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meteor752 · 3 years

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The Gamgee-Baggins children

I have mentioned a few times Frodo and Sam’s army of kids that they adopted and that Aragorn and Legolas love to babysit, and now I’m gonna go more in-depth because why not.

Also, they are based on Sam’s actual children, but I do have to tweak a few things because we switched out an entire parent here, so yeah.

Eleanor

The oldest, adopted when she was two

Was a very calm and kind child

Took up her dad’s love for gardening

Worked in Rivendell as the head gardener as an adult

Still remained her kind self though

Got the nickname “The Fair” by the elves because of her golden locks, which she appreciated

Aragorn

The second child, was adopted when he was just a few months

Was often teased by other young hobbits because of his strange name

Loved his namesake though, whenever they babysat he would just cling to him like a Koala

Is honestly just a very sweet boy that constantly craves physical contact

He became a pretty good chef in his adulthood, mainly working with Potatoes because he’s a gamgee to the core

Rose

This is where Frodo and Sam got their first devil child

Rose is their third child and was adopted when she was three, where she already had a tendency to just scream if she felt like it

Was not allowed to be around Merry and Pippin too much, it was too dangerous

While both Elanor and Aragorn used to watch and care for their younger siblings, Rose hated it and would often just ignore their existence

Gained a passion for painting, as it allowed her to truly express herself

Her paintings were all very wild though, but she enjoyed it and her parents were just happy that she was happy

Merry

The fourth child of Sam and Frodo, adopted when he was five

Was surprisingly calm and obedient, despite his namesake

Used to sit on the floor and do puzzles by himself while his parents and older siblings tried to keep track of the younger ones

Has a problem with reading and spelling however

Incredibly shy

Still doesn’t know what to do with his life as an adult, and is honestly just flowing through it

Pippin

The fifth child, adopted when he was two

This boy takes after his namesake, and they are pretty sure he’s a Took by blood

Loves his older sister Rose, looks up to her a lot, but she practically hates him.

Is often off going on his own adventures, though he stays in the Shire

Often used to under a tree in a pasture with the ponies, eating some food he’d stolen

Befriended a small chestnut colored pony named Peanut

Still goes there when he’s an adult

Goldilocks

Child number six, adopted when she was seven

Her real parents drowned, and Frodo couldn’t not adopt her

Picked up her papa’s love for storytelling, and started writing books

She secretly writes fanfiction sometimes about the fellowship, but shh only Primmy knows that

She often takes care of the youngest hobbits of the shire together with her sibling Primrose, where she often entertains them by reading

Is very sought after by other hobbits of the Shire, but she is not interested at all

Hamfast

The seventh child, adopted when he was just a few months

Has a lot of anger issues

Is *that* sibling. You know, the one you just get the Cain instinct every time you see them

Neither Frodo or Sam knew really what to do about his constant tantrums, as they are both very soft spoken

So they had someone teach him how to box, just so he could get it all out

Is as an adult one of the best ring fighters in middle earth, and does not take it lightly when someone teases him for being a Hobbit

All of his siblings except for Rose are kinda scared of him

Daisy

Child number eight and twin sister of Primrose, they were both one when they were adopted

Is baby

Just a pure ray of sunshine basically

Used to take flowers from their garden to make flower crowns

Sam and Elanor never minded, mostly because she was so cute when she did it

Managed to get a real talent for flower braiding, not just into crowns but also into art

Is always in charge of flowers when it comes to weddings

Still remains baby as an adult

Primrose

Child nine and twin of Daisy, they were both one when they were adopted

A real social butterfly

Gets along with absolutely everyone

Their best friend is their sister Goldie however, who is pretty much the opposite of them with her love for books and the indoors

Often takes care of the younger Hobbits of the Shire with their sister Goldilocks, where they entertains them by playing with them

Falls in love with everyone

Bilbo

The tenth child, adopted as just an infant

Ever heard of social anxiety? Yeah this is the embodiment of it

He does not like people, and would rather just be by himself thank you very much

The only people he’s really comfortable with are Frodo, Sam, Daisy, and Legolas

Kinda just goes unnoticed by everyone because of his many siblings, and likes it that way

Is actually rather talented when it comes to music, but would rather die than show it to anyone

Ruby

Child eleven, and proudly the two minute older twin of Robin, both adopted when they were seven

A really smart cookie, and a future entrepreneur in the making

Spend most of her childhood scheming on ways to get her grubby hands on sweets

Developed a secret underground trading network of food and pastries with the children of the shire, and sat on top as a small mafia boss

Became a skilled merchant as an adult, and has a goal to become incredibly rich

She’s a real scammer when it comes to buisness, but his able to hide it behind her big dark eyes and curly locks, because who so cute could be so wickedly clever?

Not the most lawful thing, but hey, you do what you gotta do right?

Robin

Child twelve, and sadly the two minute younger twin of Ruby, both adopted when they were seven

Pretty much instantly became friends with Brand son of Bain of Dale, despite the almost ten years age difference

While Brand is very rebellious and does everything to pester his family, Robin is a kind of sweetheart who just follows along and tries to keep him out of trouble

Loves his twin very much, but is unsure if Ruby is choosing the right path for herself

When Brand is crowned king of Dale, he becomes his royal advisor that mostly tries to keep him from getting himself killed

Nothing’s changed really

Tolman

The thirteenth and youngest child, adopted when he was an infant

Was adopted when Ruby and Robin were practically adults, unintentionally

They just found him abandoned on their doorstep, and were just like yep we’re keeping him

Had a hard time connecting with his older siblings as he’s so much more younger

Loved that he was the focus of attention with his parents however since everyone else had moved out, and all of his siblings are jealous

Will become a skilled drink mixer as an adult, but is currently just a small wittle bab that likes to play

And yeah that’s it! Now onto the other stuff!!

Elanor is Biromantic Asexual

Aragorn is Bisexual

Rose is a trans lesbian

Merry is Pansexual

Pippin is Gay

Goldilocks is Aromantic Asexual

Hamfast is Heteromantic Asexual

Daisy is panromantic Demisexual

Primrose is a non-binary pansexual

Bilbo is Gay

Ruby is a lesbian

Robin is Polysexual

Tolman is a child and doesn’t care about all that kissing stuff

Goldie is missing an arm

Daisy has a problem with her foot that makes her limp

I don’t have any romantic thing planned for any of them, but who knows

I kinda like Robin X Brand though (Robrand????)

