is it a colony? Because if it's the former then it's pretty unlikely that you could homogenise the entire global population without some sort of catastrophic bottleneck event, something that reduces the global population to a small number in a single location that then recolonises the planet. Because the reality is that most people don't want to leave their communities of birth, not permanently anyway. People like to live in the place they consider home, and to live in a culture they understand, and absent a significant push or pull factor they will want to stay roughly within their home environment. This is part of why you don't generally see mass migration between countries with equivalent levels of economic development and political/social stability.

Given that, it's pretty hard to see how you could get enough migration around the world for long enough to homogenise the gene pool. There's probably always going to be general regional trends. There's also what Feral said about how genetics works. Appearance isn't just controlled by one or two genes. It's controlled by a huge array of genes that we still don't entirely understand, and many genes impact multiple seemingly unconnected things. A good example of this is that the gene for red hair also produces pale skin, because it prevents the production of eumelanin (the black pigment) while allowing the production of pheomelanin (the orangy-brown one). This is also why red haired people freckle - freckles are made with pheomelanin - and don't tan - tanning uses eumelanin.

Now, if you aren't writing about the home planet, you could have a fairly homogenous population due to something called the founder effect. Basically, because when a new population is established the genepool is limited, the traits of the founding individuals can have an outsized impact on the later genepool, with normally recessive genes spreading to enough individuals that the trait they code for becomes extremely common. So long as the population is predominantly composed of descendants of these founders, this effect is likely to remain active - so, so long as there isn't mass immigration that outnumbers the people born in the colony to at least one parent descended from the founders. This is easily enough accomplished by having the colony be really far away, and thus having an unreasonably long travel time for most people. If it takes many years to get there, few people would be willing to abandon their whole lives to migrate to a place they've never been.

A final thing to consider is that race is not and has never been a genetic or biological category. It's a social one. It can be correlated with certain physical traits, but it doesn't necessarily need to be, and in many parts of the world the salient 'racial' categories share most phenotypic traits. In others 'race' isn't particularly correlated with phenotype at all, and is instead primarily about culture or even religion. And not every society even has a concept of 'race'. You can simply not mention it, and instead have characters with a range of phenotypic features that nobody ever comments on, and it can be assumed that 'race' is not a relevant concept in that culture.

#google submitted #evolution #race #genetics

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ener-chi · 7 months

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Feeling pushed to make a life update so here we go! TL;DR my Path, and fun school stuff - Taiji, Tuina, etc.

Hmm where to start. This program has changed me so much. Due to everything I have to deal with and go through, I feel like all of my unhealthy coping mechanisms and behaviors came to the surface and ended up being changed into something different and healthier. I mean, they kind of had to be - otherwise I wouldn't be able to handle the program.

But... this is kind of what I've been working on lately, and is pretty recent. I've realized that... I have been running. From myself, and also my Path.

I was running from my Trauma, but also parts of myself that I didn't like. But also... I was running from my Spiritual Path. My Path started to change about 2 years ago. It began to get... bigger, broader scope, more responsibility... I realized recently that I got scared, because I knew that following it would result in me changing big time, and I don't think I was ready for that at that time.

But. You can't run forever lol. I've been doing a lot of work, and I think I am finally ready to accept my Path and get back into my Practice. I've been getting a bunch of upgrades, been working with Reiki ALOT. Also... my gifts have been coming back (I've been kind of suppressing them) and that's been super interesting. I feel like I have soo much to learn, and I get to relearn how to do things, too.

In other news - cool school stuff!!

First, Taiji. The teacher I have is INCREDIBLE. He's an older Chinese man, and he is legitimately like a master you would see in movies. I have learned a form of Taiji before, but what he teaches is WILD.

Like we haventeven learned any form or anything - all we've really been doing is learning how to stand properly in two different stances and shift our weight around. But the Qi fucking MOVES. Sooo much. Like during it my whole body shakes as it's releasing blockages, and throughout the week I like have had a ton of emotional stuff come up. I definitely think that it's been contributing to the change I've been going through, for sure.

I mean we get energy blockages in our channels, and we can have big emotions and stress stored there or in our muscles. When you break up those blockages, those things get released. It's very cool to see it happen in myself.

HmmMMM I've been learning some Tuina - which translates to basically Chinese Medical Massage. It's a massage modality, but it serves a medical purpose, and can be used to treat most things, even like cold or flu. BUT where it excels is in orthopedic problems and pain.

Like our teacher - who is incredible, btw, and got his degree in China, and was the first person to have a doctor's degree in TCM in the USA - he has been showing us so many stories and case studies of people that have had near debilitating pain for years, sometimes 10 or 20, and no surgery or anything can make it better, but after about 10 sessions of Tuina, they walk away pain-free.

Absolutely mind-bending stuff. I honestly genuinely am going to recommend anyone in my life to try Tuina before considering getting big orthopedic surgeries. It's crazy.

Hmm what else. I mean I have just been learning so much stuff lol. Like Chinese Medicine can help accelerate the growth and healing of bones after a break, and can also help treat it even years after it happened. Or like how most heart attacks take place around noon and in the summer, and why that is. Just so much cool stuff!

Anywho. That's probably it for now. Gotta rest up and get back to my studies 😵

Hope everyone has a good day!

Blessings!

#mine #journal #11.14.23 #about me #path #practice

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bestrecipehealty · 3 months

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Cooking Basics for Beginners

When it comes to cooking, it is vital to keep in mind that everyone started somewhere. I do not know of a single person who was born with a wooden cooking spoon and is ready to go. There is a lot of learning that must be done in order to become a professional chef, and then there is always room for advancement. Not only do you need to begin with the foundations when it comes to cooking, but you virtually need to begin afresh when learning to produce a new cuisine such as Chinese, Thai, or Indian food.

What this says is that no matter where you are in your culinary learning cycle, there is surely someone else who is better or worse than you. You should take consolation in the knowledge that even the most accomplished chefs have terrible days. There are various people who cook for varied causes. While some cook only to keep themselves fed, others do it because they find satisfaction in making good meals. A lot of people cook when they're bored or when they're going through a difficult emotional circumstance. You should always start with the fundamentals while cooking or learning to cook, regardless of your motivation.

The first order of business is to familiarize oneself with the meanings of the different terms used in recipes. You may notice a lot of unique and even strange-sounding terms in common recipes. The success or failure of a recipe often hinges on these criteria. In every thorough cookbook, you should be able to identify a powerful portion that introduces multiple new topics. "Folding in the eggs" is a notion that should be clarified if you are confused about its specific meaning.

