#Also do we include China here or not?

[roran01]

So hetalians, want to consider this name idea I have for the ancients?

I saw the word in Japanese for 'ancestor' is 'sosen' and I thought of combining the word with '-talia' and using something like Sosentalia to refer to them like how Nekotalia is.

#hetalia #hws #aph #I'm thinking #other options? #Also do we include China here or not?

[dykepuffs]

How Do I Make My Fictional Gypsies Not Racist?

(Or, "You can't, sorry, but…")

You want to include some Gypsies in your fantasy setting. Or, you need someone for your main characters to meet, who is an outsider in the eyes of the locals, but who already lives here. Or you need a culture in conflict with your settled people, or who have just arrived out of nowhere. Or, you just like the idea of campfires in the forest and voices raised in song. And you’re about to step straight into a muckpile of cliches and, accidentally, write something racist.

(In this, I am mostly using Gypsy as an endonym of Romany people, who are a subset of the Romani people, alongside Roma, Sinti, Gitano, Romanisael, Kale, etc, but also in the theory of "Gypsying" as proposed by Lex and Percy H, where Romani people are treated with a particular mix of orientalism, criminalisation, racialisation, and othering, that creates "The Gypsy" out of both nomadic peoples as a whole and people with Romani heritage and racialised physical features, languages, and cultural markers)

Enough of my friends play TTRPGs or write fantasy stories that this question comes up a lot - They mention Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse Of Strahd, World Of Darkness’s Gypsies, World Of Darkness’s Ravnos, World of Darkness’s Silent Striders… And they roll their eyes and say “These are all terrible! But how can I do it, you know, without it being racist?”

And their eyes are big and sad and ever so hopeful that I will tell them the secret of how to take the Roma of the real world and place them in a fictional one, whilst both appealing to gorjer stereotypes of Gypsies and not adding to the weight of stereotyping that already crushes us. So, disappointingly, there is no secret.

Gypsies, like every other real-world culture, exist as we do today because of interactions with cultures and geography around us: The living waggon, probably the archetypal thing which gorjer writers want to include in their portrayals of nomads, is a relatively modern invention - Most likely French, and adopted from French Showmen by Romanies, who brought it to Britain. So already, that’s a tradition that only spans a small amount of the time that Gypsies have existed, and only a small number of the full breadth of Romani ways of living. But the reasons that the waggon is what it is are based on the real world - The wheels are tall and iron-rimmed, because although you expect to travel on cobbled, tarmac, or packed-earth roads and for comparatively short distances, it wasn’t rare to have to ford a river in Britain in the late nineteenth century, on country roads. They were drawn by a single horse, and the shape of that horse was determined by a mixture of local breeds - Welsh cobs, fell ponies, various draft breeds - as well as by the aesthetic tastes of the breeders. The stove inside is on the left, so that as you move down a British road, the chimney sticks up into the part where there will be the least overhanging branches, to reduce the chance of hitting it.

So taking a fictional setting that looks like (for example) thirteenth century China (with dragons), and placing a nineteenth century Romanichal family in it will inevitably result in some racist assumptions being made, as the answer to “Why does this culture do this?” becomes “They just do it because I want them to” rather than having a consistent internal logic.

Some stereotypes will always follow nomads - They appear in different forms in different cultures, but they always arise from the settled people's same fears: That the nomads don't share their values, and are fundamentally strangers. Common ones are that we have a secret language to fool outsiders with, that we steal children and disguise them as our own, that our sexual morals are shocking (This one has flipped in the last half century - From the Gypsy Lore Society's talk of the lascivious Romni seductress who will lie with a strange man for a night after a 'gypsy wedding', to today's frenzied talk of 'grabbing' and sexually-conservative early marriages to ensure virginity), that we are supernatural in some way, and that we are more like animals than humans. These are tropes where if you want to address them, you will have to address them as libels - there is no way to casually write a baby-stealing, magical succubus nomad without it backfiring onto real life Roma. (The kind of person who has the skills to write these tropes well, is not the kind of person who is reading this guide.)

It’s too easy to say a list of prescriptive “Do nots”, which might stop you from making the most common pitfalls, but which can end up with your nomads being slightly flat as you dance around the topics that you’re trying to avoid, rather than being a rich culture that feels real in your world.

So, here are some questions to ask, to create your nomadic people, so that they will have a distinctive culture of their own that may (or may not) look anything like real-world Romani people: These aren't the only questions, but they're good starting points to think about before you make anything concrete, and they will hopefully inspire you to ask MORE questions.

First - Why are they nomadic? Nobody moves just to feel the wind in their hair and see a new horizon every morning, no matter what the inspirational poster says. Are they transhumant herders who pay a small rent to graze their flock on the local lord’s land? Are they following migratory herds across common land, being moved on by the cycle of the seasons and the movement of their animals? Are they seasonal workers who follow man-made cycles of labour: Harvests, fairs, religious festivals? Are they refugees fleeing a recent conflict, who will pass through this area and never return? Are they on a regular pilgrimage? Do they travel within the same area predictably, or is their movement governed by something that is hard to predict? How do they see their own movements - Do they think of themselves as being pushed along by some external force, or as choosing to travel? Will they work for and with outsiders, either as employees or as partners, or do they aim to be fully self-sufficient? What other jobs do they do - Their whole society won’t all be involved in one industry, what do their children, elderly, disabled people do with their time, and is it “work”?

If they are totally isolationist - How do they produce the things which need a complex supply chain or large facilities to make? How do they view artefacts from outsiders which come into their possession - Things which have been made with technology that they can’t produce for themselves? (This doesn’t need to be anything about quality of goods, only about complexity - A violin can be made by one artisan working with hand tools, wood, gut and shellac, but an accordion needs presses to make reeds, metal lathes to make screws, complex organic chemistry to make celluloid lacquer, vulcanised rubber, and a thousand other components)

How do they feel about outsiders? How do they buy and sell to outsiders? If it’s seen as taboo, do they do it anyway? Do they speak the same language as the nearby settled people (With what kind of fluency, or bilingualism, or dialect)? Do they intermarry, and how is that viewed when it happens? What stories does this culture tell about why they are a separate people to the nearby settled people? Are those stories true? Do they have a notional “homeland” and do they intend to go there? If so, is it a real place?

What gorjers think of as classic "Gipsy music" is a product of our real-world situation. Guitar from Spain, accordions from the Soviet Union (Which needed modern machining and factories to produce and make accessible to people who weren't rich- and which were in turn encouraged by Soviet authorities preferring the standardised and modern accordion to the folk traditions of the indigenous peoples within the bloc), brass from Western classical traditions, via Balkan folk music, influences from klezmer and jazz and bhangra and polka and our own music traditions (And we influence them too). What are your people's musical influences? Do they make their own instruments or buy them from settled people? How many musical traditions do they have, and what are they all for (Weddings, funerals, storytelling, campfire songs, entertainment...)? Do they have professional musicians, and if so, how do those musicians earn money? Are instrument makers professionals, or do they use improvised and easy-to-make instruments like willow whistles, spoons, washtubs, etc? (Of course the answer can be "A bit of both")

If you're thinking about jobs - How do they work? Are they employed by settled people (How do they feel about them?) Are they self employed but providing services/goods to the settled people? Are they mostly avoidant of settled people other than to buy things that they can't produce themselves? Are they totally isolationist? Is their work mostly subsistence, or do they create a surplus to sell to outsiders? How do they interact with other workers nearby? Who works, and how- Are there 'family businesses', apprentices, children with part time work? Is it considered 'a job' or just part of their way of life? How do they educate their children, and is that considered 'work'? How old are children when they are considered adult, and what markers confer adulthood? What is considered a rite of passage?

When they travel, how do they do it? Do they share ownership of beasts of burden, or each individually have "their horse"? Do families stick together or try to spread out? How does a child begin to live apart from their family, or start their own family? Are their dwellings something that they take with them, or do they find places to stay or build temporary shelter with disposable material? Who shares a dwelling and why? What do they do for privacy, and what do they think privacy is for?

If you're thinking about food - Do they hunt? Herd? Forage? Buy or trade from settled people? Do they travel between places where they've sown crops or managed wildstock in previous years, so that when they arrive there is food already seeded in the landscape? How do they feel about buying food from settled people, and is that common? If it's frowned upon - How much do people do it anyway? How do they preserve food for winter? How much food do they carry with them, compared to how much they plan to buy or forage at their destinations? How is food shared- Communal stores, personal ownership?

Why are they a "separate people" to the settled people? What is their creation myth? Why do they believe that they are nomadic and the other people are settled, and is it correct? Do they look different? Are there legal restrictions on them settling? Are there legal restrictions on them intermixing? Are there cultural reasons why they are a separate people? Where did those reasons come from? How long have they been travelling? How long do they think they've been travelling? Where did they come from? Do they travel mostly within one area and return to the same sites predictably, or are they going to move on again soon and never come back?

And then within that - What about the members of their society who are "unusual" in some way: How does their society treat disabled people? (are they considered disabled, do they have that distinction and how is it applied?) How does their society treat LGBT+ people? What happens to someone who doesn't get married and has no children? What happens to someone who 'leaves'? What happens to young widows and widowers? What happens if someone just 'can't fit in'? What happens to someone who is adopted or married in? What happens to people who are mixed race, and in a fantasy setting to people who are mixed species? What is taboo to them and what will they find shocking if they leave? What is society's attitude to 'difference' of various kinds?

Basically, if you build your nomads from the ground-up, rather than starting from the idea of "I want Gypsies/Buryats/Berbers/Minceiri but with the numbers filed off and not offensive" you can end up with a rich, unique nomadic culture who make sense in your world and don't end up making a rod for the back of real-world cultures.