They are in the order they were adopted, but some are older than others, like Ruby and Robin are three years older than Bilbo

Maybe I’ll make a chart of it some day, who knows

The only name I changed was the second child, who was originally named Frodo, to Aragorn, otherwise these are Sam’s actual canon children

I love all of them

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teachingmycattoread · 3 years

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Things We’ve Yelled About This Episode #16

The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings (films)

The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

This meme:

Harry Potter (aka The Boy Wizard), J. K. Rowling (as always, this podcast thinks Joke Rowling is full of shit, donate to your local trans charity today)

““There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!”” Thorin Oakenshield, Chapter 18: The Return Journey

““If we don’t get blown off, or drowned, or struck by lightning, we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football.”” Thorin Oakenshield, Chapter 4: Over Hill and Under Hill

This meme:

and these posts thereupon.

The Princess Bride, William Golding

“The mother of our particular hobbit – what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us.” Chapter 1: An Unexpected Party

The Three Plagues of Lludd’s town aka Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys (wiki)

The Historia Regum Britanniae, Geoffrey of Monmouth (wiki)

Brut y Brenhinedd (wiki)

The Icelandic translation of Dracula (post)

Beowulf (wiki) - M recommends the Seamus Heaney or Tolkien translations, but they’re enjoying the Maria Dahvana Headley version immensely.

The Hobbit and LoTR as D&D campaigns, Matt Colville (youtube)

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (wiki)

Elves in Discworld, Terry Pratchett (wiki)

Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan

Babel fish, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (wiki)

The Poetic Edda (wiki)

For Dwarfish names as Old Norse past participles see this post

Game of Thrones (TV, books by George R. R. Martin)

“Then they went back, and found Thorin with his feet on the fender smoking a pipe. He was blowing the most enormous smoke-rings, and wherever he told one to go, it went – up the chimney, or behind the clock on the mantelpiece, or under the table, or round and round the ceiling; but wherever it went it was not quick enough to escape Gandalf. Pop! He sent a smaller smoke-ring from his short clay pipe straight through each one of Thorin’s. Then Gandalf’s smoke-ring would go green and come back to hover over the wizard’s head.” Chapter 1: An Unexpected Party

M, despite literally never throwing anything out on purpose, can’t find the handout for the lecture they mention on classic fantasy as war literature - if that rings any bells for anyone, let us know so we can credit properly!

J. R. R. Tolkien

C. S. Lewis

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

“Even Bilbo was given a seat at the high table, and no explanation of where he came in – no songs had alluded to him even in the obscurest way – was asked for in the general bustle.” Chapter 10: A Warm Welcome

Shakespeare and listening to women (post)

“It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.” Chapter 12: Inside Information

Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

Smaug is to the dwarves as the Sackville-Bagginses are to Bilbo (post)

Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher (Netflix)

“ “Well, are you alive or are you dead?” asked Bilbo quite crossly. Perhaps he had forgotten that he had had at least one good meal more than the dwarves, and also the use of his arms and legs, not to speak of a greater allowance of air. “Are you still in prison, or are you free? If you want food, and if you want to go on with this silly adventure – it’s yours after all and not mine – you had better slap your arms and rub your legs and try and help me get the others out while there is a chance!”” Chapter 10: A Warm Welcome

“ “Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn,” said Thorin one day.

“And winter comes after autumn,” said Bifur.

“And next year after that,” said Dwalin, “and our beards will grow until they hang down the cliff to the valley before anything happens here.”” Chapter 11: On The Doorstep

Teen Wolf

“braver than any US marine” meme

This meme:

and commentary

What Else Are We Reading?

Check Please, Ngozi Ukazu (comic)

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee

Eat Up!, Ruby Tandoh

The Great British Bake-Off

Next Time On Teaching My Cat To Read

Even More Hobbit (This Time With Moving Pictures)

#tmctr #teaching my cat to read

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wherethesunsails · 3 years

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oh actually serious question what are the best trans/nb headcanons in lotr/the hobbit. also favorite poly ship? :-)

!!!! something that I've been seeing floating around the fandom is the concept that like. elves and dwarves are up to All Kinds of gender fuckery so like. theres this joke that actually some members of the company (in the hobbit) were women, but bilbo simply could not tell and they didnt correct him. I did read one fic where Bifur used xe/xir pronouns (which was actually my first real interaction with neopronouns fun fact) and that was 👌

do smeagol/gollum/the ring count as a poly ship

#ok im sorry that was a joke #um #legolas/gimli/aragorn #moreso in the sense that legolas fucks gimli and aragorn separately but also like. they can all be dating thats cool too #sidenote apparently people ship merry and eowyn??????#i thought that was. interesting #idk thata kind of the only one off the top of my head #i think gandalf and treebeard are fucking but thats a conversation for another day

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specialagentlokitty · 5 years

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MY WRITING LIST (Updated/New shows!)

RULES AND INFO:

As a default I always write Female reader, if you want male, gender neutral, trans etc please tell me in your request

NO SMUT! I will not write smut at all

At this point in time I do not write real people, but I may change my mind at a later date but this is unlikely

I will write pretty much anything just ask! And I do write character x Autistic reader and others, again just let me know what you want!