Another excellent piece of advice when it comes to cooking fundamentals is to handle simpler dishes for a while and then broaden your horizons to the more advanced recipes that are available. Most recipes will provide a brief remark regarding their degree of difficulty, and you may browse over the recipe to judge whether or not it is something you are interested in preparing or sure that you can complete. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it will take quite some time to establish a trustworthyrepertoire’ of dishes to add to your meal planning cycle.

The good news is that once you’ve learned the principles of cooking, it is unlikely that you will ever need to relearn them. This implies that you may continually build up and increase your culinary talents. As you discover new recipes and enhance your culinary abilities and talents, you will realize that generating your own meals from scratch is substantially more fulfilling than cooking premade meals that are bought from the shelves of your local supermarkets.

You will also discover, as your competence and confidence develop, that you will find yourself more and more routinely improvising as you go and changing recipes to fit your unique tastes. If you like more or fewer of the ingredients or intend to produce a meal a little more or less spicy in taste, you may make tiny alterations during the procedure in order to achieve this aim. In other words, you will begin, in time, to produce recipes of your very own. And it is something you won’t necessarily learn when it comes to important cooking abilities for beginners, but you would never learn if you didn’t master those basic culinary talents.

#cooking #cooking tips #recipe #recipes #good pizza great pizza #pizza tower #pizzahead #cooking at home #Cooking Basics for Beginners

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starsfic · 2 years

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Okay, you know what? I saw @lem0nn-juice’s latest post about Wukong being unable to read being a joke and they’re right. Wukong clearly knows how to read, considering he’s sent letters to Qi Xiaotian.

But do you know who actually probably has trouble reading?

DBK.

After doing some research, here’s what I know.

We know DBK was sealed away for five hundred years. We don’t know when because we don’t know the current year LMK is set in. It could be in the distant future or in a world where technological advancements were made much earlier thanks to magic. That flashback in the beginning seems to keep the clothing pretty simple and it also seemed to be in a farming village where clothing didn’t really matter and was kept simple for ease. I personally do not have enough fashion history knowledge to pick out a particular era from what we see. Here’s what I do know thanks to research.

Mandarin, the most commonly known member of the Chinese language family, emerged during the Ming dynasty. This era is from 1368-1644 and is also when Journey to the West is published. But the actual journey that the novel is based on started in 629 AD to 646 AD, placing it in the Tang dynasty which lasted from 618-907 AD, a full 289 years and seemed to use Middle Chinese. This seems to be the best starting point we can guess of when DBK was sealed away.

The Tang dynasty was in the sixth century. The Ming dynasty was in the 16th century. That’s a full millennium between them. If we were to say that DBK was sealed away during the Ming, Mandarin was still just emerging. And even then, the language went through shifts and changes over the centuries.

So, yeah. DBK probably picked up on speaking the current version Mandarin fairly quick. But reading and writing? With a new writing system he had no idea how to use or had changed from what he did know? He’s probably having to relearn that.

(If I got anything wrong or if there’s a bit of info I missed please tell me.)

#analysis #Demon Bull King #LMK #Monkie Kid #Lego Monkie Kid

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peridot-tears · 1 year

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Vagueblogging time!

A lot of nations around the world have an unconscious bias towards at least one certain racial and cultural group. Because there is a social stigma associated with that group -- be it speaking the language, seeing their way of life as "backwards," assuming someone of a certain appearance in that group is uneducated -- it's easy for people within the persecuted group to have a lot of internalized shame.

The most obvious in my case is how Asian Americans tend to distance themselves from their cultures in the US. A lot of us want our eyes to be bigger, our skin to be lighter, our hair to be lighter, and avoid speaking the language.

I think what people never expect, though, are those of us who grow up in enclaves with other Asian Americans and have a healthy relationship with our identity. So we're proud. We speak the language, or at least try to relearn it throughout our lives. We eat our food and tell people to shut up when they start complaining about its smell or appearance. We know what it's like to live at peace with who we are, without having to shrink ourselves for others to fit in, which is why when we meet the people who grew up with shame, we know it can be better, that it doesn't have to be this way.

I'm speaking on the Asian American experience, especially the Chinese American experience, btw, and trying to tell you that it can be better, that if you grew up feeling shame for who you are, I don't think any less of you for not knowing the language or going through a learning curve where you want to break out of that mentality.

This also applies across the board -- if in your country, your culture is stigmatized, and you're struggling to come to terms with your identity and how you can still hold onto that and survive the ways the dominant culture would want to punish you for it -- via racial harassment, hate crimes, denying you a job, discrimination in the workplace or school -- I think you're doing the right thing. If you're Indigenous, African diaspora, or Asian in the west. If you're mixed and figuring yourself out. If you fall under the "mestizo" label. If you grapple with contradictions, holding privilege in one hand and oppression in the other.

#i wish i could go deeper into detail on the people i've met and the cultures they come from but i don't wanna accidentally doxx myself lol #you can always slide into my dms for a more specific talk tho #like god the stories that are out there #us #tears falling like peridots

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francesderwent · 2 years

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for @contagiousgrace, an album-length playlist for the era I’m in.

Lunar Years, Maisie Peters

Beach House, Carly Rae Jepsen

The Wire, HAIM

I HATE EVERYBODY, Halsey

New Romantics, Taylor Swift

Place We Were Made, Maisie Peters

People Watching, Conan Gray

To Whom It May Concern, The Civil Wars

this is me trying, Taylor Swift

I Am Disappeared, Frank Turner

Are We There Yet, Ingrid Michaelson Bonus Tracks:

Chinese Satellite, Phoebe Bridgers

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

below the cut, an irritatingly long explanation of how each song fits on the album as if I’d written it myself, which I obviously didn’t:

we start with Lunar Years, saying a final, definitive goodbye to everything that came before. I’ve come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t meant to be, I’m glad I went through it, but it’s done. no matter what comes next, the reason I’m not where I was is really because I did get better. no more rose-colored glasses for the past, I don’t look back anymore.