#worldbuilding #world building #fantasy races #racism in fiction #nomads #romani stuff

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s enshittification memos

[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:

The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.

https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/

"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."

And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.

How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.

When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.

People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.

It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.

Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.

Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.

It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf

The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."

OK.

But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."

It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."

"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."

And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.

Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."

For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.

But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554

Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.

For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."

Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).

Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.

But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.

And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.

As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.

But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.

The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."

What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #enshittification #semantic matching #google #antitrust #trustbusting #transparency #fatfingers #serp #the algorithm #telling on yourself

[astraystayyh]

Israel doesn't want to repopulate Gaza, you loveable dummy

Seriously, find one Israeli on this site who'll say otherwise. And no, quoting Ben Gvir doesn't count (assuming you even know who that is) anymore than quoting, say, Rudy Giuliani would count for anything, even though he supposedly spoke for the president of the USA for a time.

Hamas has 136 hostages. Including women, and actual literal babies, assuming they're still alive, that is. This could all have ended weeks ago if they'd fucking returned them. Israeli society would physically march on Benjamin Netanyahu's home and remove him in a coup if the hostages were returned tonight. But as long as they have Israeli people, and are unwilling to negotiate their return, that's an ongoing war crime. Is Israel evil for being a bull in a China shop trying to get back a "mere" 136 innocent civilians? Maybe. But Hamas started this and they can end it, they just don't want to. Please, justify that.

Hello, since you asked for one Israeli, here, I'll give you multiple statements:

Hundreds of activists at an Ashdod gathering in late November called for the reestablishing of Jewish settlements. “Let it be known that you support the appeal to renew Jewish settlement throughout all of the Gaza Strip. The nation is waiting for you”— Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council.

Israel “should fully occupy the Gaza Strip”— Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

An Israeli real estate firm pushes to build settlements for Israelis in Gaza. “Wake up, a beach house is not a dream” reads the ad.

Israeli Knesset member Limor Son Har Melech posted a video of herself in a boat with other settlers off the coast of Gaza. “Settlement in every part of the Gaza Strip … A large, extensive settlement without fear, without hesitation, without humiliation. This land is the land that the creator of the world gave to us.”

Israeli Settler, Daniella Weiss says Palestinians who live in Gaza, have no right to stay in Gaza.

An Israeli soldier saying that Israelis should start “investing” in Khan Younis.

Also why would the words of Ben Gvir not count? He is an elected minister, his words hold weight and they expose Israel’s clear intent to make Gaza inhabitable for Palestinians so that Israelis could settle in there— by destroying the infrastructures, making the health system collapse entirely, bombing entire residential neighborhood, Israel is trying to ensure that Palestinians wouldn't be able to return back to their land, because there is nothing livable left there.

And I'm glad you bring up all of this ending if the hostages were returned— Hamas tried to strike up a deal for the return of ALL the hostages, in exchange of the release of all Palestinian prisoners. Israel refused. You know why? Because this has never been about hostages and their safety for Israel.

There is a reason why Israel shot its own hostages when it mistook them for Palestinian civilians, waving a white cloth. There is a reason why the IDF called to shoot indiscriminately on Oct. 7, knowing that it could kill some of the hostages too. Because Israel wants to kill Palestinians, to "thin out its population" (or maybe we shouldn't take into account the says and actions of Netanyahu too ://). This is why it targets schools and mosques and hospitals and ambulances and refugee camps. Israel knows that if it does get all its hostages back, then there would be nothing to “justify” its genocide in Gaza (although, as UN Secretary-General said : "Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is beyond words")

Israel is the only reason why the hostages aren't fred yet. THEY are unwilling to negotiate the return because they don't want to stop this genocide. What good is a five days ceasefire only for the bombings to return? Do you even realize how psychologically traumatizing it is to have a countdown of when your massacre would resume? The only acceptable deal is for Israel to establish a permanent ceasefire, something that it refuses to do. The only one to blame is Israel.

And you say Israelis would instigate a coup to oust Netanyahu, that's nice, then what? Will you return the land to its rightful people? Will you give back Palestinians their rights unequivocally? Will you call for the dismantlement of Israel that was built on massacres? The reason why Israelis are angry at Netanyahu is rooted in the unresolved hostage situation. Just because you don't support Netanyahu doesn't mean that you aren't a zionist who finds the murder of more than twenty thousands Palestinians justifiable. A young girl had her leg amputated with no anesthesia on the kitchen counter of her home and you talk about “Israel being a bull in a China shop”? You consider the targeted attacks on civilians as careless actions by Israel? It actually astonishes me how inhumane some of you can be.

And here is what Dr. Refaat, who was targeted and murdered by the IDF btw, had to say about this matter:

Whether it's Netanyahu or someone else, it does not matter because Israel as a whole is an occupation, one built on the bloodshed of palestinians.

And it is funny how you choose to distort history whichever way you like it, to regard October 7th as an isolated instance that happened out of the blue. Hamas didn't start anything, Hamas was created in response to the indiscriminate and careless shooting of palestinian civilians in the first Intifada, that was decades ago. October 7th was a resistance to an ongoing colonization, Israel started this when it displaced and murdered palestinians on 1948. None of this would've happened if Israel did not colonize Palestine. It has been 100 days of this ongoing genocide, wake up and stop deluding yourself into a reality where Israel is the victim.

#dismissing Ben Gvir's statements #(yes i know who it is thank you for your concern) #then diluting this genocide into a mere matter of “hamas should return the hostages” #it must feel nice to change up the narrative so you'd be able to sleep nicely at night #and not take into account the statements that disturb you #but thanks for thinking im loveable! you are right on that point #maybe there is still hope left for you then #free palestine #palestine #gaza #free gaza

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

#rob gets political

[reasonsforhope]

"Discarded shells from restaurants and hotels are being used to restore damaged oyster ecosystems, promote biodiversity and lower pollution in the city’s bays...

Nestled in between the South China Sea and the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong has been seen historically as an oyster hotspot. “They have been supporting our livelihood since ancient times,” says Anniqa Law Chung-kiu, a project manager at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Hong Kong. “Both oysters and their shells are treasures to humans.”

Over the past five decades, however, the city’s sprawling urban development, water pollution, as well as the over-harvesting and frequent seafloor dredging by the lime industry – which uses the crushed shells to make construction material – have destroyed Hong Kong’s oyster habitats and made the waters less hospitable for biodiversity.

The more oyster colonies falter, the worse the problem gets: oysters are filter feeders and purify water by gobbling up impurities. Just one Hong Kong oyster can filter up to 200 litres of water a day, more than any other known oyster species. But decades of rapid industrialisation have largely halted their water-purifying services.

The depletion of Hong Kong’s natural oyster reefs also affects the ability of local farmers to sustainably cultivate their oysters in a healthy environment, denting the reputation of the city’s 700-year oyster farming tradition, designated by Unesco as an “intangible cultural heritage”.

Inhabitants of the coast feel abandoned, says Ken Cheng Wai-kwan, the community leader of Ha Pak Nai on Hong Kong’s Deep Bay, facing the commercial city of Shenzhen in China. “This place is forgotten,” Cheng says. “Oysters have been rooted here for over 400 years. I ask the question: do we want to lose it, or not?”

A group of activists and scientists are taking up the challenge by collecting discarded oyster shells and recycling them to rebuild some of the reefs that have been destroyed and forgotten in the hope the oysters may make a comeback. They’ve selected locations around the island where data they’ve collected suggests ecosystems still have the potential to be rebooted, and there are still enough oyster larvae to recolonise and repopulate reefs. Ideally, this will have a positive effect on local biodiversity as a whole, and farming communities.

Farmers from Ha Pak Nai were among the first to hand over their discarded shells to the TNC team for recycling. Law’s team works with eight oyster farmers from Deep Bay to recycle up to 10 tonnes of shells every year [over 22,000 pounds]. They collect an average of 870kg every week [over 1,900 pounds] from 12 hotels, supermarkets, clubhouses and seafood restaurants in the city, including some of its most fashionable establishments. About 80 tonnes of shells [over 176,000 pounds] have been recycled since the project began in 2020.

Restaurants will soon be further incentivised to recycle the shells when Hong Kong introduces a new fee for waste removal – something that is routine in many countries, but only became law in Hong Kong in July and remains controversial...

Preliminary data shows some of the restored reefs have started to increase the levels of biodiversity, but more research is needed to determine to what extent they are contributing to the filtering of the water, says Law.

Scientists from the City University of Hong Kong are also looking to use oyster shells to increase biodiversity on the city’s concrete seawalls. They hope to provide tiny, wet shelter spots around the seawall in which organisms can find refuge during low tide.

“It’s a form of soft engineering, like a nature-based solution,” says Charlene Lai, a research assistant on the team."

-via The Guardian, December 22, 2023

#oyster #oyster farming #sea shells #seafood #hong kong #ecosystem restoration #biodiversity #ecosystem #water pollution #clean water #cultural heritage #marine life #marine animals #marine science #good news #hope

[sayruq]

Biden's visit has concluded. Israel has spent his entire visit trying to muddy the waters of what happened to Al Ahli Hospital and despite their cartoonish efforts, it hasn't worked

The Global South and especially West Asia know who is responsible for the bombing and no amount of AI voice recordings of 'Hamas operatives' can change that.

Israel war crimes continues to backfire on them even in America

Biden backing Israel has had an impact on America's image. Here's a Wall Street Journal article warning that America's continued support is turning countries towards Russia and China which is code for turning countries against America

An EU official said that the EU will pay a heavy price in the Global South for its continued, unabashed support for Israel

There's also speculation that the Biden administration knew about the bombing before it happened.