If there’s a character you’d like but can’t see on the list or not sure if I write it, just ask away I’m always down to write new characters

MARVEL

* Tony

* Steve

* Wanda

* Bucky

* Thor

* Bruce

* Nat

* Clint

* Phil

* Loki

* Peter

* Logan

TWILIGHT

* Carlisle

* Rosalie

* Alice

* Jasper

* Paul

* Billy

* Garrett

NCIS/NOLA

* Gibbs

* Tony

* Ziva

* Abby

* Ducky

* Bishop

* Sloane

* Nick

CRIMINAL MINDS

* Hotch

* Derek

* Rossi

* Spencer

* JJ

* Emily

* Garcia

CASTLE

* Castle

* Kate

THE MENTALIST

* Patrick

* Grace

SUPERNATURAL

* Dean

* Sam

* Chuck

* Crowley

* Gabriel

* Balthazar

* Charlie

* Castiel

* Lucifer

LUCIFER(FOX)

* Lucifer

* Dan

* Maze

THE HOBBIT/LOTR

* Thorin

* Bilbo

* Legolas

* Fili

* Kili

* Thranduil

* Elrond

* Lindir

* Aragorn

* Boromir

* Faramir

* Pippin

* Merry

* Sam

* Frodo

BBC MERLIN

* Arthur

* Merlin

* Leon

* Gwaine

* Lancelot

* Percival

BBC SHERLOCK

* Sherlock

* John

* Mycroft

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

* Diego

MY HERO ACADEMIA

* Midoriya (Deku)

* Aizawa

* Todoroki

* Present Mic

* Toshinori (All might)

BLUE EXORCIST

* Rin

* Yukio

* Bon

TOKYO GHOUL

* Kenaki

AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER

* Zuko

* Aang

* Sokka

* Iroh

ATTACK ON TITAN

* Levi

* Eren

* Erwin

* Arwin

BLACK BUTLER

* Claude

* William

* Sebastian

* Undertaker

#lokittys writing list #lokittys rules #fanfics #fanfiction

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fanfictionlive · 4 years

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Romance/PWP readers, what are your biggest pet peeves, and what are your favorite tropes?

(Warning: english is not my first language, sorry for the mistakes that you are about to read. Also, don't know if the flair is correct)

I'm in several fandoms right now, and I read mostly romance, but some things really make me press the button to left the story and never came back, no matter what.

For example, one of my ships (really minor, sometimes I look for content, but normally I let it flow and read/watch whatever type of content that appears on Youtube or AO3/FF.net) is Bagginshield (Bilbo Baggins x Thorin Oakenshield), and normally, or at least what I've seen, is that on the PWP one shots the writers make Bilbo either a woman, or trans, and I'm like ????

So yeah, one of my biggest pet peeves is when one of the characters is trans or the opossite sex for no reason at all. I mean, I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community, therefore, a lot of the time I feel like the writers are making the characters trans bc of a personal kink, and I think it's tremendously disrespectful (also, because if I'm reading slash, I want to read slash with my canon idiots in love, thank you very much). Let me explain myself before you attack me. I have absolutely no problem if you make a character part of the community, I read a lot of slash and some femlash, so I love if you write someone has gay, lesbian, bi, pan, ace, aro, etc., but I feel that, if you are writing sex for the sake of writing sex (and thank you, smut deserves better, I admire the writers that can make a decent sex scene), I think you shouldn't make a cis character trans, because you are thinking only about the physical aspect of that person, and to me it feels a lot like yet another fetishisation of a part of the LGBTQ+ people. And I'm sorry if I'm ofending anyone with my opinion, that's not my intention.

Another of my pet peeves is when the MC has a freaking harem, it doesn't matter if is a male or a female, I think it's not reallistic, in the real world no one is that appealing, but in the FFs everyone is head over heels in love with a single person, and (s)he's gonna end up with the other end of the ship anyways, ffs. I just think that it's not something that happens in reality (of course, you have every right to like this type of plot, this is just my opinion)

On the other hand, I'm a slut for a coherent, fluffy, sweet instalove, I'm not gonna lie. Gimme those feeling of "the universe sent me this individual, I must stay with them even if we met just five seconds ago"

And I love, from the bottom of my heart, the classic "omg, we have to marry for x reason but we don't know each other, I'm gonna have to learn how to love you", I have an altar for that prompt

Also, I love when the fic starts and my two dorks already have a family. ¿A romance fic about a married couple with children? Yes, please

So, what are some of your favorites and most hated tropes/caracteristics of a fanfic?

submitted by /u/ClotpolesAndWarlocks [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/37UUsyD

#fan fiction #writing #fanfiction #tv show #series #movie #fan #write

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airagorncharda · 7 years

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My reply to a post got REAL long, so I’m just putting it here and sending them a link

@gretchensinister

[your post]

Goddddd this got so long, sorry!

You said you’d be up for opening that can of worms, so here’s my input!

Like TJ, I'm wary of the advice of "just make mpregs about trans dudes!" because (as a trans guy) that feels like it falls into the problem of fetishizing us/our bodies, in that it diminishes us to the sum of our physical parts, and ignores that lots of trans guys (especially during/post transition) cannot get pregnant, and ignores that most trans guys (or at least all the trans guys I’ve met) find the idea of getting pregnant very dysphoric and unpleasant. "Just write mpreg about trans dudes” also falls into the trap of allowing/encouraging women who are not queer and who are fetishizing/commodifying queer male bodies for their own sexual escapism to do minimal research before writing trans people, which usually just results in bad writing.

So I’m WARY of it.

That being said, I've never gotten the impression that the way YOU would write a trans character would be shallow like that. You give all of your characters deep thought and consideration as people, which automatically means you’re not diminishing them to sexual objects. Your description of your own fic verifies that for me, personally.

I don't know any trans men who want to get pregnant, but they DO exist, and I DO find it conceptually interesting to read about trans guys where that’s something they would want.

For me personally, I’m more inclined to say “consider that trans people exist when you decide to write mpreg” than TJ is, because for me I’d prefer to get a higher quantity of fic written about trans people, even if lots of it is garbage. People won’t learn to write us better if they never write us at all. So for me, I definitely don’t want to tell people NOT to, and I AM interested in the subject, I’m just also aware that most depictions of trans men + pregnancy are going to be gross and fetishistic.

There’s a whole history around mpreg (which is similar to the A/B/O tropes and the seme/uke yaoi bullshit) that’s basically cis women reinforcing misogynistic heteronormative relationship dynamics-- but on TWO MEN (gasp!)!! instead of on a m/f relationship. It’s catharsis, because they can explore the ins-and-outs of the shitty social situation they’re stuck in without it actually being about THEM for once, but unfortunately it has the effect of fetishizing queer male bodies in harmful ways. The mpreg thing is... also just cissexist and gross on that level, which is why for me, encouraging SOME LEVEL of acknowledgement that there actually ARE men who can get pregnant feels important.