Beach House finds me trying to find the next love to define the new era, but hitting a wall every time. he might have a lot going for him, he might be grown-up and established, but he’s probably gonna hurt my feelings--not that I’m completely blameless in all the romantic failures, because I have an unhelpful habit of staying aloof and judgmental and then bailing out, as represented by The Wire. when I get tired of this, I pretend that the reason I’m alone is because I HATE EVERYBODY, but that’s an obvious defense mechanism against my tendency to build up an entire infatuating love story in my head on the basis of nothing. I’m still a hopeless romantic, trying to find the romance in being left stranded again and again: New Romantics.

having tried out my wings, I return to my roots, and relearn who I am from embedding myself back in my home and my family: Place We Were Made. there is an identity there, daughter, sister, friend, and it gives a sort of peace. but at the same time, the more I’m wrapped up in the safety of that unconditional love, the more my longing for a love of my own is sharpened. there’s no irony or cynicism left, I admit that I do want that for myself, which is People Watching, but at the same time I’m self-aware and wise enough not to attach a name to it, I’m not wishing for anyone in particular I’m wishing for the person I haven’t met yet: To Whom It May Concern.

so I’m staying in a definite place, and I have a lot of unfulfilled desires and unfulfilled potential, but I’m living with it, i.e. this is me trying, of course. but sometimes it all builds up and I’m going home from work and I have the impulse to go past the turn into my neighborhood and just keep driving and driving, which is I Am Disappeared (which is also the energy that I’m throwing into all my creative projects). but all I can do in the end is live in the not-yet, hold onto the hope, which is why Are We There Yet has been the most me song for ever and ever. are we there yet? home, home, home.

and then, as a pair of sisters with really different vibes tacked onto the end, you have Chinese Satellite and Will the Circle Be Unbroken. because all the longing is ultimately for another home, and if there’s anything really good about the era I’m in it’s that I’m trying so hard to stretch my heart to wanting that more: I want to believe, because I don’t want to be alone, because I want to have somewhere I belong, because I want the assurance that everyone I’ve ever lost I’ll see again. will all the things I’ve said goodbye to come back around again? will Someone come back for me?

#tag game #me not knowing light of a clear blue morning: is it weird if i end my playlist with a hymn?#me listening to light of a clear blue morning: same hat

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sixstepsaway · 2 years

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i don't even go here but i discovered your ofmd metas earlier today and i've been bingeing. i've got a fun hypothetical! You brought up how izzy's behaviour might change going into season 2 [no longer being comfortable calling Ed on his shit / doing his JOB] and i was wondering if you wanted to spitball ripple effects from that. how do people take that, best and worst case scenario? or even just go into more detail on izzy and trauma responses/triggers. love your stuff! <3

also have you got an a03? i keep finding fragments of work but i can't find a link D:

Oh man, if you love my stuff re: trauma responses and triggers you are going to love my AO3. My longest (unfinished, sadly, though I hope to go back to it soon, now I've found a bit of a groove with my writing) fic is a 86k trauma recovery fic for the Chinese drama The Untamed. My AO3 account is here and the fic with the trauma is 'rites of a widower'. I've received pretty high praise on that fic, actually, for my approach towards trauma, recovery and all of that. It does contain a tw of past sexual assault and violence though!

I'm hoping to post OFMD fic on there soon, I just don't want to commit to more unfinished works, so I'm planning to finish stuff before posting. I have one OFMD fluff on there though! And I'm going to be dumping some Izzy stuff on there soon.

Do you mean by "I don't even go here" that you don't even OFMD? Holy shit if so; high praise, thank you. Or did you mean Tumblr? Either way, thank you for the praise.

Okay, so, in response to your question: ripple effects.

Firstly, Izzy is now disabled. It might not be as bad as a peg leg or a hook for a hand, but it's still going to be a disability and as long as it's a recovering injury he's going to be a) in pain, b) having to tend it regularly, and c) relearning balance and walking and running with a missing toe. I said in response to a different anon that I don't see them going down the "it got infected" path, but that not being a plot doesn't mean it isn't a concern for Izzy-the-Person! It absolutely is! That toe (or, ehm, lack thereof) has to be kept clean, wrapped and protected from the dirt and grime of pirate life. It probably had to be cauterized, as they lack much in the way of medical treatment and idk what else they'd do, so that means there's also a burn to contend with. I might be off base there, though. As I've said before, I'm not a doctor, and I'll google some things but I'm a tad too anxiously nauseous tonight to google how bad a foot bleeds if you chop off the pinkie. (That said, if anyone has any information, please drop it in my ask or a reply or tag me in a post!)

I did google other things though, and google says that you can do just fine without your pinkie toe, but google is also referring to modern day people who have any shoes they need on hand, who have cars and the internet and hospitals. We're talking about a dude who is out on the ocean, cut off from anyone who could be a support system, stranded with the guy who did it to begin with, and having to tend his own wounds. He doesn't even have Roach on board. Ed made him strand the ship's surgeon right after he maimed him.

(Also, speaking of Roach, there is a line in 1x06 when Lucius has his infected finger, where they take Lucius to him for aid, and someone (Fang? Ivan? I don't recall and it isn't the focus here) says, "You're the ship's surgeon too? I thought you were the cook!"

To which Roach shrugs and responds, "Meat is meat."

And that. that right there. is what I call fucking amazing foreshadowing. Roach looking down at a soon-to-be amputated limb and saying, "Meat is meat," in relation to surgery and food. Fuck me.)

So whether it's fine and you'd be fine with a missing pinky or not, Izzy is going to have a lot of changes to adapt to, and he's absolutely not going to have time to be laid up with his foot elevated, or allowed to keep his feet away from the muck on the deck, or anything like that. Nope, he's expected to clean himself up and go find Edward, which is a cruelty in and of itself and implies this behavior will continue: it isn't just over because Ed cut off his toe, Izzy has to deal with it fast and quick, not lay there and cry with pain, and get on with it. There's a real lack of empathy there, like Ed switch-flipped any care for Izzy off (and yet, if that were truly the case, I don't think he would've reacted so strongly, and also I don't think he would've kept Izzy around at all. The point is almost that he cares too much for Izzy, which makes the whole thing even more toxic: "I love you so much I have to hurt you now").

All that to say that first off his behavior will have to change from the confidence he has in his fighting ability until this point. If he needs a cane to walk, then he no longer has both hands free to counterbalance his fencing, his fancy footwork will have to change (there's a lovely video of Con O'Neill practicing his fencing for the duel scene and so much of it is poised footwork). It means he'll be less willing to go into a fight, less willing to duel. He'll be more vulnerable to Jim and/or Frenchie if either of them decide to take him on to deal with what Ed did in basically kidnapping them and also trying to kill the rest of the group.

Then, when it comes to, like, the trauma of it all, I imagine he'll probably have nightmares? Ed broke into a place that was meant to be safe, bringing with him an absolute nightmarish scenario where Izzy woke up to agony and having a piece of himself removed and fed to him. I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have nightmares, and that's even if he sleeps at all after this? The phrase "Sleeping with one eye open" is something Izzy wasn't doing before, because no matter how he feels about the Muppet Comedy Land of the Revenge, he felt safe on that ship. He didn't expect anyone (let alone Ed) to break into his room and assault him.

