#An Oriental Odyssey

[lyselkatzfandomluvs]

Zhèng YèChéng 鄭業成

Waves 漫潮 - 2023 Winter Issue

Magazine editorial and BTS pictures (3/3)

#zheng yecheng #chinese actors #hero legends #an eternal thought #desire catcher #wen cang mang #a moment but forever #love of thousand years #love under the full moon #my sassy princess #the sleepless princess #royal nirvana #stealth walker #the assassin #an oriental odyssey #enlighten your life #crossroad bistro #mirror twin cities #the degenerate drawing jianghu #bu liang ren #cdrama #modeling dà-Chéng

[the-monkey-ruler]

An Oriental Odyssey (2018) 盛唐幻夜

Director: Zhou Xiaopeng

Screenwriter: Miao Juan

Starring: Wu Qian / Zheng Yecheng / Zhang Yujian / Dong Qi / Yuan Wenkang / more...

Genre: Romance / Fantasy / Costume

Country/Region of Production: Mainland China

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Date: 2018-10-18 (Mainland China)

Number of seasons: 1

Episodes: 50

Single episode length: 45 minutes

Also known as: House Slave Mule / An Oriental Odyssey

Type: Crossover

Summary:

Luoyang in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, Ye Yuanan, the daughter of the official of the household department, was very fond of fighting against injustice and when the oiran was being killed, he accidentally got hit and was acquainted with the heroic head catcher Zhao Lanzhi. The two worked together to solve the case and got to know each other well. Yuan'an rescued Mu Le, a mysterious man with amnesia from the market, and took him as a domestic servant. Unexpectedly, the stubborn Mu Le was absolutely loyal to him, and love and obsession gradually sprouted.

In cases such as Luotian Cave and King Jing's Mansion, the three cooperated closely, repeatedly solved strange cases, and defeated the conspiracy of Guoshi Tianqiao who was hidden behind these cases to seize the most precious nine-star rosary. Princess Minghui, a member of the flyover, fell in love with Lanzhi, and threatened Lanzhi's marriage with Yuan'an's life. Yuan'an feels disappointed, and is angry to marry Mu Le, but he is misunderstood by Mu Le. When Mu Le was sad, he realized that he was a prince in trouble in a foreign land, so he stole the nine-star rosary engraved with strange magic and returned to his country for revenge. Yuan'an, Zhao Lanzhi, and Minghui came after them, and the four joined hands to quell the chaos, and thus they found the place of true love.

Source: http://chinesemov.com/tv/2018/An-Oriental-Odyssey.html

Link: https://www.nunuyy5.org/dianshiju/5343.html

#An Oriental Odyssey #盛唐幻夜 #jttw media #jttw television #television #live action #Tang Sansang appearance #tang sanzang cameo #Tripitaka cameo #crossover #Tang Sanzang #monk tripitaka

[seaofpoppies]

Perry's White Oriental Poppy

#poppies #floral photography #floral #poppy feild #floral enrichment #floral odyssey #the floral odyssey #white poppies #flowers #oriental poppy

[capacle]

20 Brazilian TTRPGs I wish also existed in English

Today I offer you:

20 Brazilian TTRPGs I wish also existed in English (because I want the world to know about them)

Buckle up, because you won't BELIEVE the diversity of our indie scene.

[presented in no particular order, and only one per author]

1. Meu Brinquedo Preferido ('My favorite toy'), by Eduardo Caetano

A metaphor about a child's growing process by deconstructing their fears through playful situations.

2. SeanchaS, by Jorge Valpaços and Jefferson Neves

A game about myths, construction of identity and narrative around bonfires, about the time of ancient stories and the present time.

3. Gatunos, by Tiago Junges

A GMless/Solo game in which you play as cat thieves and mercenaries doing the dirty work of the five big factions that run the city.

4. Nômades (Nomads), by Marcelo Collar

A card-based RPG in which you play as beings who have the ability to find and pass through the cracks in the veil that separates the universes.

5. Infaernum, by Caio Romero

Create your own apocalypse while playing the game, and interpret characters who experience the last days of all things.

6. Áureos, Os Dançarinos da Lua ('The Moon Dancers'), by Rey Ooze

A game of fight and freedom where dice play capoeira. You play as an 'Áureo', a former slave who, in a fantastic colonial Brazil, receives the blessings of his Orisha to free his people from slavery.

7. Veridiana, by Alan Silva

You play as creatures that live in a large tree, embarking on a deeply sentimental journey in search of a cure.

8. Karyu Densetsu, by Thiago Rosa and Nina Bichara

A game inspired by action anime and manga, with tactical combat, philosophical conversation, and passionate ideals.