Countries that were/are allied with Israel continue to distance themselves from Israel like Russia. The reason I keep highlighting Russia is because the West has been running out of ammunition due to the Russia-Ukraine war and that includes Israel which is rumoured to have sent 80-90% of its ammunition to Ukraine. If this conflict lasts a long time, Israel will need to buy weapons and ammunition and Russia would be one of the countries they would turn to (same with China)

So, where are we in terms of the conflict? After days of waffling over a ground operation in Gaza, Israel postponed it until some time after Biden's visit and now we're back here again

Now I'm no military expert but constantly going back and forth on whether or not you'll invade Gaza is bound to do damage to your troops' morale. No wonder they're dealing with mass desertions while their citizens demonstrate on the streets. The Israeli leadership has no plan besides bombing Gaza.

I've seen people on twitter say that the hospital bombing was done deliberately to normalise IDF soldiers to mass civilian deaths in places like hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc. I don't know if I believe that - I think they wanted to push Iran and Hezbollah's buttons before hiding behind Biden. I don't think these people are thinking strategically.

As far as the possibility of regional war is concerned, all indicators show that the West preparing for the war to escalate

Seems to me the Israel has seen what Ukraine has received in just a year and a half of war. They're done receiving a paltry 3.8 billion every year and now prepared to drag out the conflict and I can't say I blame with Biden proposing a 100 billion package for both Ukraine and Israel. This will stretch America too thin as far as funding in concerned. Cracks are already showing

There are parts of the US government that is unhappy that the Ukraine war is losing attention. During the Ukraine war, you had parts of the government that wanted focus to shift from Russia to China. Because of that, the US government has spent the past year alternating between hostility to Russia and threatening to go to war with China over Taiwan. When Niger expelled France from within its borders, America was preparing to join that conflict until Mali and Burkina Faso declared they would fight with Niger. Now they're entering a third front in West Asia. In short, the mighty empire is expending a lot of resources right now and it is not the threat it was when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.

At any rate, the ground invasion of Gaza won't go the way Israel and America hopes it will

The coalition of Palestinian resistance fighters are still patiently waiting for the IDF to come meet them. Their allies aren't backing down either

The reason I keep making these posts is to remind people that, while the genocide of the people of Gaza is horrifying, the war for the liberation of Palestine has not yet been lost.

Do not lose hope. From the river to sea, Palestine WILL be free

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #colonialism #imperialism #genocide

[tomorrowusa]

Don't risk a rerun of the 2000 election.

In the first presidential election of the 21st century many deluded progressives voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Their foolishness gave us eight years of George W. Bush who plagued the country with two recessions (including the Great Recession) and two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he heeded an intelligence brief 5 weeks before 9/11).

Oh yeah, Dubya also appointed one conservative and one batshit crazy reactionary to the US Supreme Court. Roberts and Alito are still there.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post offers some thoughts.

Why leftists should work their hearts out for Biden in 2024

Ask a Democrat with a long memory what the numbers 97,488 and 537 represent, and their face will twist into a grimace. The first is the number of votes Ralph Nader received in Florida in 2000 as the nominee of the Green Party; the second is the margin by which George W. Bush was eventually certified the winner of the state, handing him the White House. Now, with President Biden gearing up for reelection, talk of a spoiler candidate from the left is again in the air. That’s unfortunate, because here’s the truth: The past 2½ years under Biden have been a triumph for progressivism, even if it’s not in most people’s interest to admit it. This was not what most people expected from Biden, who ran as a relative moderate in the 2020 Democratic primary. His nomination was a victory for pragmatism with its eyes directed toward the center. But today, no one can honestly deny that Biden is the most progressive president since at least Lyndon B. Johnson. His judicial appointments are more diverse than those of any of his predecessors. He has directed more resources to combating climate change than any other president. Notwithstanding the opposition from the Supreme Court, his administration has moved aggressively to forgive and restructure student loans.

Three years ago the economy was in horrible shape because of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. Now unemployment is steadily below 4%, job creation continues to exceed expectations, and wages are rising as unions gain strength. The post-pandemic, post-Afghan War inflation rate has receded to near normal levels; people in the 1970s would have sold their souls for a 3.2% (and dropping) inflation rate. And many of the effects of "Bidenomics" have yet to kick in.

And in a story that is criminally underappreciated, his administration’s policy reaction to the covid-induced recession of 2020 was revolutionary in precisely the ways any good leftist should favor. It embraced massive government intervention to stave off the worst economic impacts, including handing millions of families monthly checks (by expanding the child tax credit), giving all kids in public schools free meals, boosting unemployment insurance and extending health coverage to millions.

It worked. While inflation rose (as it did worldwide), the economy’s recovery has been blisteringly fast. It took more than six years for employment rates to return to what they were before the Great Recession hit in 2008, but we surpassed January 2020 jobs levels by the spring of 2022 — and have kept adding jobs ever since. To the idealistic leftist, that might feel like both old news and a partial victory at best. What about everything supporters of Bernie Sanders have found so thrilling about the Vermont senator’s vision of the future, from universal health care to free college? It’s true Biden was never going to deliver that, but to be honest, neither would Sanders had he been elected president. And that brings me to the heart of how people on the left ought to think about Biden and his reelection.

Biden has gotten things done. The US economy is doing better than those of almost every other advanced industrialized country.

Our rivals China and Russia are both worse off than they were three years ago. And NATO is not just united, it's growing.

Sadly, we still need to deal with a far right MAGA cult at home who would wreck the country just to get its own way.

Biden may be elderly and unexciting, but that is one of the reasons he won in 2020. Many people just wanted an end to the daily drama of Trump's capricious and incompetent rule by tweet. And a good portion of those people live in places that count greatly in elections – suburbs and exurbs.

Superhero films seem to be slipping in popularity. Hopefully that's a sign that voters are less likely to embrace self-appointed political messiahs to save them from themselves.

Good governance is a steady process – not a collection of magic tricks. Experienced and competent individuals who are not too far removed from the lives of the people they represent are the best people to have in government.

Paul Waldman concludes his column speaking from the heart as a liberal...

I’ve been in and around politics for many years, and even among liberals, I’ve almost always been one of the most liberal people in the room. Yet only since Biden’s election have I realized that I will probably never see a president as liberal as I’d like. It’s not an easy idea to make peace with. But it suggests a different way of thinking about elections — as one necessary step in a long, difficult process. The further you are to the left, the more important Biden’s reelection ought to be to you. It might require emotional (and policy) compromise, but for now, it’s also the most important tool you have to achieve progressive ends.

Exactly. Rightwingers take the long view. It took them 49 years but they eventually got Roe v. Wade overturned. To succeed, we need to look upon politics as an extended marathon rather as one short sprint.

Republicans may currently be bickering, but they will most likely unite behind whichever anti-abortion extremist they nominate.

It's necessary to get the word out now that the only way to defeat climate-denying, abortion-restricting, assault weapon-loving, race-baiting, homophobic Republicans is to vote Democratic.

#paul waldman #liberalism #election 2000 #election 2024 #joe biden #third parties #vote blue no matter who #donald trump #dumpster fire #trumpster fire #fascism vs. democracy #nra republicans #abortion #climate change #lgbtq+ rights #race-baiting #take the political long view #phil hands

[rongzhi]

Hi! Love your TikTok translations, they help me learn so much. Sorry if you've answered this before already, but as a language student myself, I was just curious about how you got so good at Chinese - is it a native language for you, or what's your background in using/studying it? Thank you!

I think I answered this a long time ago (like 2021 maybe) so I will just tell it again. It's kind of a longwinded boring post that's very self-centric (😬) and also probably not going to have any helpful advice to the average language learner, so I'm going to put it under a read more!

Background

My family is Chinese so it's my heritage language. I did learn it before English as a baby but then forgot a lot of it. My parents speak Chinese at home but I always replied in English growing up. Part of this is because I have a twin sibling and because we spoke English at school, we also started speaking English to each other at home.

We went to Chinese school on Sundays growing up (this is like a community/cultural school; it included other courses like math, Chinese dance, art, pre-SATs (lol), etc, depending on who in the community was available to teach), but I didn't really pay attention so my Chinese was pretty shit for a long time—like broken conversational level shitty, although I have always had a strong comprehension ability. My dad's side is from Sichuan so I grew up understanding a bit of Sichuanese.

The beginning of my "studying"

I don't actually have much of a background studying Chinese in a formal setting. I took Chinese 101-103 in college as part of a language requirement (specifically chose to start with 101 so I could relearn basics, even though my teachers kept offering to place me in higher levels). I really credit my Chinese 101 prof who was also the college's calligraphy teacher for making us focus on brush stroke order and recognising characters and understanding semantic components, which is something other profs did not emphasise (they were more focused on building conversational skills).

Anyway, that was only my freshman year of college because I ended up changing majors and not having a language requirement anymore (boo). I continued studying a bit of Chinese in the intervening years, but I am not a very disciplined person when it comes to self-study, so much of it was just translating song lyrics for my own amusement. During this time, I also started watching some cdramas, but mostly just Chinese web shows, which maybe helped? (I don't think I was watching enough for it to really make a difference).