I don't see him willingly sleeping for a while, and then that means sleep deprivation and that means slower reflexes, yet more vulnerability and less capacity to physically (and mentally) heal.

Another lovely anon suggested the idea of Izzy locking/barricading his door at night, which is a possibility, but as I said to that anon, I don't know if I think Izzy would feel that's an option? What would Ed have done instead if he hadn't managed to get into Izzy's cabin? How much worse could it be, if Ed decided to punish him again and couldn't get the door open? What would the fallout of trying to keep Ed out be?

I don't see Izzy eating or sleeping much for quite a while. Meat would be supremely off-putting, especially any meat with blood still in it. I imagine anything that goes crunch in his mouth would surely cause a trauma response as well, which leaves him with basically soggy porridge or whatever pirates might have. Bread, but crusts can be crunchy, especially if it's stale or older bread.

Which means we're left with food and sleep and his long-time companion all being a trigger. Since he's still in the trauma, he might not even register it until far later, so the triggers might creep up on him out of nowhere after a good chunk of time, maybe even years. If the show doesn't let him be traumatized and genuinely damaged by this, I will assume that's the angle they're going with: delayed response, once he's out of the situation (so, post-canon most likely), and so, probably, C-PTSD. There's no way that he and Ed can heal unless he's allowed to be fucking traumatized by what Ed did and Ed is made to face the god damn music about it and atone for his behavior.

This goes for stranding the crew on an island too, by the way, and killing Lucius (even if he survives the attempt). Ed needs to know he fucked it up and make amends for that. The crew should fear him. Lucius should no longer want to be alone in a room with him, let alone be on the same ship. The people he was praising a day earlier should no longer look at him with stars in their eyes. He should have to earn every last scrap of that back.

Scenarios! I imagine you mean in-world best/worst case scenarios (eg. worst case being "x dies" and best being "x is happy") rather than best/worst case scenarios for plots in the show, but I'm going to answer both.

In-World Best Case Scenario for Izzy:

This is as far as this kind of treatment goes. Ed sees it as "finished" because the punishment was meted out and Izzy has the time and space he needs to heal physically. Ed, at some point, is made to realize what he did, and is forced to atone and re-earn Izzy's trust once he knows he lost it. He manages, because he ends up being deserving of that trust.

Izzy isn't too traumatized because it's just the life of a pirate, isn't it? It's just A Bit Much and he handles it with grace and only minimal bitching.

In-World Worst Case Scenario for Izzy (and the one I prefer because I like watching characters heal, and they can't heal if they aren't hurt to begin with, and it would be a great plot and frankly I might write it):

Izzy is fucked up beyond all reason. He doesn't sleep, he doesn't eat. Fang comments on the fact his clothes look baggy (did he get new ones?) and Izzy flinches with one of Con O'Neill's excellent micro-expressions and then changes the subject.

Jim picks up on the fact Izzy got injured and Ed has gone off the rails. They're the one that also notices they haven't seen Izzy eat in a really long time. They bring him food. Izzy yells. Jim recognizes an angry shell protecting something very damaged and brings more food.

Eventually Jim gets Izzy to admit what happened and Izzy says that he deserved it for what he did. Jim is like, "The fuck did you do?" and Izzy, with complete seriousness, tells Jim exactly what he did to deserve the maiming.

And Jim is just like, "The fuck?" because someone murdered their entire family and left them an orphan and they gave that person a quick death at the end of a knife. Jim is not sadistic, and absolutely tells Izzy that yeah he said some stupid shit, but holy fuck Ed went on a killing and maiming spree because Izzy called him a namby-pamby pining after his boyfriend? What the fuck Edward?

Jim offers Izzy some more food and this time they offer him like, mushroom soup or something, something that's so bafflingly different to a toe that Izzy just starts wolfing it down and Jim produces some like, soggied bread or something, and Izzy eats that too.

Izzy still isn't sleeping though. He opens his door one morning and finds Jim asleep outside his door, leaning against it, on guard.

Izzy sleeps a little.

Ed meanwhile is still full Kraken and everyone is fucking terrified of him, except for Jim who thinks, at this point, that he's a git. Jim floats an idea one day while Izzy is eating another bowl of something non-meaty that maybe they should mutiny against Ed.

Izzy actually gives it a moment of thought before saying no. He's somewhat horrified at himself that he even considered it.

They argue back and forth and finally Jim is like, "For fuck's sake, he maimed you! Look at you! You're a fucking mess, how much do you even sleep? Fuck. We can't keep living like this."

Lingering loyalty and fear of "if you ever threaten me again, I'll feed you the rest" (and no, he doesn't know which voice is louder) means Izzy is absolutely not going to try and overthrow Ed and he's somewhat terrified they're even talking about it, but they hatch a plan to bring the ship somewhere they can leave or at least be on more even keel. Jim is thinking Stede but doesn't say that to Izzy.

Stede is brought in and he has the crew with him and probably Lucius, and when Ed sees Lucius alive he's like "holy fuck" and just shatters because he didn't want Lucius to die, it was just something that happened. He tells Stede all the horrible things he's being doing, including, "I cut off Izzy's toe!" and Stede is like, "Did he deserve it?" and Ed has to realize that no, nope, he did not, and when he tries to go talk to Izzy, Jim is bold and wonderful enough that they block his path, proving their dedication to protecting Izzy: Ed is not getting in that room.

Jim takes the place of Lucius in telling Ed exactly what he's done, though they don't get too into revealing Izzy's trauma. Ed spends a good chunk of time trying to figure out how to re-earn Izzy's trust and make amends for what he did.

Izzy remains traumatized, but once he's in a safer environment he starts to heal from it and be triggered less and less, and maybe manages to forgive and trust Ed again, one day. He never eats meat again and he's no longer really jealous of Stede; he doesn't want Ed in his bedroom anymore, after all.

Show Best Case Scenario:

What Ed did to Izzy (and everyone else) is treated with nothing less than the depth it deserves. Much like the toe scene is not played for laughs, and nor are any more of the Revenge scenes in 1x10 after Lucius is yeeted, what Ed does is treated with sobriety and respect. Izzy is allowed to have feelings about what was done to him, the show acknowledges and addresses that what Ed did is fucked up and Ed is forced by the narrative to see what he did and make amends. No one laughs at Izzy for what was done to him. They do not call him Izzy Limpy or mock him. They do not think he deserved it.