The other half of it though is that I’ve literally never seen someone write a trans woman who is magically able to get pregnant just because she wants to. People are willing to write cis men who are able to get pregnant for 50million nonsense reasons (and really, I used to be into mpreg, so I can assure you that the explanations for how it works are incredibly diverse and thought out, and NONE of them make much sense), but nobody seems willing to give that level of consideration, thought, and care to a trans woman character.

The fact that I’ve never seen anyone say “I wrote a fic where a trans woman gets pregnant and lives happily ever after” but I’ve seen an UNBELIEVABLE number of fics about cis men getting pregnant, and also a lot of people being like “just write trans men getting pregnant because after all trans men are just women with different pronouns, right?!” (again, it doesn’t sound like that’s what you did, but I’ve seen other people doing that) says a lot about how these people are really thinking about trans people. They aren’t writing about us to write about us, they’re writing about us to write about THEM, but in a fetishistic escapist way that is harmful.

Overall I think it can be done, and I personally would like to see more of it, but I’m 1) not holding my breath that most people are going to do it, and 2) definitely not holding my breath that they’ll get it right if they do.

On to your original question:

Are cisswaps fine? ... I mean... I think the answer is just “Yes” but also “some people go about it in gross ways, which is not fine” with a side of “people use the term ‘genderswap’ when they mean ‘cisswap’ and that’s transphobic and ignorant”

I don’t think there’s anything WRONG with the idea of just rewriting a cis man as a cis woman.

The problem comes in with how people handle it. I’ve seen a few versions of this going really wrong really fast (and honestly I don’t think I’ve seen any of them from you, nor would I expect to). Off the top of my head in no particular order:

1) Making queer pairings straight, aka hetswapping:

Specifically I saw a LOT of this in the Hobbit fandom with Bilbo/Thorin fics. The fandom actually seemed to have more m/f [cis man thorin + cisswapped cis woman bilbo] than it had of them in their original forms (and of course it had WAY higher of both than of f/f cisswapped femslash, or of either of them as trans).

While some authors do this sort of thing justice, and the occasional m/f cisswap fic isn’t bad, there’s a big problem with hetswapping. Basically that’s where the writer decides “I like this pairing except for that pesky sinful queerness. Lets fix that right up!” and makes them not only a m/f pairing, but also both inexplicably hetero. This is --phobic and erasure of all queer identities that can produce m/f relationships, and it’s just queerphobic in general for obvious reasons.

And again, when tropes like this inundate a fandom with such force that they utterly overwhelm the other fic... there’s something screwy going on.

2) Everyone be gay men. Everyone.

All the women in the story get cisswapped to be dudes, so that everybody can be fetishized equally.

Literally this is just an excuse to write bad fetishistic penis/penis porn, and it’s pretty much always rife with aggressive sexism and queerphobia.

3) Complete physical makeover.

Beefy masculine male character submitted to the cisswap machine? Enjoy your thin, busty, long haired femm with a completely different body type and facial structure. She likes makeup and boys and she’s clumsy.

Basically this is just people not comprehending that people are people, that changing someone’s gender doesn’t need to change that much about them, and that the biology of cis men and the biology of cis women is... not that different. Society has a huge effect on how people grow up, including how much they eat and what they feel comfortable wearing, etc.

I know you know all this, just saying again-- there’s a ton of reasons why this form of cisswap is sexist and cissexist and gross.

What you were mentioning about making cisswaps where the characters are mostly physically unchanged? Honestly I love that idea. Not enough people do it. More often than that, I’ve seen people do that same design for trans characters, which makes honestly LESS sense to me, because trans people are usually forced to be much more performative with gender expression than cis people. Also, always writing/drawing trans women as being “obviously” dmab, and trans men as being “obviously” dfab is gross and transphobic. Writing/drawing CIS people who don’t fit the expected physical binary is way more underdone and very needed.

Basically, ultimately I don’t think it’s cisswaps that are the problem, I think it’s how they’re handled. A lot of people handle them badly, which has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths in regards to them, and that might be why you’d encounter someone who HATES them or who they make really uncomfortable. It’s not a matter of them being inherently bad, so much as there being a lot more bad examples than good ones.

Again, sorry this became like a dissertation instead of a reply. I figured since you were hoping to have a conversation about it, I should really put all my thoughts down. ^__^

#gretchensinister #my thoughts #cisswaps #readmore

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helloarmchairphilosopher · 7 years

