#like aside from the harm inherent to the word & the way it inherently alienates large chunks of our community

[dairugger]

i am sick to death of every single instance of media with lgbt characters being described with a fucking slur by everyone who speaks about it. like it actively discourages me from wanting to put work of mine out there if i'm ever able to write it because if you describe the themes, characters, and stories i want to tell as "q***r" i'm fucking stealing something out of your house

the characters i create and their stories and experiences are informed so much by myself, my experiences, and my perspectives. i do not feel any sort of identification or kinship in a slur that is so widely used against people like me without our consent that corporations and cishets have gotten comfortable throwing it around, and it makes me feel queasy to think that people would use that kind of language towards me and towards my work without a moment's thought towards the history i or my loved ones might have with it

i'm not "q***r" and neither are my experiences or the characters and stories i want to construct to process things in my own life. please have an ounce of fucking respect for the fact that not everyone within our community is going to identify with a word that is used to this day to enact violence on us, especially in the current climate. i genuinely do not get why this is still considered such a big ask

#'this is a q***r story about q***r characters' at this point is a sentence utterly devoid of meaning #first of all it actively avoids any specificity or nuance which in media analysis renders it useless #is it a story about gay men's culture? about gender exploration? about lesbian identity? about bisexuality? #is it more abstractly about the difficulty to relate that many of us experience? is it about love? self love? community? #like aside from the harm inherent to the word & the way it inherently alienates large chunks of our community #it serves to say absolutely fucking nothing #which i understand makes it appealing as a personal identifier #and i get why a lot of people find comfort in it for that reason #and that's great! if it works for you then it's your prerogative #but when talking about other people and talking about media: if there's specificity then fucking specify #sorry i saw a post and it pissed me off #like no matter the rest of what you say nothing turns me off a post more than that basic refusal to use any other word #joshathan.txt

[aces-to-apples]

Your Reputation Precedes You

A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion

i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post

-

To be frank, I'm not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the 'name' wasn't a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of "calling out racism." I think we both know that what you're actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples' genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you've used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you've mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than "talking about your feelings with friends uwu." Let's just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn't adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you've used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.

Let's toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you've written here.

What you've written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.

The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it... frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that's really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical "Asian" accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were "based," then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone's business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.

Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term "Death of the Author" holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.

As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that "cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt" is a ridiculous statement. The way you've comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it's about power, it's about control, it's about fandom being the only space where you have some.

So I'm writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don't deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don't participate in fandom the way you think they should.

Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not "think critically" as in "to criticize" them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.

Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.

As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you'll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they're toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.

Congrats, Ri, you've gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.

No love, bad night.

P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.

#fandom bullshit #fandom racism #fandom harassment #fandom ableism #fandom antisemitism #fandom misogyny #by apples

[dweemeister]

A Touch of Zen (1971, Taiwan)

When Chinese director King Hu was writing the screenplay to his upcoming martial arts epic, he found himself disgusted with the mindless violence pervasive in the wuxia genre. Wuxia, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a genre of Chinese fiction involving martial arts during the times of Imperial China. Wuxia can also include elements of masculine chivalry, sometimes sorcery (though not in this film). King Hu’s A Touch of Zen is an unusual wuxia film – it is over three hours long, and no swords are drawn nor do fists fly until more than an hour has passed. Those facts about A Touch of Zen might alienate wuxia fans and frighten those who have never delved into Asian martial arts cinema. But what if I told you that A Touch of Zen is one of the greatest martial arts films of all time, with its first-hour nonviolent intrigue, enormous scope, heavily Buddhist themes, and among the most astonishing action choreography that movie audiences have ever witnessed?