Show Worst Case Scenario:

Everyone thinks Izzy deserved it because he's a dick. It's played off as him getting his just desserts and isn't it funny that Izzy got maimed? Look, he's limping! Izzy Limpy now, instead of Izzy the Spewer haha!! The show focuses entirely (rather than partially, along with the crew and Izzy) on Lucius's murder, whether he survives it or not, and that's the amends that Ed has to make. Izzy stagnates by his side as though nothing ever happened. Sometimes Ed hurts him, but it's framed as something Izzy deserves.

I don't think that's the scenario we're going to get. In 1x06, Ed and Stede were both run through in two separate scenes, in fact Stede even gets skewered to the mast for hours and it's literally fine. No one ever mentions their stabbings again, it doesn't matter, it wasn't a big deal.

If they were going to do that with Izzy's toe, I think they wouldn't have had him limping with a cane, he would've just been fine immediately afterwards. Instead, he immediately has the marks of what Ed did to him:

This first scene is Izzy telling Ivan (who's just like "it's a lotta books, Izzy O.e chiiiiill") with a tang of panic to his voice to work faster because he thinks if they don't, he's going to get punished again. He also has a cane and he does this pained smile when he says "Blackbeard is himself again" and then screams, "QUICKER!!!!!!" in what I can only describe as terror and then limps out, having to use a cane to walk.

When he maroons them, he's still using the cane, and instead of having his foot out of sight below the wood of the rowboat, his injury is on full display. It isn't being immediately brushed aside.

And when he tells Ivan, "Rowwww," there's. something in his voice, I don't know. He's nervous. Who can blame him?

The last time we see him, he doesn't have the cane, I don't think, but he's also on steady footing and his legs are spread to aid his balance.

I do not think his injury will be shrugged off. I hope it won't be. But that's my 'worst case scenario'.

Finally, if they give it enough attention and dedication, Izzy being traumatized and afraid of Ed (his number one supporter, the guy always in his corner, his right hand) will absolutely have an affect on everyone. Even if the crew and Lucius are like, "Meh! We survived!" seeing Izzy flinch or be less confident around Ed will change how they relate to Ed as well.

In 1x04 when Ed is like, "It's a full moon!" and Izzy is the one that chimes in to say he's wrong, Lucius backs Izzy up. Lucius didn't have the guts to speak first and say it wasn't September 1st (who would want to tell Blackbeard he's wrong?!), but he did have the guts to support Izzy. Izzy opened that door by showing that he could inform Ed of his mistake.

Izzy not being able to correct Ed in that scene, for example, would mean they died. End of story. Show ends. They go right into the Spanish vessel because Ed got his dates wrong and no one corrected him, so he and Stede didn't go off to mope about death and Stede didn't mope about his wife and how he was meant to be a lighthouse for his family, and they didn't get the lighthouse idea. Because if they were fine, they didn't need the lighthouse idea.

Izzy saved their lives by telling Edward he was wrong and giving them the time they needed to come up with another plan. Izzy did that.

The ripple effect is that Ed will miss the minutiae and he will not have Izzy there to fix those things. You can, in fact, even see the beginnings of that in that episode via the way Ed doesn't talk to Izzy. He snags Stede, messes around, flirts with the crew, comments on the Bird Guy, tells Lucius to count because he knows the ship is coming, and doesn't tell Izzy the plan.

Izzy has to chase him around the ship, calling his name and trying to get him to come out of the (literal) closet he's in with Stede so they can do actual sailing and pirating things like getting out of dodge real fast, and then after their clothes swap he points out to Edward that Blackbeard needs to do something and Ed is just like "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that's Blackbeard" and points at Stede

which is hilarious because it all works out, but oh my god, Edward?!

so Izzy is like, "Fucking FINE I'll see if this other bloody captain has a lick of sense!" and drags Stede off to go hey. what about you. do YOU have a fucking plan to SAVE OUR LIVES?

Which, Stede does not lol

and Stede is so busy going OMG ED THIS GUY IS SUCH A DICK! he doesn't realize Izzy is god damn right

and then after all of this, Ed flounces around and shows off like "look how smart I am, I saved our lives by seeing the clouds look like sausages, aren't i amazing" except had he told Izzy why the clouds mattered and his plan, Izzy would have said then and there that it wasn't a full moon and he would have said then and there that they needed a new plan, and they might actually have had time to come up with another plan without having to become a lighthouse (which was great, but a last ditch effort).

Ed doesn't tell Izzy shit and it's his always his god damn downfall.

His downfall is and has continued to be the entire show through: taking Izzy for granted and treating him poorly.

I hope this continues into seasons 2 and beyond.

Thanks for giving me questions to chew on for what feels like 6000 words. I'll do a word count in a second because I think I typed for two hours.

#ofmd #ofmd meta #izzy hands #izzy hands meta #edward teach #edward teach meta #our flag means death #anonymous #ask

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999-roses · 1 year

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SMSKSKSKSKSKSKSKS CHEN WHEN YOU SAID “BOBA LIB” IN THAT TAG I SCREAMED PLS WHY DOES IT FIT SO WELL

screams in the mortifying ordeal of being seen

well. 'boba lib' is a term that exists... but i didn't come up with it. i dont know where it originates from tho (like idk if it's a 4chan or reddit pejorative, but whoever came up with it doesn't get to solely dictate how it's used or what it means). i never personally identified with it but i see my past thinking/behavior as aligning under that label. anyway imo tread lightly with its use

lmao i ranted too long and hit tumblr's tags per post ceiling. i should probably make my own post since my rant has nothing in particular to do with swk//disney's recent 'asian representation' sanitization, and the point(s) i wanted to make the most was truncated at the tail end

(i'll edit and clean this up if/when i actually make my own post;;; engage with culture not solely consumption. don't alienate or tokenize 'what it means to be diaspora' by enclosing that to a monolith/specific kind of diaspora, and by that i am not that limiting to 'AAPI shouldn't be a willy-nilly mashup monolith' nor to dismantling the 'model minority'/'x excellence' standard. bringing it back to culture: learn a language other than english, or re-engage with learning your mothertongues no matter how rusty you are because it's never too late or too embarrassing to relearn. internalized racism is real but staring, paralyzed, at your issues, how you were inoculated, how you're retraumatized can be a neverending loop... but it would certainly be worse to never address it. if you (re)learn your native language, it allows you to reengage with culture especially the culture back in 'the old country' that is moving forward, regardless of what you might think. if you're fortunate to have access to media produced in your native language, that's a decent place to start, outside of family members. yes, language can be utilized as a barrier to keep people out (particularly those who don't want to actually learn to engage with a culture on the culture's terms), but in most cases, language is not an impossibly tall fence, there are ladders for people who want to put the effort into trying climb it. and, ultimately, language is a place that culture calls home. find pride in becoming/being/doing rather than being seen or championed [by white people].