Fast forward a couple years to 2020 and I started watching more cdramas during lockdowns, including watching 成化十四年 (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty), which I was super invested in for about two years (this used to be a fandom blog lol). Basically, hyperfixation led me to rapidly improve my Chinese; I started translating a few behind-the-scenes videos for fandom friends. In order to keep up with Chinese fans and gain access to more material about the show, I started venturing onto Chinese sites such as weibo, bilibili, and eventually, douyin, which I downloaded around October of 2020 (so this was 6 months into my increased interest into Chinese things). At first, I translated a couple of douyins to share with fandom friends as I had done with behind-the-scenes materials, but for whatever reason I felt like some of the videos I wanted to translate would just be annoying to spam into the chat... I couldn't figure out a way to connect them to the blorbos, but I still wanted to translate them, so I started posting them here on tumblr. That's how my douyin translations started out. This was the height of covid-19 related sinophobia, too, so at some point I started realising how important it was to continue translating douyins, and that motivated me to continue even beyond it just being a fun thing to do. On that topic, it was through this blog that I realised how poorly understood China and Chinese people are, specifically on this site. I feel like that has changed a lot, or maybe that's just a comment on insular online spaces, but I have to think not; since I started translating douyins, I've seen a noticeable decrease in sinophobic comments and messages (not that I don't still get them, but it's lessened), and I think that's also thanks in great part to other blogs on here that were posting/have started to post more content from China to help increase exposure to tumblr users.

Improving

In any case, in the beginning, I did a lot of translations mostly by ear rather than reading captions because my Chinese reading wasn't that good.

It's kind of slowly improved with time and repetitive reading, and over the last three years now, I've also gone through periods of taking notes and actively seeking out some vocab lists or grammar explanations... but it usually comes in the process of trying to translate something. My motivations in "studying" (it's more like "figuring out") Chinese is largely based on the simple desire to know what people are talking about... what they're joking about... what they're ranting about and roasting. Related: I also started reading fanfics in Chinese about a year ago. Some fics have been easier to read than others, but some of the best ones I've read were also the ones that challenged me the most, and which I had to take a lot of notes on while reading. I'll admit! There have been times where I just took a fic and dumped that sucker in google translate and have it read the Chinese to me, so I could just listen to it like a podfic. But even so, I would take notes, because I think my improvements in Chinese are heavily connected to my Chinese literacy.

Reading douyin comments and forums on douban or comment sections on bilibili has been one of the main ways that I've picked up on common phrases and characters. I often write things down but I do so more as a muscle memory practice, because I have never really been the sort of person who reads back notes (this was also how I studied in school, iirc). Branching out and translating things that are written in formal or non-colloquial styles is also a way I challenge myself from time to time, and I do like to look up the etymology of Chinese characters from time to time because it helps me pick up patterns of semantics and phonetic hints when I'm reading (this makes it easier to guess what a character might mean or sound like, even if you've never seen it before). Overall, translation has been the great learning tool for me. I think maybe it comes down to learning styles? I have always learned better from trying to teach others, and I feel like translation works a similar muscle in the mind; translation is about figuring out ways to efficiently communicate a message, and in order to do so, you must be able to grasp the essence of what it is you're relaying.

All this said... And to try and return to your original ask after all my usual Wawa rambling... I actually don't think my Chinese is that good, lol. In fact, there's probably people who follow this blog who are studying Chinese in a more conventional and methodical manner whose Chinese is objectively much better than mine 🤷🏻‍♂️ I mean, if you crunch the numbers, I have really only be self-"studying" for three years. Three years of what is really just vibe-based learning. There's a lot of vocab I still don't know (I mean my English vocab is pretty limited too, sooo.... 😭), a lot of areas that I can still improve on, and am improving on, and try to improve on... when the mood strikes. Again, I am not a very disciplined self-study type.

Maybe this will give any other Chinese diaspora hope, though. I feel like it's never too late for us to start learning. There is probably a seed or language foundation within you already which will make it easier for you to start, and then after that, I think it sort of comes down to finding what interests you and will keep you motivated.

Most of the stuff I talk about on here when it comes to culture or folk art or what have you, I did not know even five years ago! I learned about it because I was interested to find out more. (That's another reason I have to laugh when I get some of the asks I do in my inbox... The stuff I don't answer is dumbfounding at times. You translate a couple of funny videos and people think you're some kind of Tripadvisor cultural ambassador guy! I swear...)

The "study" resources I use regularly are the following:

Pleco

Zh-En browser extension

Yellowbridge (usually to check brush stroke order, since I have Pleco)

Baidu etymology pages / Chinese etymology dictionaries such as hanziyuan

#text #answered ask #about me

[absolutebl]

What are some BL couples who you DO think could actually have a long haul perfect ending and not burn out two months after the show ends?

(Also if possible, could you drop the show titles aswell? Thanks)

20 BL Couples I Love & Think Would Actually Make it In the Long Run

Ha, yeah I intentionally didn't include the titles in that last post because I was being negative. Since these are positive... here you go!

Advance Bravely

I know right? One from China. But yeah I think they're very opposites attract but still well balanced and suited to each other. Plus "stern but indulgent Daddy + spoiled brat" is a favorite dynamic of mine.

Guardian

He waited 10,000 gd years. It has to work out. Despite censorship.

Old Fashion Cupcake

They both mature enough to be very motivated.

Tokyo in April Is

They suffered for that love. It's an enduring eternal kinda thing.

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

Taesung is NEVER letting him go. Never.

Long Time No See

Not only are they staying together, can you imagine anyone trying to separate them?

Nobleman Ryu's Wedding

I just think they gonna live in obscurity in the middle of the woods with their books forever.

Our Dating Sim

Of course they're gonna last, that was the whole point of the show.

Oh Boarding House

I think they both had to come around to each other with a lot of self-examination as to what it meant for them, their identities, and their lives. That kind of thoughtfulness bodes well for longevity.

(This is an under-appreciated gem. IMHO)

Be Loved In House I Do

Yeah they just so into each other but also adoring but understand each other's quirks. There's no meanness or pettiness to either of them. Double down on affection + chemistry is a good recipe for longevity.

DNA Says Love You

They came back for, and waited for, each other.

HIStory Obsessed

It's in the title. This level of mutually obsessed disfunction only ends in death.

HIStory 4: Close to You

Problematic side couple. Dito the above.

Thousand Stars

It's high romance of the eternal forever kind.

2 Moons Ambassador

They are *that* couple. "I married my college sweetheart and am incandescently happy forever in a disgustingly sappy way" that shouldn't work but does.

My Only 12%

Again, they suffered too much not to make it work. They are basically each other's half, it codependent, but that's the point.

Ingredients

They define domesticity. The true key to most couple longevity is the ability to actually live together.

Oh My Sunshine Night

File these two under the "once he had a taste, its' forever." The seme is too bossy and too possessive for anyone but the one he picked. This one lasts because Rain would MAKE IT last.

Oxygen

Dito the above, only softer.

Until We Meet Again

Of course. I mean, OF COURSE OF COURSE. That's the point. Dean's entire existence would be a failure if they broke up.

Despite my love of the genre I didn't pick any high school BL couples. Even if I think they may have a chance I'm not sure how I feel about that kind of pairing.

I didn't pick ones we know lasted because they showed it to us: e.g. Unintentional Love Story, His, Dear Doctor, My Ride.

There are a few I left off because I think they could last as a couple but the circumstances of their lives and surrounding, means I'm not sure if they would be allowed to, like Not Me, Never Let Me Go, Manner of Death.

(source)

#chinese bl #thai bl #korean bl #taiwanese bl #Until We Meet Again #DeanPharm #Oxygen the series #Advance Bravely #Old Fashion Cupcake #Japanese bl #live action yaoi #Tokyo in April Is #cherry blossoms after winter #long time no see #Nobleman Ryu's Wedding #our dating sim #oh boarding house #be loved in house: i do #dna says love you #2 Moons Ambassador #oh my sunshine night

[chiaraanatra]

Break Up in a Small Town

Request: What about break up in a small town by Sam Hunt? Pilot!Reader and Jake?! Love your work!! - @callsign-viper

Summary: You and Jake had known each other since high school and the two of you dated back at the Academy. After being stationed on separate sides of the US the two of you separated. Little did you know both of you would be called back to Top Gun. Little did he know you would be followed by a civilian boyfriend.

Warnings: Swearing, name-calling (slut), shitty boyfriend, Hangman to the rescue!

No Y/N; callsign Stinger; called Honeybee by Jake as term of endearment.

Word Count: 3k

AN: This took way too long and I’m sorry. It also ran away from me and I’m not sorry.

When I first started writing this, I was watching too much VPR and Tom is definitely based on Tom Sandoval.

For the parts 1 & 3 of this accidental series: pt 1: Cop Car || pt 3: Falling Like This

《 m.list || ao3 》

“Stinger!” You looked up from your spot in the common room, greeted by the commander looking about as pissed-off as usual, “My office now!”

Shit! What did I do…? Your thoughts ran rampant. You weren't a bad egg by any means but depending on the day the commander could go on a tirade over just about anything.

You stood in front of his desk, eyes trained straight forward. He was looking through a large manila folder. “Do you know why I called you in here?”

“No, Sir.”

“I have to send somebody from this squadron to Miramar…” Your brain was barely able to register the Commander’s words. “This might be against my better judgment, but I’m giving you your dream shot. I'm gonna send you up against the best. You’re going to Top Gun.”

Holy Shit…!

“Thank you, Sir.” You tried to keep a stoic look on your face but inside you were screaming. Top Gun was a big deal and you would be one of the few pilots included in the upcoming class!

“You ship out tomorrow. You're expected to be there Monday at 0500. Don’t make me regret this decision, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed. Go home and pack up.”

“I won’t let you down, Commander.”

You walked out and closed the office door behind you. You tried your best to contain your giddy smile. You bolted down the hall, running into the parking lot and towards your car. The first thing you did was pull out your phone and call your best friend.

Viper was stationed in Florida. The two of you were inseparable at the Academy, attached at the hip, and you didn’t let being stationed in different places stop this. Regardless of the distance, the two of you always stayed in touch, sharing whatever news and gossip came up wherever you were stationed.

“Hello?”

You couldn’t contain yourself and just screamed into the phone, “Guess what!!”