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Writer's works in progress

I saw that someone else had written up their wip-s, so maybe writing up mine will make me GET ON WITH IT and help me write more on one (or more) of them. 1) 1938 Brooklyn Murder mystery: in which a Ripper (any killer with a knife is always dubbed a Ripper by the press, it's a thing) stalks the young men of the queer/gay community of Brooklyn. One by one young men die and the cops either can't or won't do anything about a few dead [slur]; the mob doesn't care either; war looms in Europe; the Mayor is trying to clean up the city before the World's Fair; the dynamics of the queer community itself is changing as men and women who previously might not have considered themselves part of it are thrown in with it, with new laws meant to manage a moral society; and two men, in exactly that predicament, are watching their friends dying at the hands of the Ripper and hoping they're not next, while dealing with feelings for each other. (The historian in me has run amok.) 2) The Sweater Curse: (Bagginshield) In which hobbits consider it bad luck to make crocheted or knitted garments for themselves (a sign that one has no kin) because sweaters are made and given between first and second degree blood relatives (parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews). Other kinds of garments are given freely. If a sweater is given to an unrelated person it is considered a proposal. In which dwarves make their own crocheted or knitted garments for themselves (a sign of their craft-skill and self-sufficiency). Other kinds of garments are bought and sold freely. If a sweater is offered as a gift to another person it is befuddling at best and an insult at worst. The Sweater Curse in our world says that if a person, usually a woman, starts to make a sweater for their significant other, usually a man, before they are married, the relationship will end. The fic I'd imagined had a happy ending - with Thorin thinking that Bilbo had been making the sweater for himself. "You loveable dunce, did you never notice I'd keep borrowing Kíli to size it correctly for you? I'd be swimming in it!" 3) transman Phil Coulson fic. I'm not trans, so I'd have to tread carefully here. My real aim is feminism and femininity. A male Coulson has leeway in a manner that a female Coulson would not. A male Coulson is not told that he is missing out on the essential manly quality of being a father and a husband; he is not automatically assumed, on walking into a room, to be the secretary or the assistant. Women always have to be twice as good to be perceived as half as competent, and then (often) they're told not to be a b*tch about it. But all this from the point of Clint Barton, who is kind of clueless, and who really loves Phil (I kind of love this ship and like the rest of the fandom I'm not really sure why), means that he just sees grade-A badass Phil Coulson. Full stop. No edits. No matter what is, or isn't, in his past, in his pants, in his medical file, or what his parents used to call him. 4) Werewolf romance novel Tall dark and handsome (TM) is the antagonist who is stalking and eating people. He's a creep who plays into rape culture and preys on young women who think that his bad boy vibe cover up anything other than a black heart. The protagonist is a smart and kick-ass young woman with a shiny degree and huge student loans working below her talents, as a barman, which is how she knows of the antagonist and his creepiness. She has a friend, her landlady's daughter, who is close to her age. (Yay for passing the Bechdel test? I'd better, after actually meeting Alison Bechdel.) The love interest is this sandy blonde dorky guy, a drifter who works construction and throws darts at the bar. When people start getting chewed up he's the prime suspect, and even our protagonist doesn't know what to think - but only until our antagonist tries to take a bite out of her, and he intervenes, as a werewolf. And from there it's your usual. I got sick of the werewolf books with creepy rape culture overtones and not passing the Bechdel test and thought, I could do better. 5) a Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis fanfic, in which she helps patch him up after Loki's mind control. In the comics, Clint had a pretty messed up childhood. Circus, dad who beat him, taught to shoot by a man who beat him and then used him first as a thief and then as a killer (or so I loosely understand; and I'd be using a variation on that in the fic, anyway). He would have had to have therapy for it at SHIELD just to be functional as an agent around people. But Loki's mind control messed with all that, breaking the locks and self-management he'd had for so long. He'd have major depressive episodes and PTSD following it. And Darcy, being a civilian, might not be the best person to bring him out, but she was there for Thor and the Destroyer. She saw some shit. And who knows what she had in her childhood. (I do, because I created it, but I'm the author and I can do what I like.) What was done by Loki cannot be undone, but what was done before Loki could, just maybe, be done over again, more painstakingly and with greater care, like walking around the glass shards of a broken vase. 6) a Fíli/fem!Bilbo fic: in which a pregnant Bilbo runs from the Mountain. (Thorin died of his wounds, but Fíli and Kíli survived.) Bilbo, in whatever feminized spelling of one's choosing, won't, can't, stay. The memories of battle, of being shaken like a rat over the gates of Erebor, are too fresh and too raw. The halls reek of dragon and she hears Smaug's eerie deep voice creeping in the shadows. No, she cannot stay. She must go somewhere green. A month, a year, five years, forever, she must go somewhere clean and cleansed. And Fíli, her One, can't go. She knows this. And she, even though she's his One, can't stay. Magic lover's nonsense and whatever, there's reality you have to deal with, and sometimes reality means PTSD and dragon stink. So they argue, the night after his coronation. She is due to leave the next day with Gandalf and it'll be the last time - it's emotionally fraught. He's mad and she's mad, because they both *want* it to be different. In my mind's eye I saw the argument, in the indirect result: his name was Frerin. And, of course, that can't be let alone, since as the eldest son of a king, half-hobbit or no, he is heir apparent to a throne, and a birthright. Tolkien wrote that dwarf populations at the end of the end of the Third Age and into the Fourth dwindled until the race itself failed - meaning that there were too few women having too few children. This is obvious enough from what we see in the appendices. A king having a son hidden from him and raised by a non-dwarf woman, even if she is his mother? A scandal, the fanon assumes, and I presume with it. 7) a Bucky Barnes in slightly more efficient and effective hiding fic. There's that photo going around of Sebastian Stan from the set of his latest movie and he has this big mustache, and jeez if Bucky looked like that, some people commented, and not all 90s Grunge, he might have escaped a lot better, since the photo Zemo circulated assumed that Bucky looked like a hobo. Personally I don't see Bucky growing that mustache (looking like Howard Stark, who he assassinated, would give him a heart attack). Nor do I see him as a teacher, of math or otherwise, as the original post suggested; he'd never pass the background check. But there's another picture of Sebastian Stan I saw that was also relatively recent (but before any of the photos from the set of I, Tonya) with a full beard, and if he'd grown that out, if Bucky had grown that out, maybe he might have looked like Norm Abram back when he was younger. So, maybe a carpenter. It's a sin to hide that beautiful jawline, but effective. Bucky would get away from HYDRA and SHIELD both, just by staying off the radar and not looking like what they expect. He could even use his real name - there are 4,207 other James Barnes-es in the US, what would make him special? There are only 27 Clint Bartons. One borrowed social security number, one rented house, anywhere would do but I was thinking Santa Fe (because I've been there and can describe it, it's cool enough in part of the year he can wear long sleeves outside and the rest of the year there's air conditioning and he can wear long sleeves inside to cover the arm, and because it's a tourist town, people with money to spend on his carpentry work). From my notes, in particular: He checks in at the spots the Smithsonian mentioned. Red Hook, Dumbo, Coney Island. Those spots in Brooklyn that are supposed to have had that towheaded little captain America to be and his sidekick to become running amok in the 1920s. Some pieces fit. Bits of bitty Steve fit in, here and here, slotting back into Bucky's memory. Steve is a huge, pun intended, part of who he once was. To have made Bucky forget Steve, no wonder he forgot himself - - or was it the other way around, that Bucky forgot himself because he forgot Steve? 8) nonfiction, Torah commentary, starting with Genesis (Bereshit). 9) nonfiction, the history (I've been working on for five years) of the Hasidic movement during the Holocaust. Various dynasties and their rebbes, and the rebbes' successors, and the survival of the Hasidim and the Hasidut - how it worked, where it happened, how it happened; but from there, which members of the rabbinical families did not survive? Why? What attempts were made to save them? When attempts were made, who was given first preference and what stated reason, if any, was given? These are questions that have not yet been answered. And I have limited access to Hasidim, by language and by culture. These are not questions anyone would ever give me a straight answer to, of course. I have strong suspicions. Nothing more. The demographics of death - these are records we do have - say a lot. And the final chapters of the book, or the last volume, or the next book, also needs to be written: the rise to power of the other Hasidic dynasties, the massive shift in power away from Poilisher-Yidish culture elsewhere due to the near destruction of that community. Lubavitch, Bobov, Satmar, Belz, and Ger - only the last is Poilisher-Yidish. Before the war the largest Hasidic dynasties were to be found in Poland: Ger, Aleksandr, and Radomsk. There's a lot here no one else has done. I suppose it falls to me. So, I have many things to work on. I have lots to choose from. If only my brain would ACTUALLY LET ME DO IT, DAMMIT.