For the first two hours, A Touch of Zen centers its plot on the oafish painter, Gu Sheng-tsai (Shih Chun). It is set sometime during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Gu lives with his mother (Zhang Bing-yu) – who hounds her son into taking the civil service exam and finding a wife to continue the family line – in the charred remains of an abandoned imperial fort. It plays like a domestic comedy, if only briefly. A behatted stranger, who will later be identified as Ouyang Nian (Tien Peng) and is introduced in shadow as if this was an American Western, comes to town one day to have his portrait painted by Gu, but his unspoken objective is to capture a woman named Yang Hui-zhen (Hsu Feng) – a fugitive of the law and adroit in combat. Unbeknownst to Gu, Yang has moved into the house across from his mother’s and the two will become friends – although Gu’s mother would like her son to seal the deal already. Also in hiding and allied with Yang are generals Shi and Lu (Bai Ying and Xue Han, respectively).

As motivations are gradually revealed and as the corrupted eunuch’s forces converge upon the town and the fortress, our protagonists flee to the countryside and, in the final hour, the narrative focus shifts from Gu to Yang and General Shi. We are also introduced to a number of characters – most notably, the eunuch’s commander Xu Xian-chun (Han Ying-jie; who also serves as the film’s martial arts choreographer) and Buddhist Abbot Hui-yuan (Roy Chiao).

The opening shot of A Touch of Zen sees a spider moving towards its entangled prey. Spiderwebs are typically a thoughtless hallmark of horror films, but here they appear – mostly in scenes at the abandoned fortress – on occasion to suggest entrapment, the proximity of bloodshed. This applies not just to the protagonists, but those pursuing them. Despite the spectacular wide shots that appear after Gu, Yang, and General Shi find themselves in the wilderness, many of the interior shots in the opening half of A Touch of Zen feel cramped – even moreso at night and during the moments when Gu, Yang, and their allies attempt to trick the enemy reconnaissance into believing that the abandoned fortress is haunted. Notice how quickly the predators can become prey. Such is the confusion that imminent violence might cause.

If the violence found in A Touch of Zen is a result of Yang’s familial duties and sense of honor clashing with the rigid laws governing the eunuch’s lands, it is something that several characters – including Yang herself – are considering an escape from. Here enters Abbot Hui, who first appears in the town’s market with his fellow monks, walking past Gu’s establishment without talking to anyone. Only after the stranger, Ouyang Nian, has confronted Gu for the first time does Abbot Hui break from his wandering stroll. Abbot Hui will not appear again until much later after a violent battle, to help clean and tend to the deceased. In general, the Buddhist monks only make appearances in the film when violence is imminent or has just completed – serving as a sort of punctuation for the film. Unbounded by the earthly desires and allegiances that dictate the actions of all the other characters, Abbot Hui extols nonviolence, showing quarter to even those who threaten exceptional violence.

Does nonviolence work against those who do not respond to soothing, reasonable words? Current sociopolitical thinking might reject these notions outright  In Buddhism – a religion dominated by principles, rather than rules – self-defense is, depending on who you ask, an ambiguous topic. But self-defense is largely believed to be permissible (excluding to-the-letter pacifists, but not to the extent of how certain Burmese Buddhist radicals have condoned violence against the Rohingya minority there), as long as it is not borne from hatred towards the attacker, but compassion for the defendant/s and the attacker. From the words of Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh, when asked about a hypothetical question in which he faced an attacker after a genocide in which he would be the last Buddhist on the planet:

It would be better to let him kill me. If there is any truth to Buddhism and the Dharma it will not disappear from the face of the earth, but will reappear when seekers of truth are ready to rediscover it. In killing I would be betraying and abandoning the very teachings I would be seeking to preserve. So it would be better to let him kill me and remain true to the spirit of the Dharma.

Though no such genocide appears in A Touch of Zen, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s illustration of Buddhism’s incompatibility towards much of the violence contained in A Touch of Zen. Separation from worldly matters and displaying trust and forgiveness for those who might wish one harm is key, and Abbot Hui abides by these principles. For many Westerners – especially those who have not studied or at least have a superficial understanding of Eastern religions – this might cause befuddlement and consternation in the closing third of the film when King Hu begins to feature the Buddhist monks more often. The final, open-ended scenes draw from Buddhist metaphysics and mysticism – capturing ascendance through selflessness.