“Okay tone it down there, Sting. I don’t need you blowing out my eardrums.” She laughed.

“I’m going to Top Gun!”

“Oh?” There was a small pause, and you could hear her giggle softly. “That’s amazing, babe! I think there will be a lot in store for you there!" she paused for a moment. "You know, Top Gun, full of surprises!” You knew Viper was acting weird, but your excitement was taking over, and you couldn’t be bothered to ask what she knew. “I umm have to go but call me when you get to Miramar safe! Love you!” She hung up just as quickly as you called her.

Weird as that was you knew better than to question Viper. But the last thing on your mind was the fact that in the Navy, news travels fast and Viper knew much more than she was letting on. All you could think about was goodbye China Lake and hello Miramar!

“You accepted it? Don’t you think we should have talked about this first?” This was not exactly the reaction you were expecting from your boyfriend.

You met Tom about a year ago at a bar just off the China Lake base. You had been stationed at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake since you graduated from the Academy. Being a skilled pilot with a talent for air-to-air combat, it was the perfect placement for you. Last fall, Tom moved to sunny California after being employed as a civilian contractor, hired to work on weapons navigation. The two of you seemed to click well and after a month of being friends, you decided to go out with one another. You hadn’t really dated anyone since the Academy, and it was a nice change of pace, for a while at least. As months went on Tom tended to, not so subtly, question your career as a naval pilot.

“I know, but this is Top Gun. This is a huge deal!” You said adrenalin running through, a giddy smile was plastered on your face. “This is the big leagues! And it’s still in California, only like a 4-hour drive.”

“I get that babe, but you really should have consulted me on such a big decision.”

Your smile began to fade, “You’re right I should have talked to you…” Tom always had a knack for bringing you down a couple of pegs.

“It’s cool and all but you have to consider how it could affect me, us. You know?"

“Yeah… I’m sorry.” You looked down at your feet.

“Hey, don’t give me that face.” He placed his finger under your chin lifting it so you would look at him. “You just have to think before you act.” He pulled you into a hug, “We’ll make it work.”

The drive to Miramar was surprisingly easy despite the traffic. You made it there in record time, partly due to your tendency to drive just a bit over the speed limit.

*Ping*

You looked at your phone expecting it to be Tom but the name on the notification read Phoenix. The two of you had gotten pretty close after her short stint at China Lake a couple of years ago. You were relieved when you found out that she was also accepted into Top Gun, the perspective of a familiar face made your nervousness subside.

You, me, Hard Deck 7 pm! The whole class is meeting up!

You smiled at the screen and all thoughts of Tom and the hope that he would text that he was glad you made it to Miramar safely quickly left your head.

You made it to the Hard Deck a few minutes after 7. As you walked in you saw a collection of khaki surrounding the pool table. You made eye contact with Phoenix, who lifted her empty glass with pleading eyes. You smiled, giving her a nod that indicated her next round was on you before you headed to the bar. You didn’t notice when more khaki uniforms shuffled into the already-packed bar.

“What do we have here? If it ain’t Phoenix!” A tall blonde made his way over to Phoenix and the others. “And here I thought we were special, Coyote. Turns out the invite went to anyone.”

She rolled her eyes, “Fellas, this here’s Bagman.”

“Hangman,” he smiled as if the snide comment didn’t bother him.

“Whatever.” She turned to Fanboy and Payback, “You’re looking at the only naval aviator on active duty with a confirmed air-to-air kill.”

“Stop.” He tried his best to fain embarrassment.

“Mind you, the other guy was in a museum piece from the Korean War.”

“Cold war,” he corrected. “Different wars, same century.”

She smiled back at him, “Not this one.”

“Who are your friends?” He nodded toward the two men on either side of her.

“Payback. Fanboy. And Stinger’s at the bar grabbing drinks.”

“Stinger...?” he spoke in barely a whisper. Hangman could feel his heart skip a beat at a name he hadn’t heard in years but never forgot. There’s no way…

After a few moments you made your way over to the pool table, Nat’s tequila and soda in one hand and your drink of choice in the other.

“What did I miss?” You said squeezing in next to Nat and handing her a drink.

I knew I'd see her around.

I'd be at some party, she'd show up and I'd be walking out.

“Stinger! This is-“

You interrupted before she could finish, “Hangman. It’s been a while, Seresin.” The corner of your lip turns up slightly as you maintain eye contact.

“That it has…” Jake’s eyes wandered through the room, itching for an escape. He figured it was inevitable that he would run into you again, but he wasn’t prepared for it to be now. He saw Rooster out of the corner of his eye, “Bradshaw! Is that you?” Bradley made his way over to the group and you watched as the two men had a dick-measuring contest.

You moved closer to Nat. “Well, he hasn’t changed,” she sighed as she turned back to you.

“Nope. Sure hasn’t…” a small smile making its way across your lips. You downed the rest of your drink, “I think I’m gonna head out. I have a lot of shit to do before Monday.” The reaction between you and Hangman had Nat curious but she knew better than to bombard you with questions.

You were barely at the parking lot before you had your phone in hand dialing Viper’s number. Time differences be damned!

“You knew, didn’t you?!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You could hear Viper’s smile through the phone.

“You knew he was here!”

“Okay maybe… Yeah, I knew. But come on Sting… I know you still have feelings for him.”

“That doesn’t matter I have Tom...” You didn’t even sound convincing to yourself.

Viper held herself back from sharing her thoughts about Tom. “Well, a lot can happen in a few weeks. Maybe keep your options open.”

You rolled your eyes and let out a soft sigh. “I’ll talk to you later V. Love you.”

“Love you too, S. Be safe up there.”

The first two weeks had been maddening. Top Gun training was a lot, to put it mildly. Being so close to Jake Seresin brought up feelings you thought you had long since buried and it didn’t help that Tom was MIA due to work.

You were wrapping up your post-flight checks, humming along to the music softly playing from the speaker on your workbench.

We just needed some time.

Your mood dampened slightly at the choice of song. You didn’t listen to much country before you met Jake. Coming from the Lone Star State, it’s all he would listen to. It didn't take long for the genre to grow on you. But even after all those years, there was a pull somewhere in your heart whenever a song like that would come on.

Thought I would be fine, but maybe not.

“Hey, Honeybee.” Jake mentally hit himself for the nickname.

Speak of the devil.

You couldn’t help the shiver that made its way down your spine. You wouldn’t say it out loud but you missed the nickname. One only he ever got to call you.

You turned around to see Jake walking towards you. You stood, adjusting your flight suit.

“Good job out there today.” Jake was looking down at the ground.

“Thanks. Same to you.” You gave him a small smile just as his gaze made its way to your face. “Mav’s a hard ass, but this is a good team and I think we have what it takes.”

He couldn’t help but smile, “Hard ass might be underselling it, but I have to agree.” He looks back at the ground once more. “Hey, I’m happy you’re here. While I had some doubts about some of the pilot selections, I never had a second thought about you being here.”

“Thank you, Jake. I-“ Before you can finish your thought you hear a door open next to you. When you look over the sight of Tom is a surprising one. He had barely spoken to you since your arrival, let alone mention coming down to see you.

“Sorry, am I interrupting?” Tom’s arm was slung heavy and uncomfortable on your shoulders.

“Tom, this is Lt. Jake Seresin. He’s also attending Top Gun.”

Hangman extended a handout to Tom, “Nice to meet you, Tom.”

“Back at you, buddy.” Tom leaves Jake’s hand empty, pulling out his phone from his pocket. “Hey babe how about you clean up your grimy self and we meet somewhere for a drink.”

You try your best to brush off Tom’s brazen attitude, “Umm yeah we can meet at the Hard D-“

Tom cuts you off, moving his arm from your shoulder and turning all his focus to his phone, “Yeah. Cool. Let’s meet there in a few hours?” Without waiting for your reply, he starts making his way towards the exit. “Just send me the address.”

You let go of a sigh that caught you somewhat by surprise. “Well, I guess I should wrap up my checks and get out of here.” You couldn’t bring yourself to look at Jake.

Jake was taken aback by the little interaction but bit his tongue. He had no right to comment on your current relationship, even if he hated how the guy talked to you. “Yeah,” he paused for a brief moment, “I’ll see you at the Hard Deck.”

You couldn’t help the smile that formed on your face, “yeah, see you there.”

Jake sat at the bar of the Hard Deck watching Penny and the new bartender pour drinks while he debated his decision to come tonight. The second he saw you for the first time since the Academy, everything that happened between you and him came flooding back. Meeting you in Corpus Christi after your dad got promoted and stationed at their Naval Air Station, going to the Academy together, long nights spent studying, and even longer nights spent intertwined with one another. He missed you. He wanted to convince himself that he didn’t, but he did. He always wondered where you two would have been had you been stationed together after graduation or had you tried to make things work despite the distance. Maybe you wouldn’t have been with that jackass now…

Jake looked up from his drink to be met with a view of the said jackass. However, the hands that were hanging all over Tom, didn’t belong to you. Jake watched for a few more moments as Tom’s hands grabbed at the girl’s ass. Before he knew what he was doing, Jake was making his way towards Tom, taping the shorter, dark-haired man on the shoulder.

“What the-Ho, hey Jacky boy!” Tom’s demeanor quickly changed when faced with the taller blonde.

“It’s Jake.” Jake was straight-faced and unamused.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Any way you mind?” Tom’s eyes moved from Jake to the girl and back to Jake, hoping that Jake would catch the hit and keep quiet.

I wanna jump out, I wanna fight, I wanna say, "F- that guy!" but I can’t.