#writing #look at your life #look at your choices #my life #good lord #my own authored posts #gads this was long

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bthesisideas · 7 years

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Hapa: The Word of Power by Wei Ming Dariotis

[Note: A slightly different form of this essay was first published on the website for Hyphen Magazine, 12/3/07:http://www.hyphenmagazine.com]

Preface: I have been struggling for several years with this apparently un-resolvable issue: what to do about “Hapa/hapa”? I finally decided I had to start writing about it, had to start engaging the dialogue, even though I have been afraid of what the controversy might visit upon my professional career. Nearing 40, and having done everything I can to get tenure (though not, as of this writing, having it), I have resolved to live a life more free from fear. This essay represents my commitment to be fully involved in this dialogue, this journey, no matter where it might take us.

The poet Truong Tran told me that when he was a young boy his Tolkiensian "ring of power" was the English word "fuck." This word made him American; it was like a secret language, something his parents didn't speak, a word of his own. He used it gleefully, like Bilbo used the ring, to set himself above where he had been. Eventually, like Frodo, Tran had to destroy the ring before it would destroy him. Tran accomplished this by writing his book of poetry, Within the Margin.

My ring of power was also a word, the word “Hapa.” I first learned this word in 1992, when I was 23 years old. I was a second-year English Literature doctoral student at UC Santa Barbara, and I was enrolled in the course, "The World of Amerasians," taught by Teresa K. Williams. When I learned the word “Hapa” I felt as though a whole new world had opened up to me. Before this, when anybody asked me, "What are you?" I had to answer, "Chinese Greek Swedish English Scottish German Pennsylvania Dutch." This was a list of my ancestry. It is my heritage. However, this list is not my identity. Heritage does not equal identity. To paraphrase the title of the book on Asian Americans of mixed heritage edited by Teresa K. Williams and Cynthia Nakashima, my identity is something more than the sum of my parts. “Hapa” gave me such an identity. Instead of worrying, "where am I going to find another Chinese Greek Swedish English Scottish German Pennsylvania Dutch American?" I realized I already had a Hapa community.

The word “Hapa” made me something more than just a half Chinese or a fake Filipino. When I joined the board of the Asian American Theater Company, I fulfilled the need for diversity in terms of being Hapa despite the fact that most of the other board members at that time were Chinese -- and so am I. When I joined the faculty of the Department of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, I also fulfilled their need for a mixed heritage Asian American. In fact, the position I occupy, as far as I know the first one in the US so described, is for a specialist in Asian Americans of mixed heritage. For reports from the various ethnic units in our department, I am not counted among the Chinese American faculty, rather, I am referred to as the Hapa unit, or to paraphrase the Eurasian writer, Diana Chang, "The Hapa Contingent."

Of course, the years I worked with Hapa Issues Forum were the height of the power of the word Hapa for me. In particular, I recall a leadership retreat in which two remarkable things happened. First was simple, and nobody planned it: throughout the entire weekend, among the more than 30 people present, I never heard anyone ask anyone else, "What are you?" I find this remarkable because it is actually quite common for mixed heritage people to ask each other about their ethnic heritage -- we are often trying to find points of commonality, but sometimes we are just competing a little bit to find out who has the longest list. What struck me during this weekend, was the fact that the 30 of us may have shared almost no common ethnic heritages, but for that weekend it did not matter; we were all Hapa. We were part of a larger community. The other thing that happened was planned by our executive director, Sheila Chung. Sheila, who is Argentinean and Korean, lead us on a visioning exercise that I have never forgotten. Sitting around a campfire, we were instructed to close our eyes and envision the earth below us while we hovered above in the sky. Slowly we descended through the clouds and we could see a landscape below us. Within this landscape was a building; a sign on the building read, "Hapa Culture Center." Within the building there was a library stocked with books about Asian Americans of mixed heritage, an art gallery for art by Asian Americans of mixed heritage, a theater for gatherings and performances, a space for an after-school program and a summer camp, and meeting rooms.

We never built that building, or have not yet built it. Hapa Issues Forum as an organization lasted only from 1992 to 2004. Yet the word Hapa in many ways has been that building for me and many other mixed heritage Asian Americans. It has given us a space of our own, a place where we can be us, without having to explain ourselves. Anyone entering the space created by the word accepts our identity. In this way it works opposite from Bilbo and Frodo's ring of power, which makes the wearer invisible; the word “Hapa” makes my community visible, that is its power.