Through the actions and words of Abbot Hui, we are better able to comprehend the suffering of Gu, to use one of a few possible examples. Unambitious and uninteresting though his life might have been prior to meeting Yang, Gu’s involvement with Yang and her allies sees him evolve from bumbling straggler to cold-blooded tactician when planning an ambush against the eunuch’s troops – as an aside, undesirable events occur any time after he sleeps with Yang. There, the idea of planning violence is shown as less mentally consequential than committing those acts. Committing violence – whether in self-defense, for “altruistic” purposes (is such a concept inherently contradictory?), or for other reasons – aligned with one’s compassion is a perilous predicament, as this behavior can all too easily transform into malevolence.

The protagonists depicted in A Touch of Zen are well-meaning, imperfect beings unable to release themselves from the shackles of chivalry, familial honor. That is what leads to their suffering from the hands of others, and from within.

For those without much experience in Asian martial arts films, let alone wuxia, A Touch of Zen starts roughly for its opening minutes. Cinematographer Hua hui-ying and editors King Hu (who had a history of performing many tasks other than directing in his movies) and Wing Chin-chen utilizing various swooping movements that do not appear to serve much purpose other than to make the motion-sensitive slightly queasy. After that inexplicable introduction, Hua, Hu, and Wing piece together an excellent collaborative effort. For cinematographer Hua – working with Eastmancolor and a glorious widescreen lens – his cameras are typically flat or glancing upward, utilizing swathes of open space to suggest danger, a higher consciousness/power, all to unsettle the viewer and keep our attention not just on the foreground. Shot partially at Taroko National Park in eastern Taiwan, there are nature shots in A Touch of Zen stupendous to behold; fans of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Taiwan) will be awed by the scenery, and perhaps wondering if A Touch of Zen inspired the later film in any way (it certainly did, but more shortly). Hua’s camera can also barely capture combatants when running or jumping from ground to rooftops – because wuxia, kung fu, and other Chinese martial arts logic is like that, so just accept it – at full speed. The editing by Hu and Wing, sometimes only including a shot for the shortest of split-seconds, forces the viewer to pay the fullest attention, in fear of missing on a crucial detail of geometry, body positioning, or location during a furious swordfight.

The action would have been less exhilarating if choreographer and actor Han Ying-jie did not work on this film. Two extended set pieces are standouts: the final battle at the abandoned fortress in the dark of night and a free-flying bamboo forest battle that would later be recalled and reworked in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. For those who have never seen A Touch of Zen – it is recommended that you have seen some other wuxia, kung fu, and other assorted martial arts films before this one – this movie contains some of the most arresting action imagery and gobsmackingly tense battles one can ever experience in this genre. Han’s choreography has stamped his unquestionable legacy into modern martial arts films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

A Touch of Zen became a sensation of world cinema when released – winning a technical prize at the Cannes Film Festival – but was half-forgotten until Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came along at the turn of the century. Releases of the most recent restoration by the Masters of Cinema releases in the United Kingdom and the Criterion Collection in North America have allowed A Touch of Zen a global reach like never before.

Asian martial arts cinema – of the distant past, less distant past, and the present – has never been a specialty of mine (my father and many in my extended Vietnamese-American family have consumed much more). What separates A Touch of Zen from the dizzyingly large number of Asian martial arts films lies in something not often found in this genre. It has mastered matters elemental and physical, while commanding a dialogue with the spiritual.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. A Touch of Zen is the one hundred and forty-first film I have rated a ten on imdb.

#A Touch of Zen #King Hu #wuxia #Hsu Feng #Shih Chun #Bai Ying #Xue Han #Roy Chiao #Tien Peng #Cao Jian #Miao Tien #Zhang Bing yu #Han Ying jie #Wang Rui #Hua Hui ying #Wing Chin chen #TCM #My Movie Odyssey