Jake knew exactly what that look meant. While he wasn’t proud of it, he had a past. When you first met in high school, Jake had a reputation for having a high “catch and release” rate. It was because of that it took him a while to convince you that he wanted something different with you. After you things reverted, never wanting something serious if it wasn't with you.

The doors to the Hard Deck opened and your gaze was drawn to Jake. Thoughts of Tom were nonexistent, to the point where you couldn’t be bothered to notice the shorter, dark-haired man or the shorter woman hanging all over him.

You waved to try and get Hangman’s attention. On further inspection, you could tell that the man was seething. Jake wasn’t one to share his emotions much and he wasn’t the most readable, but after spending years with him you could read him like a book. When you finally reached the man, you were met with the source of his anger.

“Tom?”

The girl turned to you with a look of disgust, as if you were beneath her. “And who are you?”

“Well, girlfriend doesn’t seem like an appropriate title anymore,” your attention shifted from her back to your ex-boyfriend, “does it, Tom?”

Tom let out a laugh that made you want to shrink into yourself. “Sure, sure. You know what? Fuck you! I could have any girl I want! I don’t have to put up with this bullshit!”

“What bullshit? You’re the one with another woman hanging all over you.”

“Oh, seriously?” Tom looked to Jake and back at you, “Like you haven’t been slutting yourself out to guys like him?”

“Hey hey hey!” Penny moved toward the two of you, “I will not have this shit in my bar.”

Tom scoffed, “And what are you going to do about it?”

Penny smirked and ranked the bell. The whole crowd cheered as Tom looked around in confusion.

“Overboard! Overboard! Overboard!”

Before he had time to think, much less react, Tom was hoisted into the air and carried toward the exit. Before he knew it his ass hit the sand and the doors to the bar were slammed shit.

Jake looked over to you, you had shrunk into yourself at Tom’s words but tried your best to hide it. He gently placed his hand on your shoulder. “You wanna get outta here?” He gave you his iconic smile and you couldn't help but give him a small smile in return.

“Yeah, I would rather be anywhere but here right now.”

“I think I know just the place.” He cashed you both out with Penny and led you to his truck.

“I hope this isn’t your masterful plan to get me back in your bed.” Half joking you look over to him.

He let out a breathy laugh, while he liked the thought of you back in his arms, tangled in the sheets of his bed, he knew that’s not what you needed. At least not right now. “Unlike some, I am capable of think without using my dick.”

The two of you drove in comfortable silence. You noticed that he had driven you back to Miramar. He parked and you looked at him with some confusion. “Come on,” he hopped out, grabbing two blankets out of his back seat before making his way towards the back of the truck and you followed. “You remember back in Corpus Christi when we would sneak onto the base and watch the planes take off.” He laid out the blankets and lifted you to sit on the truck bed.

“I remember us almost getting arrested senior.” I couldn’t help but laugh as you remember that night. You also remember that being the night you two first kissed.

He jumped up to sit next to you, “Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that.”

Your eyes drifted in his direction, taking in his form. His strong arms, his hands that were much larger than your own. His strong jaw and beautiful eyes. You knew your timing could have been better, but you couldn’t stop yourself, “I’ve missed you, Jake…” Your head came to rest on his shoulder.

His head came to rest slightly on your own, “I missed you too, Honeybee.”

Tags: @callsign-viper @luckyladycreator2 @saturnsbabe69 @desert-fern @pono-pura-vida

As always, feedback, likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated!𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑑? 𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 💜

#top gun #top gun maverick #jake “hangman” seresin #top gun fanfiction #hangman #hangman x reader #hangman seresin #hangman fanfiction #jake seresin #jake seresin x you #jake seresin x reader #jake hangman imagine #no beta

[tavina-writes]

I started writing an essay in the tags of a post that was not strictly related to this topic but started getting me thinking and realized I should just. Make my own post about this because I have kind of been sitting on this frustration for a while? And mmmm idk how to feel about this.

(For the record, the post that inspired this is this one.)

I want to make it clear UPFRONT that I am not knocking on ANYONE's interpretations of NHS or about having gender headcanons about a character in general. I think people can headcanon NHS as whichever gender they like because those interpretations are fun and exciting and I like to read about those too.

What I have been getting progressively iffy on, and am not entirely clear on how to express until I came across the above post is the idea that 'NHS is femme-coded because he has femme-coded hobbies' or 'NHS is very gender/gender nonconforming because he likes to paint and doesn't like exercise/practice his saber' or 'NHS is not very masc in comparison to his brother and people in his society put him down/are irritated with him/react to him differently because his gender presentation is more femme.'

And I think what's always kind of boggled me about interpretations like these that I've mentioned above is because...

Hobbies like keeping birds* and painting and calligraphy and poetry** and being well dressed and fashionable*** were strongly masculine coded scholar gentry hobbies for bored rich men**** in historical China. People react to NHS they way they do in text (at least from what I can understand of the social norms of the MDZS jianghu) because NHS is determined to be a particularly foppish dandy and also yknow, actively wailing about his many problems.

So, I think the tldr of this is that: NHS can be interpreted as whatever gender people would like! But his society and his peers and the other characters are not reacting to him in a certain way because he's femme-coded, they're reacting to him that way because he's an irritating asshole and kind of foppish (affectionate)

*keeping birds (as pets and not like, just raptors for hunting) was a rich man's hobby in Ancient China from at least the Zhou dynasty, though which birds were popular as pets (everything from parrots to orioles) differed depending on the dynasty, but the Ming and Qing dynasties were extremely big on pet birds in rich people's houses in particular.

**it is unclear if NHS is particularly good at say, painting or calligraphy OR poetry but the point is that he appears to like these things

***men's fashion has been a wild beast throughout the ages both in the east and the west, and men have done things for fashion like wearing gaudy archer's rings to show off archery skills they didn't have, high heels, Song dynasty men wore flowers in their hair, and my own personal unfavorite: the Qing Dynasty queue.

****the four gentlemanly arts were for example: qin qi shu hua -- playing the qin (music), weiqi (Go if you want to use the Japanese name for the game), shu (calligraphy), and hua (painting). See brief wikipedia summary about the four arts here. There were different things also included in the education of an aristocratic gentleman in pre-imperial China but we have no time to delve into that in this post. HMU for more info if you want it because I love to talk about historical things.

#nie huaisang #meta #my meta #again I'm not trying to say don't headcanon him a certain way #headcanon him whatever way you like!!!! #I too LOVE a good gender exploration #but people canonically react to him the way they do because he's IRRITATING AS FUCK (affectionate) #and not bc his hobbies are gnc #they're actually really gender conforming 😔😔😔

[meraki-yao]

I'm here once more to talk about RWRB fan culture difference :D

Okay so the thing is people in China can't access Prime, so they watch a "pirated" version on Bilibili, the closest Chinese platform to YouTube

And on most Chinese video platforms, including Bilibili, there's this thing called "bullet comments", which are comments that float across the screen as the scene is playing, so the audience can comment in real-time (according to my sister: 'it's like a twitch chat but instead of staying in the chatbox as god intended everything flies across the screen like a flock of deranged geese')

And it can be problematic at times, especially when people start an argument with bullet comments, as it is with idol culture-related videos

But for RWRB, for the most part, the bullet comments are civil

Now the fun thing is that you can get genuinely wonderful comments like these:

He was alone on an island, but then he came...

He swims toward the little prince, and since then the lonely island blossoms like spring, a neverending glorious summer.

The freeing wind of Texas breezed past the Atlantic Ocean, awakening the dying rose of the London Castle

"Idealistic" is good, we need "idealistic" works to show people another possibility

Statues tell the stories of a million lives, and they are an ordinary pair among them

But then you also have hilarities like these:

The entire pink circle is literally just feral screaming, 啊="AHHHHHH"

Ha, I put on my earphones

I'm overwhelmed by the gays

Poor security guard (Amy) Hahahahahaha

Alex: These Flowers are really flowery

Henry: OMG These books are so bookish

In moments of awkwardness, everyone will pretend they are really busy

I'm on the streets...What do I do

Wait! Who's the top! (yeah top or bottom is a.. weirdly strict thing in Chinese LGBT culture)

Remember to pull the curtain!!!!

Fuck Me Am I allowed to watch this?

I really like a quote from Bilibili audience's: "AHH???"

So when I watch stuff on Bilibili, I have to watch it twice: once for the actual video, and once for the *chef's kiss bullet comments that are either poems that I copied down onto my notebook or things that make me laugh until I choke

I really want to share more of these comments, but there are like thousands of them and certain things can't be translated into English. Maybe I'll go through it scene by scene and pick out some fun ones that I can translate?

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrb movie #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #henry hanover stuart fox #firstprince #taylor zakhar perez #nicholas galitzine #rwrb rambles #rwrb memes #I really wanna show some of the good things from the Chinese RWRB fandom to yall #rwrb bullet comments

[nyerus]

Overview of TGCF Versions

Due to recent(ish) events, I thought it would be good to make another post cataloguing all the different "versions" of TGCF, for newcomers and old fans alike! I'll also be going over some FAQs that I've seen or been asked so this post can serve as a decent info thread.

For simplicity's sake, first think of there being two "main" version of TGCF:

The Original -- what all the translations are based on, as well as the manhua and donghua.

The Revised -- what was released in print last year in China (only), and what was recently updated on JJWXC. The audio drama is adapting this

The original webnovel was itself not "censored." By that I mean, it contained everything MXTX originally wrote including kisses, swearing, innuendo, etc. MXTX did self-censor to avoid Real Censorship (hence the lack of NSFW scenes we may have gotten like in her previous novels), but that's a whole different thing. For all intents and purposes, consider the original version and (most of) its translations as being uncensored.