However, power, as we all know, always creates the seeds of its own destruction. The very success of the word “Hapa” has been in some ways its downfall. What I mean to say that the word “Hapa” as it is used now can never go back to what it (or what “hapa”) once meant: a Native Hawaiian word meaning mixed or part or half, as in the phrase hapa haole. This phrase means part European American, with the implication being that the person is also part Native Hawaiian. In Hawaii there are other kinds of hapa people. You will notice that I'm not capitalizing the word when I use it in its Native Hawaiian context. I am also not using the term here like in ethnic signifier, which is what the word “Hapa” has become in the mainland context. In contrast, the native Hawaiian word is an adjective. Increasingly, many Native Hawaiian people object not only to the way the word has been changed in its grammatical usage, but also to how it is applied to anyone of mixed Asian and or Pacific Islander heritage, when it implies Native Hawaiian mixed heritage. This is not merely a question of trying to hold on to word that like many words encountered in the English language has been adopted, assimilated, or appropriated. This is a question of power. Who has the power or right to use language? Native Hawaiians, in addition to all of the other ways that their sovereignty has been abrogated, lost for many years the right to their own language through oppressive English-language education. Given this history and given the contemporary social and political reality (and realty—as in real estate) of Hawaiian, the appropriation of this one word has a significance deeper than many Asian Americans are willing to recognize. To have this symbolic word used by Asians, particularly by Japanese Americans, as though it is their own, seems to symbolically mirror the way Native Hawaiian land was first taken by European Americans, and is now owned by European Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans and other Asian American ethnic groups that numerically and economically dominate Native Hawaiians in their own land. In “Foregrounding Native Nationalisms: A Critique of Antinationalist Sentiment in Asian American Studies,” Candice Fujikane argues that Asian Americans are “settlers” in Hawaii, and therefore “support American colonialism” (76) even while trying to fight racism and discrimination in a “colonial context” (80). She defines the term “settler” in opposition to “native,” and argues that Asian Americans “refuse to see themselves as the beneficiaries of [the US] colonial system” (84). Although Fujikane does not here specifically mention the use of the word Hapa by Asian Americans, her argument is certainly in line with the critique that Asian Americans have wrongfully appropriated the term in a way that disenfranchises Native Hawaiians from their culture.

There is a website called www.realhapas.com, on which Lana Robbins states When Hawaiians began to mix with Caucasians they began to have offspring who were Hawaiian and Caucasian. That is when Hawaiians of Hawaiian and Caucasian ancestry created a Hawaiian word to describe themselves and people like them. Eventually these Hawaiians of Hawaiian and Caucasian ancestry began to use the word "hapa" for a part, portion, or fragment of Hawaiian people, places, and things. Until [Japanese Americans] began to rape their language. Today's rape of the Hawaiian language also implies that the Hawaiian language means nothing and thus the Hawaiian people are nothing.

Robbins continues, The raping of Hawaii continues with a new group of Colonizers, the California Wanna Be Hapas. As colonizers, California Wanna Be Hapas raped from Hawaiian Hapas their very identity, culture, and history and called it their own. These colonizers justified their illegal actions by creating organizations such as Hapa Issues Forum and other "Hapa" online forums. They gained allies from elite mixed Eurasians who like California Wanna Be Hapas, stole their term from the wartime and colonial Eurasians while stomping on the rights of Amerasians and Hawaiian Hapas.

My response to first hearing this protest was to say, "But I like the word Hapa; look at everything it has done for us." I didn’t want to give “Hapa” up. I remember how hard it was just to get people to use it. When I first started to use the word in 1992, I encountered Korean, Chinese and Filipino people of mixed heritage who objected to using the word Hapa because they thought it was a Japanese term. They didn't want to feel colonized by the Japanese language the way their ancestors had been colonized by Japan. When I informed these people that the word was Native Hawaiian in origin, they gladly adopted it for themselves. Native Hawaiians have never colonized anyone. Besides, most mixed Asians are mistaken for being Hawaiian -- and there is a certain glamour in being associated with the islands. Like many of us, I have been frequently told, "You must be from some exotic island somewhere!" (I had long hair at the time. I cut it.)

When criticism against Asian Americans using the term “Hapa” first started being raised strongly in 2002, I realized that the fact that Native Hawaiians had never colonized anyone, and that is therefore why mixed heritage Asian Americans feel comfortable to use the word, was a sign of the relative power of Asian Americans in this context. Maybe the word “Hapa” was a colonizing violence in which I was participating. At a 2003 talk at UC Berkeley I mentioned my increasing concerns about using the word Hapa. I was very surprised when a young man in the audience became visibly upset at the suggestion that the word Hapa might be somehow taken away from him. It meant so much to him for the same reasons it meant so much to me—it provides a sense of community and identity in one simple word.

In other words, quite possibly, the word “Hapa,” which I had been so happy to wear because of the sense of identity and community it gave me, might have to be destroyed—or like Frodo’s ring, which was forged in the fires of Mt. Doom, returned to the point of origin to be destroyed or at least re-shaped. I say this knowing that the word can never be again what it once was. There is a nostalgia here that cannot be satisfied even if everyone were to stop using the word “Hapa” to refer to non-Native Hawaiian mixed Asians. But while I certainly do not have the power to fling this word into a ‘Mt. Doom’ of linguistic destruction, I do feel responsible to participate in the dialogue. I have been silent on this issue for too long, perhaps hoping that it would go away, so I could keep “my” word.

The controversy has not gone away, it has only grown stronger, and it is time for me—and other mixed heritage Asian Americans—to recognize that when we use the word “Hapa” it causes some people pain. What is so troubling about this is that the word “Hapa” was chosen because it was the only word we could find that did not really cause us pain. It is not any of the Asian words for mixed Asian people that contain negative connotations either literally (e.g. “children of the dust,” “mixed animal”) or by association (Eurasian). It avoids the confused identity and the Black-White dichotomy implied by English phrases (e.g. mixed blood, biracial). It was adopted to enhance an Asian-focus to our mixed identity, thereby allowing us to use the word to participate more fully in our Asian American communities—rather than being separated into the larger mixed race community (and perhaps being subsumed under the Black-White dichotomy).

Making a change away from using “Hapa” will be a steep uphill struggle. Aside from the growing usage of the word both within and beyond the Asian American and mixed heritage communities, the word is featured in the titles of such publications as Marie Hara and Nora Okja-Keller’s anthology, Intersecting Circles: the voices of hapa women in poetry and prose; Kip Fulbeck’s photo book, Part Asian 100% Hapa; and the recently published memoir by May-Lee Chai, Hapa Girl. Where does that leave us? Is it too late to stem the tide? Languages grow and evolve, and how they do so reveals the traces of power—but is it our lot to merely record and uncover those changes? Or is it our responsibility to shape those changes? I have to acknowledge that, through my work with Hapa Issues Forum and as a writer and an educator, I have contributed to spreading the use of the word Hapa by Asian Americans.