9. Imperia, by Jonny Garcia

A game of politics and intrigue in a medieval court, inspired by Game of Thrones. Create a kingdom collaboratively and assume the role of the most influential people in it.

10. Goddess save the Queen, by Carol Neves and Julio Matos

A pulp adventure game in which you play as secret agents of the British Crown during the interwar period, with their own agenda connected in some way with their home nation.

11. Abismo Infinito ('Infinite Abyss'), by John Bogéa

A narrative game of psychological horror in which the protagonists are astronauts, far away in space, involved in a web of lucid nightmares and manifestations of their own fears.

12. Mojubá, by Lucas Conti and Lucas Sampaio

An Afrofuturistic urban fantasy game inspired by Yoruba and Afro-Brazilian mythologies. Play as a person with fantastic powers who descends from the Orixás, fights evil spirits, and occasionally gets into a rap battle.

13. Chopstick, by Igor Moreno

A game inspired by action movies of oriental martial arts, gang fights and crime, with a twist on Fate Accelerated.

14. Contos do Galeão ('Tales of the Galleon'), by Encho Chagas

Create together the legend of a vessel that would have existed during the Golden Age of Piracy. Players will create the ship, its pirates, as well as its enemies, challenges, and rewards.

15. O Cordel do Reino do Sol Encantado ('The Cordel of the Kingdom of the Enchanted Sun'), by Pedro Borges

A narrative game set in the northeastern 'cangaço' region at the beginning of the 20th century.

16. Através das Trevas ('Through the Darkness'), by Ramon Mineiro

A post-apocalyptic fantasy game inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher and Diablo.

17. Nihilo, by Andre Osna and Gustavo Rolanski

A world very much like our own—yet bigger, deeper, and stranger. Secret banks are run by Urban Dragons, Infernal mafias terrorize slums, interdimensional portals open in the basements of abandoned pizzerias.

18. Caçada ao Colosso ('Hunt for the Colossus'), by Jairo Borges Filho

Reenact stories such as Siegfried and the dragon Fafnir, the Greek Odyssey or legends centered on the opposition of two primary forces of humanity.

19. Perdidos ('Lost'), by Marcelo Paschoalin

Inspired by Bloodborne and Dark Souls, a world in ruins, fragmented to the point where only memories remain. You'll find relics of yesteryear, monstrous beasts, beings that have forgotten their purpose, and devious paths to tread.

20. Hitodama - A jornada das almas ('The Journey of the Souls'), by Alexsander Araujo

You are Shinigamis: creatures half divinity, half Yokai, who must carry out missions through different worlds, fighting formidable enemies and saving lost souls.

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #ttrpg design #brazil #global south

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Odyssey - an opinion on Odysseus

Tw: reference to sexual assault, coercision, rape in abstract terms as themes.

Currently reading the Odyssey for the first time and there are 2 interpretations it feels like you can make with Odysseus and his intereactions with characters like Calypso.

He's an unloyal twat who willingly sleeps with everyone woman he can (I feel like this seems to be the most popular female oriented take from what I know of a lot of modern retellings)

That actually, Odysseus has very little choice. The women he sleeps with are goddesses who entrap him in someway and the reality is that his one consistent goal is to get back to Penelope, the clever wife he loves. In effect Odysseus pretty much is being coerced and forced into these sexual relationships. Take Calypso for example, he can't kill her, can't leave, can't persuade her to let him go. He spends the years he's there crying, sobbing, desperate to leave but lays in her bed at night when she asks him to. This to me doesn't seem like a man who wants to be doing that, wants to be betraying his wife, but instead a man who has little choice. Admittedly as well, it's made clear that the goddesses (Calypso and Circe) have a sort of magic when it comes to coercing and getting people to do what they want and it's made clear that Calypso's goal is to have Odysseus stay as her husband forever. The moment he has a chance to leave, after Hermes forces Calypso's hand, he does so, refusing to stay and turning down immortality and by all accounts one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. There are multiple women, mortal and immortal, in the books who are described as desiring Odysseus and as extremely beautiful. The immortal he sleeps with, but the mortal he does not despite the opportunities afforded him. This to me suggests he only sleeps with the immortal ones because he has very little real choice, who is he to go against a goddess? I personally believe that if he had a real choice, he would have been celibate for those 20 years until he returned home.