The revised version was first publicly released as a print novel in China. As such, it was actually censored. While "Hualian" is still there, and things are alluded to, it's a lot more vague. Kisses and a lot of other things were cut, including certain dialogue tidbits that perhaps were deemed a bit too obvious. (Plus a lot of Feng Xin and Qi Rong's cursing was removed lmao.)

HOWEVER, shortly after the print release, the audio drama started adapting the uncensored revised version. So we all knew there was an uncensored revised version somewhere in existence. It wasn't until the end of last month that we actually saw it! TGCF was available again on JJWXC after years of being "temporarily locked" to comply with regulations. (Though it was possible it was locked for other reasons. We will never fully know!) Not only was it finally unlocked, but it was actually updated to the uncensored revised version!

F.A.Q.s

1.) Why did MXTX make a revised version anyway? MXTX has mentioned before that she was not entirely satisfied with the original version of TGCF. Because she wrote and released each chapter in a serialized manner, with frequent (possibly daily?) updates, it doesn't surprise me that it didn't turn out exactly how she wanted. Now that she has the opportunity to sit down with it and go over everything on her own time, she's able to get it closer to what she wanted. In short: she's just really passionate about this story!

2.) Is there and English translation, or will there be? What about other languages? Officially, not yet. We don't know if there ever will be, as MXTX would have to re-negotiate the rights with publishers for translations, and at this time, we don't know if that'll happen. Unofficially, there are a few options: a. ClearNoodle has done some fan-translations you should check out here! b. By purchasing the webnovel on JJWXC now, you can MTL (machine translate) the novel. If you've seen screenshots in English floating around that aren't part of the fan-translations above, this is probably the source.

3.) What is JJWXC and how do I use it/purchase TGCF on it? JJWXC is the webnovel publishing site where TGCF was originally released. It hosts a giant array of C-novels, including most other danmei that you may have heard about. SV and MDZS were indeed also on JJWXC, but are currently (still) locked. To purchase TGCF (or any other novel) on JJWXC, cangji.net has an excellent guide and list of other helpful links to get you all set up. Please do check it out! Additionally, buying on JJWXC seems to be the most direct way to support authors. You can also throw bonus tips at them!

4.) How much has really changed in the revised version? A fair bit. Mostly, the changes are to do with plot structure, minor characters, overall flow, and so on. It's still essentially the same story, but in a way that feels fresh. Hualian in particular have exactly the same dynamic as before. MXTX added extra scenes between them, including very sweet and tender domestic stuff haha! There's also a few new lines of spicier dialogue to go along with some of the scenes that already existed in the original.

5.) So what is considered canonical? Both, in a way. MXTX has stated that she's happy if fans can enjoy both at once, and that we're free to pick-and-choose as we wish. Personally, while there are many things I prefer from the original, the revised version is something closer to MXTX's true vision for the novel. So I feel that holds a little bit of weight there, too.

6.) Will the manhua/donghua be adapting any of the newly revised content? So far that seems unlikely. The revised version facelifts a lot from the early parts of the story, which is stuff these adaptations have already covered. It would be hard to change things down the line now. At most they could add some of the extra dialogue or such, but we'll see if that's the case. For now, we simply don't know and shouldn't count on it. If you'd still like an adaptation of the revised, please absolutely check out the audio drama! It's easily become my personal fave adaptation of the story, and is made by a small but very passionate team who are close to MXTX. Thus, it's quite faithful and does the source material such justice! <3

#tgcf #tian guan ci fu #hob #heaven official's blessing #this post was supposed to be out WEEKS ago but such is life lol #nyerus.txt #guide

[centrally-unplanned]

Gonna make this a quick one since I just don’t have the spoons for a really big effort post: Pre-CCP 20th Century China Did Not Have Feudal or Slave-like Land Tenancy Systems

Obviously what counts as “slave-like” is going to be subjective, but I think it's common, for *ahem* reasons, for people to believe that in the 1930’s Chinese agriculture was dominated by massive-scale, absentee landlords who held the large majority of peasant workers in a virtual chokehold and dictated all terms of labor.

That is not how Chinese land ownership & agricultural systems worked. I am going to pull from Chinese Agriculture in the 1930s: Investigations into John Lossing Buck’s Rediscovered ‘Land Utilization in China’ Microdata, which is some of the best ground-level data you can get on how land use functioned, in practice, in China during the "Nanjing Decade" before WW2 ruins all data collection. It looks at a series of north-central provinces, which gives you the money table of this:

On average, 4/5ths of Chinese peasants owned land, and primarily farmed land that they owned. Tenancy was, by huge margins, the minority practice. I really don’t need to say more than this, but I'm going to because there is a deeper point I want to make. And it's fair to say that while this is representative of Northern China, Southern China did have higher tenancy rates - not crazy higher, but higher.

So let's look at those part-owner farmers; sounds bad right? Like they own part of their land, but it's not enough? Well, sometimes, but sometimes not:

A huge class (about ~1/3rd) of those part-owners were farming too much land, not too little; they were enterprising households renting land to expand their businesses. They would often engage in diversified production, like cash crops on the rented land and staple crops on their owned land. Many of them would actually leave some of their owned land fallow, because it wasn’t worth the time to farm!

Meanwhile the small part-owners and the landless tenant farmers would rent out land to earn a living…sometimes. Because that wasn’t the only way to make a living - trades existed. From our data, if you are a small part-owner, you got a substantial chunk of your income from non-farm labor; if you owned no land you got the majority of your income from non-farm labor:

(Notice how that includes child labor by default, welcome to pre-modernism!)

So the amount of people actually doing full-tenancy agriculture for a living is…pretty small, less than 10% for sure. But what did it look like for those who do? The tenancy rates can be pretty steep - 50/50 splits were very common. But that is deceiving actually; this would be called “share rent”, but other systems, such as cash rents, bulk crop rents, long-term leases with combined payment structures, etc, also existed and were plentiful - and most of those had lower rent rates. However, share rent did two things; one, it hedged against risk; in the case of a crop failure you weren't out anything as the tenant, a form of insurance. And two, it implied reciprocal obligations - the land owner was providing the seed, normally the tools as well, and other inputs like fertilizer.

Whether someone chose one type of tenancy agreement or the other was based on balancing their own labor availability, other wage opportunities, the type of crop being grown, and so on. From the data we have, negotiations were common around these types of agreements; a lot of land that was share rent one year would be cash rent another, because the tenants and market conditions shifted to encourage one or the other form.

I’m doing a little trick here, by throwing all these things at you. Remember the point at the top? “Was this system like slavery?” What defines slavery? To me, its a lack of options - that is the bedrock of a slave system. Labor that you are compelled by law to do, with no claim on the output of that work. And as I hit you with eight tiers of land ownership and tenancy agreements and multi-source household incomes, as you see that the median person renting out land to a tenant farmer was himself a farmer as a profession and by no means some noble in the city, what I hope becomes apparent is that the Chinese agricultural system was a fully liquid market based on choice and expected returns. By no means am I saying that it was a nice way to live; it was an awful way to live. But nowhere in this system was state coercion the bedrock of the labor system. China’s agricultural system was in fact one of the most free, commercial, and contract-based systems on the planet in the pre-modern era, that was a big source of why China as a society was so wealthy. It was a massive, moving market of opportunities for wages, loans, land ownership, tenancy agreements, haggled contracts, everyone trying in their own way to make the living that they could.

It's a system that left many poor, and to be clear injustices, robberies, corruption, oh for sure were legion. Particularly during the Warlord Era mass armies might just sweep in and confiscate all your hard currency and fresh crops. But, even ignoring that the whole ‘poverty’ thing is 90% tech level and there was no amount of redistribution that was going to improve that very much, what is more important is that the pre-modern world was *not* equally bad in all places. The American South was also pretty poor, but richer than China in the 19th century. And being a slave in the American South was WAY worse than being a peasant in China during times of peace - because Confederate society built systems to remove choice, to short-circuit the ebb and flow of the open system to enshrine their elite ‘permanently’ at the top. If you lived in feudal Russia it was a good deal worse, with huge amounts of your yearly labor compelled by the state onto estates held by those who owned them unimpeachably by virtue of their birthright (though you were a good deal richer just due to basic agriculture productivity & population density, bit of a tradeoff there).

If you simply throw around the word “slavery” to describe every pre-modern agricultural system because it was poor and shitty, that back-doors a massive amount of apologia for past social systems that were actively worse than the benchmarks of the time. Which is something the CCP did; their diagnosis of China’s problem for the rural poor of needing massive land redistribution was wrong! It was just wrong, it was not the issue they were having. It was not why rural China was often poor and miserable. It could help, sure, I myself would support some compensated land redistribution in the post-war era as a welfare idea for a fiscally-strapped state. But that was gonna do 1% of the heavy lifting here in making the rural poor's lives better. And I don’t think we should continue to the job of spreading the CCP's propaganda for them.

There ya go @chiefaccelerator, who alas I was not permitted to compel via state force into writing this for me, you Qing Dynasty lazy peasant.

#Chinese history discourse blog #essay

[libraryofgage]

The Prince and the Metalhead (2)

Part of: Steve Deserves Good Parents, Actually

Debbie and Fester Addams One | Two | Three | Four Rick and Evelyn O'Connell One | Two | Three Harley Quinn One 10th Doctor and Rose One | Two (on the way!) Scooby Gang (there are plans for this one lmao, so plz be patient with me orz) Jedidiah and Octavius (from Night at the Museum) One Queen Clarisse Renaldi One | Two (you're here!)

I know I just posted part one but I've got Thoughts for this AU that include: Steve's first birthday in Genovia and then his 16th, his conversation with his grandmother about attending public school in America for his senior year, and then we get into him attending Hawkins High and meeting Eddie!

