Hey MDZS fandom. I want you guys to be careful interacting with this person.
If you don't already know, Chinese people have had a long history with cultural erasure when it comes to taking on English-language names. It started with imperialism, and continues as a way to "assimilate" and avoid mockery of our language in western countries.
For Chinese diaspora like myself, it's another form of racism we face, to the point where some of us are reclaiming our names in everyday life. Here's an article about this movement happening across Asian diasporas in the United States -- just to name one instance out of many.
The responses to this post reflect that:
You can see that my comment assumed "good faith." However, OP deleted these comments and blocked me. (That didn't stop other people from calling it out as well, though I have to assume that if OP was so offended by my comment, the next few people will receive the same treatment.)
I honestly didn't like whipping up the diaspora statement -- that I wrote with multiple Chinese diaspora fans of MDZS, all of us hailing from multiple different countries and backgrounds, our ancestry coming from completely different regions of China -- because it meant that we were encountering another microaggression.
If you ever wonder why MDZS and danmei fandoms in general seem to be so bereft of Chinese diaspora voices, that's absolutely because of these microaggressions: Someone makes a joke, writes a story, writes some meta, that is culturally ignorant at best, offensive and harmful at worst, and when we gently correct them, explaining why it's racist, the person in question shuts us down, dismisses us, gets defensive, or worse.
Regardless of where you are -- fandom, social media, on the street, at work, at school -- as long as you are interacting with other people, your words matter and affect other people. That includes being racially offensive, even if you didn't intend to be. It's how you respond to the people you've insulted that reveals your character, how willing you are to be complicit in their mistreatment.
My rule of thumb has always been this -- if multiple people, including those of the culture you've just made a microaggressive joke about, find it unfunny, racist, or harmful, then you listen. Dismiss or ignore them, then yes -- you absolutely are racist.
Love how ADHD, autism and schizophrenia objectively have the same amount of traits and experiences in common, but schizophrenics aren't welcome in the metaphorical club house because they're bad for the image the neurodivergency movement is currently trying to capitalize on and with "love" I mean fuck y'all
Quick PSA, if you get one of those "Work scanned, AI use detected" comments on AO3, just mark them as spam.
Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.
There is no scanning process, your work doesn't actually resemble AI writing, it's all bullshit. Mark the comment as spam (on AO3, not the email notification you got about the comment!) and don't let it get to you.
I've always wanted to draw the unmasking scene from ch 38 and imagine the expression on their faces and the way wkx described zzs's appearance so here she is!
And here we go, these were two of my most significant goals for the month, fresh copies of Lord Seventh and Faraway Wanderers, at quarto size, in leather, with coordinated but not matching-matching bindings. I already knew one of the fabrics I wanted from an older binding (the teal and red is so perfect for wen kexing, even if it fights my color balance tooth and nail), and the drop effect on the other fabric is one I've been considering for lord seventh for a while. Even more so in real life, that teal color matches very well, and coordinates well with their matching endpapers! I aligned the fonts for their typesettings, and I'm extremely pleased to have this matching set for these books now. Love this lots, can't wait to reread fully and remind myself how hard I adore wen kexing, my best beloved
Much like last time, here's all the covers together! And don't forget that the final fifth volume will be available in two other special versions you can get through certain retailers!