and for (white) people who want to try harder not being surface-level or purely performative, the ladder is open for you to climb, or at least it is for chinese language and culture, since I can't speak to the openness of anyone else's cultures. learn our languages, and not just honorifics, i mean the whole kit, grammar, conversational etiquette, how we divide the color spectrum, common idioms, referential and influential literature. speak with us in our terms. <- thinking about this paragraph/whole discussion;; i have no say on what indigenous first nations or formerly enslaved people want or should do; their historical circumstances are far different from mine, resulting in if they have a language other than english for their cultures to call home. if they wish to remain culturally and linguistically closed (like I've heard expressed about AAVE) then other people should respect that)

#asks #c969800a02t04 #revisit #clearly i need an editor but i also need to Stop

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trinh24 · 2 years

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Looking East-Asian in Japan + Reflexivity

After working at my assigned school for over a month now, I’ve gotten into the routine of knowing how the other JTEs (Japanese English teachers) and staff treat me. What their 建前 or work face looks like, who will always say good morning, and who will ignore me or is not interested at all in talking to me. Because I don’t have a co-ALT with me at this school, I just thought that the way people treated me was just normal. Of course until I compared stories with my co-ALT, Will. If you read this Will, bless you. Please link me your blog soon. At two different schools, the vibe of how we were welcomed from the beginning and taken care of as new hires was very different. A big factor was the schools themselves and the culture of the teachers room, where my school’s teachers always (seemed) overwhelmed with work. Weekly staff meetings are not translated for me, and I don’t know about bell schedule changes until I’ve walked into the classroom and the kids are still cleaning. On the other hand, Will’s school took more time to let him know every day when there were changes or events, even if he had nothing to do with it. The staff there obviously have different personalities and just enjoy taking more time to talk to ALTs.

However, the schools themselves aren’t the only part of this; we both look very different from each other. I apparently look like I could’ve been born and raised here even though I’m Vietnamese-American, while Will shocks everyone by being white and British. I speak N3 Japanese and Will is still learning. We may be the same age, but the way Japanese people view (especially young) women who are traditionally feminine is definitely not the same as they would view a blond-haired blue-eyed man. I think all of these things intertwined play a part, and there is no way to separate them. For example, I can’t for certain say that the sole reason xyz happened was because I speak Japanese, because no one looking at me doesn’t notice I’m a woman or that I’m young. Even if Japanese people don’t admit it, they see it (me as a young Japanese-presenting woman) and treat me a certain way. And the culture shock from it is one I didn’t expect.

In unpacking this, my focus has been observing the ways in which my identities interact with Japanese culture throughout the past 2 months. It's a continual process of constantly meeting new people who treat me a certain way, meeting more people who cement some of those judgements, and unlearning (or relearning?) how I want to present myself to others in this country.

When I read the blogs of other/previous JETs, one thing that stuck out to me was the ways they all talked about themselves, or how they saw themselves within Japan. Sometimes, I feel like it's more about how Japanese people choose to see you. For me, I am Japanese-presenting full stop. Every Japanese person I've met who doesn't see me with other foreigners or know that I'm an English teacher without fail thinks I'm Japanese (not even Japanese American) because of my physical appearance and sometimes Japanese pronunciation. And even after I struggle speaking Japanese or I'm with other foreign-looking people, people still think there's a chance I'm just stuttering or I'm the token Japanese person. (One factor in all of this is that I’m ethnically Chinese, so I’m on the fair side compared to other Viet people.)

Overtime, I've realized that blending in is both a good and bad thing, like Austin's Tofugu article says. On one hand, I can feel normal walking through the grocery store and not like an exhibit. But when you just need help or want people to treat you like a foreigner because the Japanese expectations people put on you isn't doing it, I almost have to convince people I'm not Japanese. Perhaps the default for people is to not look too closely and just assume East-Asian presenting people are Japanese (defining Japanese is too large of a hurdle today).

Sometimes I feel like I’m making it harder for people to identify me by dressing with Japanese fashion trends. But at the same time, I want to appreciate and participate in Japanese fashion trends without needing to use my clothes as an instrument to convey foreignness. That’s never what it’s been about for me in my home country at least. And while it would be kind of me to give others a hint that I’m foreign, why has me simply existing in this country given me work to do? I think if Japanese-presenting foreigners want to be understood or seen in the ways they want to, it takes effort to go against the grain and put it in work to change people’s minds.

As I mentioned above, my Japanese competence (that is certainly not up to business levels or fluent enough to understand work meetings 100%) is something that my coworkers have interpreted in different ways. My JTEs interpret it as that they don’t need to check in with me or make sure I understand meetings in order to save themselves time. However, other staff will skip important flyers and announcements for me because they don’t know if I can read or write Japanese. I can’t know to ask my JTEs to clarify something I didn’t know existed. If I looked less Japanese, I wonder if I would still struggle with this issue. Thus, I think also it’s a juggling act of managing multiple people’s expectations of you.

In any case, Japanese people have lots of unspoken expectations that are hard to keep up with. Being relieved of participation in those strict routines would be nice because I just don’t know the routines sometimes. I’m lucky that I can pass off as both or emphasize my foreigner identity when I want to. It’s obviously a privilege to be able to pick and choose if I’m a foreigner or part of the mob depending on the situation. In moments where I’m confused it reminds me that I’m still a foreigner after all. Even if I don’t look the part. And sometimes, I really want to be a foreigner because being treated as a sort-of Japanese person is really difficult.

I’m still figuring this out. It’s not my fault that I’m mislabeled as Japanese, but should I expect Japanese people to assume I’m not if they never got a reason to think otherwise? No. I want to recognize that Japanese people will treat me how they feel they should: sometimes being allowed “in” as an intermediate Japanese speaker and East-Asian presenting person, but also strictly “out” as an American at the end of the day. I can’t pick and choose, I just see that there are many factors and identities that are salient at different times.

As an outsider somewhere, you need to balance respecting or interacting with a culture with your own comfort. In my opinion, phrasing a foreign exchange experience as a chance to help you discover yourself or explore your identity (as a main goal you have) puts a burden and expectation on Japan or any country to act upon you. However, foreigners are their own agents who are constantly reacting to different uncomfortable situations, which I think is where the growth happens. We must acknowledge reflexivity and be confident that we know what our race, ethnicity, native language, or nationality means to us. To me, it doesn’t make any sense to go somewhere else and task others to define those for us-- then be upset by what they choose.