So, yeah, plans lmao

Anyway, if you see any typos, no you didn't ;)

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"You'll have a rotating course schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays will focus on math and social studies. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be science and literature. Friday will be Royalty lessons and the history of Genovia. We can also include an elective, if you'd like."

Steve blinks, staring at Sue for a moment before glancing at Jonathan and Robin. Jonathan is looking through a book of photography and Robin is idly scratching behind Dart’s ears. "Will we all have the same elective?" Steve asks.

"Not unless Jonathan and Robin want to join you," Sue says, looking at Steve expectantly. She's got a pen at the ready to write down what he says, and it suddenly feels like a lot of pressure.

Is there a wrong answer here? Is there an answer that gets him sent back to his parents? He looks down, biting the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. Before he can lose himself in his thoughts, a cold and wet nose presses against his hand. Steve blinks, smiling at Dart and picking her up to hold close. "What kind of electives are there?" he asks.

Sue hums softly, flipping to another page on her clipboard. "Possible electives include art, music, theatrical performance, physical education, equestrian studies, botany, and foreign languages, to name a few."

"I'll be taking photography lessons," Jonathan says, looking up at Steve and gesturing to his book.

Robin nods and leans back on her palms. "I'll be doing the physical stuff. Like learning how to fight and practicing ballet to improve my balance," she says, leveling a look at Steve that dares him to say anything about the ballet.

Steve wouldn't, though. He doesn't want to make Robin angry enough to ditch him. He looks down at Dart, thinking for a moment before asking, "Can I take more than one?"

"Of course, but you're limited to three for now," Sue says.

What would be the most helpful? Foreign languages, probably, since he'll definitely have to speak with ambassadors from other countries at some point. He should also learn something that can be shown off, a skill that he could pull out at functions to make his grandmother proud or distract guests.

"What language should I learn?" he asks.

Sue thinks for a moment, tapping her pen against her chin. "Mandarin. It's a business language, and we have close relations with a few representatives from China and Hong Kong. If you'd like to learn a Romantic language first, though, Spanish is good."

"I'll learn Mandarin," Steve decides, nodding once to himself. "And music. I want to learn to play...hmm...the piano."

With a nod, Sue writes his electives down. "Let me know if you'd like to add an elective later, Your Highness. In my opinion, though, your current courses will keep you properly challenged for now."

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Sue wasn't kidding about his academics being challenging. Steve struggles in math, muddles his way through science, drags himself through literature, and is ready to drop when he hits social studies. He'd ask the tutors to spend more time on topics, but Robin and Jonathan seem to have no problem keeping up, and Steve can't bring himself to disrupt their pace.

His Mandarin lessons are going just slightly better if only because the tutor seems to recognize that slower is better for him. After almost a month, he's starting to understand intonation and vocal variation better, and he can recognize a few characters on sight.

Piano lessons are also going well. His tutor there doesn't burden him with theory; she introduces the keys, shows him how to read sheet music, and then lets him choose songs to learn. Steve feels the most at ease when he's squinting at sheet music and slowly pressing piano keys into something recognizable.

The lessons he really looks forward to, however, are the ones for his Royalty Education. He gets to see his grandmother then, and she spends the whole day with him. Even better, something about this stuff just clicks. He's good at fixing his posture and memorizing silverware placement. He bows just right on his first try and his grandmother compliments his wave.

By the end of the lesson, she'll be smiling, her pride obvious, and take him for a walk in the gardens or to eat cookies in the kitchen.

"Royalty requires maintenance," Clarisse says, standing in front of Steve with relaxed shoulders. "You maintain your demeanor, your image, your knowledge of foreign dignitaries, your understanding of the people’s needs, and your humility. But you must also maintain your pride and your boundaries."

"That sounds like a lot," Steve says, idly tugging at the hem of his shirt.

"It can be overwhelming, but it becomes second nature in time," Clarisse explains, smiling reassuringly. "When you're royalty, you are constantly watched. Many eyes are kind or curious, but others are malicious, and you want to do everything you can to disappoint the malicious ones."

"How?"

"By acting like the Crown Prince you are."

"What kind of prince am I?" Steve asks, finally voicing the question that's been lingering since these lessons started. What kind of prince does his grandmother want? What kind of prince would best serve the people? What kind of prince will be so loved by all that nobody could even think of thinking about getting rid of him?

Clarisse hums, thinking for a moment. "I suppose a good one," she says, her slight smile telling Steve that she's only lightly teasing. "My hope is that you'll be kind and competent. You will make Genovia prosperous without compromising tradition. You won't allow politics to stand in the way of doing what's right by the people of Genovia. But this is a tiring job, so I hope you'll learn how to balance your duties with relaxation."

It's a lot, but Steve can do it. He can be that kind of prince, especially for the country and grandmother that's offered everything he's ever wanted and more. He nods once. "Okay," he says, "What do I need to learn, then?"

Clarisse smiles fondly at him. "Let's start by reviewing Genovian history. Only by knowing the past can you face the future."

With that, she places a book on Steve's desk and doesn't wait for him to open it before telling him about Genovia's founding.

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Steve has weekends off from classes, which leaves him with more free time than he knows what to do with when he doesn't have to clean a house or make his own meals. So, he's bored, and telling Robin that he was bored was a huge mistake after she suggested riding bikes around the garden only to learn Steve didn't know how.

She'd insisted that he should learn, insisted that Clarisse be the one who teaches him, and insisted on hearing no objections.

And now he's here, standing in front of Clarisse's desk and staring down at his feet as she finishes writing something on the paper in front of her. Joe is standing just to her right, hands behind his back.

"Okay," Clarisse says, gently placing her pen on the desk before looking at Steve with an encouraging smile. "What did you want to ask me, Steve?"

Steve bites the inside of his cheek, takes a deep breath, and looks up. "Well, um, Robin wants to ride bikes, but I don't know how," he says.

"Well, that's easily fixed," Clarisse says, reaching for a phone at the corner of her desk. "I'm sure a member of staff is free to teach you."

Before she can pick up the phone, Steve finds himself blurting out, "Well, I...I was hoping...you could teach me."

Clarisse freezes, blinking twice with confusion before looking at Steve. "You want me to teach you?" she asks. When Steve nods once, she sighs softly. "A queen does not ride bikes. Besides, I have too much work to complete. Perhaps I could accompany you for a walk this evening to make up for it."

Despite himself, despite bracing for rejection, it still hurts. In the three months he's been in Genovia, Clarisse has agreed to just about every request he's made. Every held breath as he waits for cruel words has been released with unprecedented relief when none came. Even when he broke something---a priceless vase, according to Jonathan---his grandmother had simply surveyed the damage, thanked him for being honest, and asked him to avoid kicking soccer balls in the presence of priceless vases in the future.

Perhaps Steve has gotten too comfortable. He shouldn't be pushing like this. If he wants his grandmother's affection, he should know when to hold himself back.

So, despite the unfamiliar urge to ask again in case Clarisse might change her mind, Steve nods once. "I look forward to walking with you, Grandmother," he says, his voice quiet. He glances up, waiting long enough to see Clarisse's smile before turning on his heel and leaving the office as quickly as he can.

Clarisse watches him go, her head slightly tilted as the door closes silently behind Steve. She nods once, glad that Steve is sensible enough to understand things like work and propriety, and picks up her pen once more.

"If I may speak freely, Your Majesty?" Joe asks.

"At this point, Joe, you may as well assume the answer is yes."

"With all due respect, Your Majesty, and please pardon my French, my experience has been that assuming makes an ass out of you and me."

It takes a moment for Clarisse to understand the joke. When she does, she can't help her amused smile. "Fair enough," she says, "Go ahead, Joe."

"Do you remember what I said about being Steve's grandmother?"

"Yes, of course."

"Perhaps now is one of those moments where being a grandmother is more important than being a queen. His Highness does not ask for much, and he is not the kind to ask more than once, even if he really wants something. I imagine it took a significant amount of courage to ask you to teach him in the first place."

"Are you suggesting that I...I risk making a fool of myself for all to see?" Clarisse asks.

"I am suggesting you spend time with your grandson, who asks very little of you because he does not believe he can ask for anything."

Clarisse is silent a moment, letting Joe's words process and settle in her brain. Finally, she sighs and gestures to the papers on her desk. "I have work to complete," she says.

"Your Majesty, editing these proposals was on your schedule two weeks from now. You are ahead of your work. A break would not be unreasonable or unwarranted."

Well, when he puts it like that.

Clarisse sighs, leans back in her chair, and looks up at Joe. He's still staring at the door, giving no indication that he feels her eyes on him, but she knows he does. "Have a groundskeeper retrieve bikes and safety gear and meet us in the garden," she says, standing from her chair and bracing herself to look like an utter fool.

Her apprehension fades away fifteen minutes later. It can't hold last when she sees Steve's surprised and delighted expression at her presence. As she helps him put on knee and elbow pads, shows him how to pull the helmet's strap tight, and holds the bike steady as he sits on it, Clarisse decides a little foolishness is perfectly fine (necessary, even) if it will keep the smile on Steve's face.

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Tag List (let me know if you'd like to be added to future parts!)

@y4r3luv, @potato-of-the-lord,

#stranger things fic #steve harrington fic #princess diaries crossover #queen clarisse renaldi #modern royalty au #future steddie #robin buckley #jonathan byers #the party's parents #my writing #anybody else ever have that experience where the first time you realize that somebody won't make you feel guilty for asking for things #you get way in your head about not asking for the one (1) thing that will ruin it all for you #so every time you ask for something new you're bracing to take the request back as quickly as you can #just me? #aight then lmao #to absolutely nobody's surprise i am projecting on steve harrington #if you made it this far in the tags #you deserve a cookie lmao