Meanwhile, Hapa Issues Forum has folded as an organization, though many still believe that there is a real need to have an organization specific to the needs of mixed heritage Asian Americans (it focuses on issues specific to the Asian American community, outside of the Black-White binary oppositional racial dialogue, and it provides mixed heritage Asian Americans a venue in which to be authentically Asian American). The Hapa Clubs that had started on so many college campuses in the late 1990s and early 2000s have mostly abandoned this term in favor of more general mixed heritage inclusion: Berkeley’s Mixed Student Union, Variations (UCSB-formerly VariAsians and SFSU—formerly the Hapa Club), Fusion (Wellesly), Half and Half (Bryn Mawr), Students of Mixed Heritage (Amherst),The Biracial and Multiracial Student Association (NYU), The Multiracial Identified Community (Stanford), Multiracial and Biracial Student Association (University of Maryland), Check One (University of Pennsylvania), and MiXed (University of Washington). Cornell Hapa Student Association, Harvard HAPA (Half Asian People’s Association), and the UCLA Hapa Club retain the term Hapa. Communities and the language that represents them change quickly, and redefine themselves even before you have a chance to write them into history.

I presented an earlier version of this paper on November 15th, 2007, at a talk at Occidental College. At the end of my two hours of sharing my research and my poetry—which included a series of “Hapa Poems” written mostly around 2002-2005—a young woman, who identified herself as Native Hawaiian and Japanese American, told me that my use of the word Hapa felt like a violence—like something was being taken away from her—another piece of Hawaii, another piece of Native Hawaiian culture and identity. She reminded me that I am part of this problem, that I am responsible and have influence and power in this dialogue. She was right. So here is the first step—my first attempt to send the word of power into the fire, to be re-forged to serve the community for which it was originally intended—people of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage. A word used to give power to one community, while taking power away from another, is not a word I can use in good conscience. However, I will still slip up, I will still say Hapa to mean people like me the way I still sometimes use sexist language despite 20 years of trying to train myself not to, but I will not read my “Hapa Poems” any more until I can find a way to elegantly revise them [Laura Kina kindly reminds me that perhaps I should simply recognize that these are the works of a particular time period, rather than trying to revise all of my former work to meet a new standard], and I will not use “Hapa” anymore in my academic writings as a shorthand for Asian Americans of mixed heritage.

What to replace it with? We could switch from using “Hapa” to using “Asian Americans of mixed heritage,” which is the title of the class I teach at San Francisco State. The problem is that it is much harder to rally around the “mixed heritage Asian American community” than it was to be part of the Hapa Club. But it is for other reasons that I am growing uncomfortable with using the term “mixed heritage,” which has always seemed something of a stop-gap measure. It is meant to be inclusive of transracial adoptees as well those who are of mixed ethnicity (who must deal with ethnic hierarchies within racialized groups), but then it seems to elide what is still the main issue in our society—race. Jayne Ifekwunigwe makes a good argument, in her introduction to ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader, for using ‘mixed race’ in quotation marks rather than mixed heritage—because “mixed heritage” can be so easily co-opted—who is not, to some extent, of “mixed heritage”? Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, heritage does not equal identity, and “Hapa” was for me an identity that conveyed community.

It was Marlon Hom, as Chair of Asian American Studies at SFSU, who set up the course I teach and named it “Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage,” not “Hapa Studies,” though this is what many people regularly call it. It was also he who recently suggested maybe we should change the name because mixed heritage does not quite seem to satisfy. Ah, but to what? Multiple Identity Asian Americans? –That raises the specter of split personalities, which of course is a common stereotype of us. Manifold Community Association Asian Americans? Asian Americans Plus? I am drawn to the image of the Venn Diagram implied by the title Intersecting Circles, but while that makes a great visual to describe how we can and do maintain allegiances to multiple communities and identities, it isn’t a great label (Venn Asian Americans?). I hate to say this, but “Hapa” has great mouth feel as a word, until the bad taste of Native Hawaiian oppression slips in. My talents as a wordsmith do not extend to creating new language whole cloth, with no negative connotations, so, for now, this essay is only the first stage in the anti-colonial project of refusing to mis-use the word “Hapa.” Stage two will be coming up with a new word that encompasses mixed heritage Asians and Pacific Islanders, without coming from a dominating or oppressed language. I feel a little bit like an advertising executive, being asked to avoid another Chevy Nova fiasco. Calling all poets--we’ve got to be able to come up with something good, short, and catchy—that’s the challenge. My dear friend, Dr. Marianne Maruyama Halpin, reminded me, after reading this essay, that “A name, to work, needs to be something loved.” With that in mind let us find a name we can all love calling ourselves and that also causes no one else pain.

Works Cited

Fujikane, Candace. “Foregrounding Native Nationalisms: A Critique of Antinationalist Sentiment in Asian American Studies.” In Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, ed. Kent A. Ono. Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2005

Halpin, Marianne Maruyama. Personal email, 11/20/07

Ifekwunigwe, Jayne. ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader. London: Routledge, 2004

Kina, Laura. Personal email, 11/30/07

Robbins, Lana. www.realhapas.com, retrieved 11/15/07

Tran, Truong. Personal communication, 4/20/06

* My thanks to the students of Occidental College, San Francisco State University (especially AAS 550: Asian Americans of Mixed Heritage), UC Davis (ASA 120), Spring 2000), and UC Berkeley; the former members, staff and Board of Hapa Issues Forum (especially Andrew Bushaw, Anthony Yuen, Claire Light, Eric Hamako, and Sheila Chung); my teacher, Teresa Williams-Leon; Cynthia Nakashima; Paul Spickard; Laura Kina; Marianne Maruyama Halpin; Mohammad Salama; Stuart Gaffney; Lori Kay; Kent Ono; Sachiko Reed; Aaron Kitashima; Danise Olague; Joemy Ito-Gates; Truong Tran; and Native Hawaiian hapas, all of whom have contributed to the ongoing dialogue that has lead me to write this essay or have acted as sounding boards for these ideas.

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