In application, all of this theory lets me realize that I am not a “normal” foreigner. Because of my school or the way I look, many Japanese people are more comfortable talking to me or overlook our differences. I’m also not as flashy and interesting as my co-ALT who is called a prince. Therefore, we’ll both have different experiences even if we were teaching at the same school. I’m learning when I want to blend in or try to make others comfortable, but also how to show Japanese people that I’m different and make them think harder about it when I need support.

#japan #JET #reflections

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anamossia · 6 months

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12/11/23

So I found out the other day that the way I have been feeling is actually described in a short story. Its called The Egg by Andy Weir, and apparently by some who have read it have named it the Egg Theory. The short story is between a man who just died, and “God”. There, God explains that the man will be reincarnated into his next life as a Chinese peasant girl in 540AD. This then leads to more questions from the man until God finally explains that he is everyone in the Universe, just reincarnated into different forms. It pretty much tells a short story of all of the things I described in my previous entry, minus some. There is no mention of energy being reused or recycled, but I feel like that can be implied for sub context.

I have been feeling so emotional the last few days, I feel like someone has a grip on my consciousness and is pulling it out so quickly saying “Here! Look at the vast truth behind life! Take it all in!” But there are millions and millions of pathways and I don’t know where to start. It is so comforting yet terrifying at the same time. What happens when I do finally become that higher power in which I have experienced all that I needed to? Do I then move on to another Universe? Does the Big Bang happen and then I relearn everything all over again but in a new parallel? I know that I am asking questions that I won’t get the answer to until I am done living, but all of these questions and feelings have been stuck inside of my mind for weeks.

I wish I could start over this life and do it differently, if I had known that at some point I would be feeling this way I would have made better decisions for myself. I know that all of the decisions are for a reason, and it helps me learn this life’s lesson, but I have been so unkind to myself majority of the time I have been alive. I feel badly that I have been so unkind to myself. I am just a baby, trying to learn how to exist as a larger being in the universe. That’s so unfair of me to be so harsh to myself.

I think this is why I want to become the best version of myself, I deserve to be kind to my mind and my body. I am going to keep journaling and becoming more aware of how I feel and allow myself to take all of this information in. I want to be more enlightened and aware of my energy and soul. I just hope I can benefit my journey into the next life.

#life #spirituality #beliefs #soul

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rut-ro · 8 months

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... 9 years later

I realized today that Tumblr still exists (!!) and that I started a hand-full of short lived blogs. Reading those old posts, I'm kind of impressed with myself. (Is that allowed?) Who wrote this, it's not half bad!

This one is my fav. Rut Ro! I was in a rut after moving to Amsterdam, struggling to look for a job in 2014. This blog helped me stay motivated and now 9 years later (in spongebob voice) I'm in a rut again.

Somehow writing my thoughts down in a blog feels so different than writing in my journal. My journals are filled with wild rants and negative thoughts in my worst moments. Maybe because they're on pages of paper that no one will ever read, I feel safe to unleash my worst self. A blog has that possibility of being read. Even if it's read by only one person, a stranger who doesn't know me, I want to be on my best written behavior(?) But I still want to be authentic and maybe impress that one person with my wit and obvious intelligence. ;)

I guess a rut every 9 years isn't too bad.

This is how I ended up here and what's happened since the last post.

Work:

Left that job I found 9 years ago because of a visa issue. The HR person was not interested in helping me and wouldn't permit me to go back to the office after I left one Friday and never returned (not even to collect my things). Hired an immigration lawyer and we won the appeal 1 year later. Probably the best career move to happen to me that I didn't do for myself.

After panicking about being unemployed again, I got a job freelancing for Philips and never left. Started as a UX designer and moved up to UX lead. Joined as a fulltime employee to build out the digital design team when the domestic appliance division split off, becoming Versuni 2 years ago.

Now on burnout leave after simultaneously building, then rebuilding the digital design team, helping educate the global design team on digital/UX design, leading multiple app projects, and taking part in the company's digital transformation projects. It was a lot. I'm now just starting to return to work, carefully.

Thus my current rut but I have a therapist this time!

Friends:

Made lots of friends in the last years. Some stayed, some didn't. Some became very close. Burnout has affected the social events and people I hangout with now. I also think getting older and more settled within myself also made me appreciate the ones who have been there for me when I really needed it (and didn't know it).

I'm not good at asking for help. Wasn't taught to do it and wasn't encouraged to need help when I was young. Still learning how to do it. So when people called and brought me food and kept me company during the difficult times, its surprising to me. I'm a lucky person to have these friends (you know who you are).

Family:

My mom remarried and my sister has grown up. My dad's health steadily declines at a medium pace but he remains positive about life. I was running from them when I moved away and now I'm starting to open up to them more.

I'm seeing a lot more social media and media in general about the immigrant experience. Especially about Asians growing up in western communities. It's so crazy to think that we were all having similar experiences at the same time in the 80s and 90s. And now that we're the "adults" who rebelled/fought/suffered/lived through it, we can create content about it. I guess when it comes to this topic, I still don't feel like an adult. I'm still the Chinese kid growing up in LA confused about her identity. And to add to that now living in the Netherlands for 11 years. Who am I and where do I really belong? Still working on that one too.

Romance:

This one is hard to write about. Had a couple bad breakups. Very dramatic ones that I won't go into details about. I learned from each one. Codependency was a hard but incredibly valuable lesson to learn. Interdependency, that's what I've been working on. Lots of habits to change, unlearn and relearn. Communication and being vulnerable are difficult and important things to do in a relationship (romantic or not). I learned that you don't have to do them well all the time, it's more of a practice.

My new relationship is the healthiest one I've ever had. We both have a learner's mind and actually want to learn from and understand each other. What a concept!

Inner peace:

I think I lost my way a little bit on this one. When I started freelancing, it was also when I became single after a long time, I decided to study yoga seriously. Went almost everyday for many years. Learned that it's more than physical movement and stretching my body into impressive looking poses. Stepped into the spiritual stories, meditation, and ayurvedic lifestyle a little bit. With that, learning how to create/communicate boundaries for myself, and living on my own (again) in a foreign country, I felt like I ate a mushroom and leveled up my life.

I felt so free and confident. I prioritised traveling and visiting with friends. I got my yoga teaching certification. I started studying yoga therapy and other forms of yoga.

Where did I lose myself? I think when I decided to put all that aside to focus on my so called career.

What now:

I guess I feel quite negatively about that decision because of how it's turned out. I might feel differently in another 9 years. It was part of a bigger plan. I wanted to accomplish a few things.

