superborb

After recent complaints about the HUMANITIES OF IT ALL by someone under f-lock, I am wondering about the balance within fandom. As a teen in fandom, I did feel like a substantial fraction of fandom were also science-y people. Biased, of course, by the fact that I would have sought out those people.

Back then, I was very good at critical reading (of the sort that standardized testing rewards), but because I understood myself to be bad at essay writing, I thought myself definitely not a hums person at all. (Though I loved my AP English teacher so much, I thought I might want to major in English in college. One class disabused me of the notion.) Anyway it was enough that when Erin mentioned that I was good at hums stuff it cued a mini existential crisis...

Of course, this all plays into the false dichotomy of STEM vs hums that I've come to dislike, but at the same time, I dooo think it's worth discussing? Like no, they're not at all orthogonal the way it gets presented sometimes, but there are worldview differences if you're strongly one or the other that are kind of interesting.

Namely, I think my STEM background inclines me strongly to prefer quantitative evidence and distrust anecdata, to argue strongly and dispassionately with friends -- but to divorce the idea from the person. (I'm not saying these are exclusively STEM-y things, just that that is where those parts of me were nurtured.)

Also, poll here for the next 24 h:

Would you consider yourself a STEM or humanities person?

— &helena; (@superborb) March 12, 2021

tl;dr a somewhat frothy, highly character driven modern cdrama. I enjoyed it a lot, though there were quite a few bits that were frustrating. Relatively light, not very plotty, very beautiful outfits, that sort of thing, but has enough serious, insightful conversations and character moments that it felt satisfying and not just like candy.



The premise: as teenagers, Shen Siyi and Lu Ke were inseparable best friends, until they had an argument and didn't speak for years. Now, they are working together for the same magazine. They and their close group of friends live through the trials and tribulations of youth in Shanghai. (You know it's Shanghai bc they cannot resist showing you shots of the Bund...)

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This was what I was being all hesitant about on twitter, the idea of writing a review for a book where the author can potentially see it without deliberately seeking out reviews of her work? But I figure it'd take at least one click out of twitter to get here, and I really want to talk with people about this book!!!

The premise: in Victorian England, Catherine Helstone's brother, Laon, has gone to be a missionary to the land of the fae. As the letters he's been sending back are scant, she decides to follow him. There, she meets a handful of mysterious and unusual fae and discovers the history of that world.

Would recommend if you like: intricate but well resolved plot, Gothic novels, Christian theology, tight first person unreliable narrator

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Overall, I enjoyed it, but it was not at all what I expected! I went in without having read anything at all about it (rare for me!) on the strength of Jeannette's twitter ahaha.

Since I keep pulling it up, I thought I'd do a quick pinyin-ification / translation of this source https://news.tvbs.com.tw/ttalk/detail/topic/6756. Some caveats here are that it's compiled by a Taiwanese internet person (though this site is a respectable TV channel), so like, this is definitely one person's suggestion. The article itself gives the caveats that as long as both parties feel that it's appropriate there should be no problems. After all, people in real life will use "wrong" titles all the time; the example given in the article is women may "properly" call sister's children 姨甥 (yisheng), but usually 外甥 (waisheng) is now used. There's also, as I've mentioned quite a lot before, a lot of variation especially in the grandparent terms -- the ones used here for grandparent's siblings (not even considering their spouses) are not ones I would use.

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tl;dr Mixed feelings: loved the acting and characters, the plot is scattered and uneven.

The premise: in the Republican era (i.e. right before WWII, the Japanese are in the process of invasion), Shang Xirui is an up and coming Peking opera dan performer (i.e. he sings the female part). He's childish but extremely passionate about opera, and has brought his troupe to Beijing to make his name. There, he meets Cheng Fengtai, an extremely wealthy businessman, who becomes his financial backer and the two share a deep friendship. The story begins with a substantial amount of opera world drama, but slowly the Japanese occupation / Second Sino-Japanese War begins to overshadow everything.

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1. Diaspora vs Chinese-from-China feelings on culture. Growing up diaspora means living through racism that completely colors the perspective -- it's hard to explain why wearing qipao as a costume is A Problem or cultural appropriation broadly to people who haven't had the experience of it being uncool and othering when you do something and then cool when a white person does it. From someone who grew up in the dominant culture, it just seems like a good thing that people are interested, right?