Own a home

Level up my position (difficult to do while freelancing, you end up getting the same positions/projects most of the time)

Get paid to learn new things instead of paying for my own training and struggle to get experience

After that go back to freelancing and focusing on my inner peace, gain experience teaching yoga, and eventually exit corporate world to become a yoga teacher/therapist of some sort.

I did do all three! But it doesn't feel like I succeeded.

Dammit!

If this isn't the biggest example/lesson in "it's about the journey, not the destination" then I don't know what is.

Not saying my way here was all terrible. It wasn't. But it did cost me my inner peace and mental health.

I'm lucky to have friends and a partner who support me with hugs, food, their time, kind words, and love.

Now I'm trying to retrace what I did back then when I felt free and confident (only a few years ago). After writing this, I see it. I need to bring back my inner peace practices while focusing on work. Maybe focus even more on my personal practices because work will happen anyway.

My practices:

Yoga with a touch of spiritual mindfulness

Meditation

Breaks to see friends near and far

Learning both for my career and for myself

Nurture my friendships while also having boundaries

Approaching work with less attachment and more boundaries

Ask for help and ask loudly (new)

Onward and upward. Thanks for reading.

#motivation #inspiration #burnout #career #mental health #life choices #life challenges #rut #life lessons #reflection

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tinyrebeldinosaur · 9 months

Text

10 Best Facebook Pages Of All Time About Online Menu App

When it pertains to food preparation, it is very important to bear in mind that everyone started somewhere. I do not know of a single person who was born with a wooden food preparation spoon as well as all set to go. There is a great deal of finding out that need to be done in order to end up being a respected cook and then there is always space for enhancement. Not just do you need to start with the fundamentals when it pertains to food preparation yet you practically need to begin again when finding out to cook a brand-new cuisine such as Chinese, Thai, or Indian food.

15 Up-and-coming Trends About Restaurants Tullamore

This means that at any kind of given time in your cooking discovering cycles there is rather probably somebody someplace that is much better and/or worse at cooking than you. Take heart from this since even the best have bad days when it pertains to cooking. There are lots of people who cook for various factors. Some cook in order to consume and also survive while others cook because they actually appreciate the process of cooking. Some chef throughout times of emotional upheaval and also others cook out of large dullness. Whatever your reason for cooking or discovering to cook you ought to always begin with the fundamentals.

The first thing that you need to find out is what the different terminology you will locate in dishes actually means. There are lots of new as well as in some cases international sounding terms that you will certainly discover in common dishes. Fast food These terms can suggest the difference in dish success or failure. You ought to be able to discover an excellent section in any type of inclusive cookbook that describes the various meanings for unfamiliar terminology. If you aren't definitely certain what is suggested by "folding in the eggs" it remains in your benefits to look it up.

5 Laws Anyone Working In Whatsfordinner Butcher Restaurant Kilkenny Should Know

Another terrific little guidance when it pertains to cooking fundamentals is to try easier dishes for a while and after that broaden your perspectives to the more complicated dishes that are plentiful. A lot of dishes will have a little note concerning their level of difficulty as well as you can go through the dish to see whether it is something you want preparing or confident that you can prepare. Remember Rome wasn't built in a day and also it will certainly take fairly time to develop a trusted 'repertoire' of dishes to infiltrate your dish intending rotation.

The bright side is that once you've learned the essentials of food preparation it is unlikely that you will ever before require to relearn them. This implies that you can continuously build up and increase your food preparation skills. As you discover new recipes and also enhance your cooking abilities and skills you will uncover that preparing your very own meals from the ground up is far more rewarding than preparing packaged dishes that are purchased from the racks of your neighborhood grocery stores.

10 Secrets About Restaurants In Tullamore You Can Learn Today

You will certainly also discover as your experience as well as confidence expands that you will certainly find yourself increasingly more often improvising as you go and changing recipes to meet your personal preferences. If you like more or less of active ingredients or want to make a recipe a bit basically spicy in flavor you can make simple modifications along the way in order to achieve this objective. Simply put you will certainly start in time to develop dishes of your extremely own. Which is something you won't necessarily discover when it pertains to basic food preparation abilities for novices but you would never ever find out if you really did not master those standard food preparation skills.

Food Preparation Indian Food at Home - Where to Begin?

If you review my write-up, Curry - A Journey, released on the Curry page of this site, whatsfordinner Affordable dining you'll understand that my very first experiences of the meal were of the generic range which the British inevitably prepared as well as ate when living abroad a few years ago. You'll also understand that I after that discovered "real" Indian cookery and also made a decision that as I couldn't pay for to dine in restaurants that much, I required to learn just how to cook the stuff myself.

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My first quit then, was a regional bookshop, where the option of books on Indian culinary was rather restricted. However, I struck lucky as well as discovered a book called Indian Culinary by Madhur Jaffrey - what a locate. Written in easy language however with charming detailed message and referrals on what to offer with what, it was simply what I had been trying to find.

There was an impediment, nonetheless, which was the unlimited checklist of flavors, spices as well as flavourings in the front of the book. I didn't recognize where to begin - I 'd heard of quite a lot of them, having actually enjoyed a couple of TV programmes on Indian cooking yet, "aid" I assumed, "buying that numerous at one time is mosting likely to cost a lot of money". If you're assuming the very same, don't panic. Sign in your store cupboard. You probably already have a few of the things you will certainly need. For instance, look for black peppercorns, bay leaves, chilli powder (if you're currently a fan of chilli con carne), ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves as well as cinnamon if you cook cakes or apple pies. Perhaps you'll find mustard seeds if you do your own pickling and also sesame seeds if you make rolls or prepare Chinese food. That only leaves a few basic components which show up in a great deal of Indian dishes - cumin, coriander, turmeric and also cardamom. Often you require ground cumin and also coriander yet if you acquire the whole spices, you can grind them as necessary (as well as they keep much longer that way also).

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The other point I did was to pick a relatively simple dish to start with as well as I just got the seasonings I required for that. The following time I intend to prepare an Indian meal, I selected an additional dish with comparable components so I had to simply buy a couple a lot more things. Quickly enough I built up an entire store cabinet of things I required as well as it really did not have had such a radical result on my pocketbook.

Then there was no quiting me - I also know some recipes by heart currently as well as you can do the very same if you want to.

You don't require special devices for Indian cookery, although I wouldn't be without my electrical coffee grinder (to grind seasonings) and it behaves (however not needed) to have the standard meals to serve your meal in. Aside from that, you require a little bit of persistence and also it's enjoyable to prepare with a close friend to make sure that you can share the slicing as well as grinding or have a person read the recipe out to you step by step so you don't go wrong in the center.

The flavours are excellent, a curry evening is actually friendly, so take place, give it a try.

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