Anyway, this leads to a feeling (a logical one!) of possessiveness over the tidbits of culture that you can claim for yourself.

2. The nuances of cultural erasure for a canon that was created by the dominant ethnicity and culture of Somewhere Else. As point 1 says, I highly doubt Chinese-from-China would feel as possessive over MDZS/CQL as diaspora fans do. They have many canons that reflect their world; as diaspora, there is relatively few canons that speak to the Chinese diaspora experience. So we attach ourselves to the things we can see a glimmer of ourselves in, in familiar faces, even though we aren't really their target audience.

I personally don't like most modern AUs or really, fic that gets too removed from the Chinese roots of the canon and just /feels/ wrong. It's just not what I enjoy reading. But I'd argue that it's way more erasure to celebrate [insert vaguely often American modern AU here] through its ubiquity and influence on the fandom. I know I fall more on the "this is a transformative works" fandom side of things generally, though I also know that fic and fandom can be deeply racist. But blanket bans on what kind of transformative works are permissive... MDZS/CQL are out there in the world! We can't erase it by any fanworks.

I do fully understand /why/ people are uncomfortable with certain transformations, I just think that in the absence of criticism of transformations that are similar, it leads to point 3.

3. I am so, so, so uncomfortable with anti-Semitism in a world where the alt right is resurging. Adding to the previous tweets I made a while back, characterizing Jews as "greedy," "taking over" are clearly dogwhistles. Please, I beg you, do not. The double standard where Christian AUs don't get backlash? Also seriously anti-Semitic.

As a nonreligious person who grew up in the US, where Christian Chinese are common, I absolutely 100% really do not like Christian AUs. And hey-- I can skip them when they're tagged. The fic getting backlashed was tagged as AU and Jewish from the very beginning.

In conclusion, I don't really want to be ~discourse all the time~ like I feel like I've been recently. I wanted to do two things: a. to push back on the narrative of "you're pushing out diaspora folks!" a bit and b. leave an opening for my ideal, a more nuanced discussion about why certain things feel like erasure and certain things do not. I think it would be revealing.

I am here, months late (though not that late really, it just came out last October), to tell you that Cherry Magic is VERY CUTE and I enjoyed it a lot.

The premise: as Adachi was still a virgin when he turned 30, he developed the ability to hear the thoughts of other people! Cue the discovery that his handsome, popular, and gregarious coworker Kurosawa is IN LOVE WITH HIM?!?!

It's a light romance show, with 12 eps of 25 mins. All the characters, including the side characters, are so earnest and lovely. There's just enough conflict and meaningful backstory for characters to feel like they aren't a prop, while still being a speedy show. Because of the premise, you get to know the introspection and feelings of characters in a natural way!

I was worried because of embarrassment squick, but it didn't get me at all: the conflicts are all relatively quickly resolved and earnestness on all sides meant that no one was unduly embarrassed.

Nearly all the characters are very earnest (how many times can I say the word earnest? It was my main impression!), and most of the conflict is for various characters to recognize their true feelings and then blurt them out. (It's uh, very jdrama in that way.) So, it's not very deep plot wise, but it did get some interesting perspectives in.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot! Would recommend if you are in the mood for a light romance with fun side characters.

tl;dr I liked this book enough -- it took me a few tries to start, but I got 15% of the way through and then sped through to the end -- but probably won't seek out the rest of the trilogy.

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Don't pay lip service to "oh we don't speak for all the diaspora" and then if someone disagrees call them names and say how much self hatred they have.

You do not speak for all the diaspora.

I try to always express myself cleanly and I'm always, always willing to change my views with more data (the sign of a scientist!). I was already hesitant to say anything bc it didn't sound like opposing views would be entertained at all, so I narrowed my arguments to the most major, (I thought) unobjectionable flaw. I doubt any of the more fuzzy ones about diaspora vs mainland politics, the element of the fantastical, or the transformative nature of our fandom would have been entertained at all!

I'm actually shocked at how upset I am over this. I'm so glad the mdzs/cql fandom let me meet new folks, but I can't say that it was a good experience overall.

(Xposted from twitter for posterity/archiving purposes)

ETA: I'm a dumb dumb who shouldn't be allowed to post at night, HJJ's fan is clearly meant to be read from right to left, 将死你 is the correct way to say checkmate 

ETA2: Over on twitter, megumi translated the idioms on the fan! https://twitter.com/megumim09/status/1345010490993471488