I think it's really easy to judge Odysseus at face value, that he's a cheat and liar and that he didn't have to do these things. But to me, my personal interpretation (which is what it is, you can have a different one and that's fine!) is that this man, this highly intelligent man, adores his wife, wants to be back home, but has very little choice. That at best he sleeps with these goddesses knowing that it will enable his survival and at worst he's literally forced through the coercive nature that is a goddess and her powers. It doesn't seem to me, especially with Calypso, that he wants to be there, that he really wants her or cares for her or desires her, it seems like a motion, something he has to do because he's forced to. This man spends his entire time crying and I suspect if he could have he would have killed her, but who can kill a goddess? A daughter of Atlas? Certainly not him.

It strikes me as well, that if he really were that much of a rake, then the mortal women he comes across who are described as beautiful and desiring him, he would also sleep with or even marry and stay with. But he doesn't.

It may be an unpopular interpretation, but I actually really like Odysseus and I personally believe he has little choice in these flawed actions and that in reality he's a victim, I don't believe Homer puts it forth as some sort of romantic ideal or the hero being rewarded.

Obviously, you don't have to agree. You can have your own opinion and that's fine.

#That being said I've only just got past Circe so maybe there's other parts of the story I haven't gotten to yet #but I'm a penelope/odysseus stan and I 'm tempted to rewrite the odyssey with odysseus very clearly a victim #it doesn't feel like he's this rake that people put him as in my opinion #the odyssey #odysseus #odysseus/penelope

[alatismeni-theitsa]

Ancient Greek and Roman music Masterpost

As our national epic, the Odyssey, did I'll start from the middle. Please listen to the sound of medieval Greek music and then come back. It's an exercise, I command you!

Middle Ages Greek music is speculated to be "slowed down ancient Greek music"! 😁 So, take notes on that!

Christodoulos Halaris - Anthology of Byzantine Secular Music

(Christodoulos Halaris was a prominent Greek composer, researcher, and musicologist. He focused on secular Byzantine and traditional music, incorporating his extensive research into a solid and singular musical language.)

After your warm-up (and perhaps some confusion) let's get into what you came here to see.

What Ancient Greek and Roman Music Sounded Like - A Beginner's Introduction

Α fantastic introduction by a composer, musician, and researcher who calls himself:

OKAY, OKAY, HE IS FARYA FARAJI, YOU GOT ME.

So, this is going to be another excellent video where he spits facts. He gives a great impression of how ancient Greek and Roman music sounded like.

And no, they didn't sound like the watered-down (north)-eurocentric "ancient Greek music" on youtube videos you find. (who's surprised at this point, after all this Northwestern appropriation) Unless they are made by Farya Faraji because… the man knows his shit (and our shit 😂)

By the way, I called it "watered down", not because I believe western music is lame, but because the performers apply western rules to ancient Greek music, stripping it of all the Heterophonic complexity.

In the video above, you'll learn how the lyre should actually be played!!! And what instruments have been in continuous use in Greece for more than 2.000 years! And see all the ways our ancient and traditional music is more complex than Western music - such as Western music can be more complex than ours in other ways! (as also stated in the video)

And before you ask: Why does ancient Greek and Byzantine/traditional Greek music sound Oriental? Well, that's just your ear and biases and Hollywood stereotypes, my dear friend. See, these sounds are not (just) Oriental! They are originally Greek, too!

Many tunes and the way of singing the West associates today with the Middle East came from the Greek world (where these tunes are still in use, mind you) or other Mediterranean countries. That's not to say that Middle Eastern nations didn't have these scales and twirls for a long time - because they did. That's their ancient music, too.

Please see the video below to make more sense of my ramblings:

The Greco-Roman Influence on Middle-Eastern Music

All of Farya's videos have their sources in the description so make sure to check them out!

Now you can better enjoy the Epitaph of Sekeilos you heard in the first Middle Ages video! You can also listen to another great version by Farya, where he uses the above ancient Greek principles he mentioned in his video. That's why his version actually feels fun to listen to, thank god! (Of course Chalaris also orchestrates the Epitaoh in an excellent way)

Personal commentary: I am happy to share Farya's work online because he put into words why reconstructions of ancient Greek music online don't sound Greek at all. Greeks have a hard time relating to it because... that's not our folk music. They sound boring like Chopin playing piano when he was 3 years old. (But by now you know why! 😉)

Of course, ancient and traditional Greek music are not identical and no one expects them to be. But given our history, our music history, and cultural evolution, we know the sounds of our music - as all people can identify the music of their land and area. I am glad my gut feeling was right and the music wasn't actually that simple. With the complexity of our ancient chants and the plethora of instruments we had in antiquity, there was no excuse for our ancient melodies to be that simple.

#ancient greek music #instruments #music history #middle ages #history of music #lyre #harp #ancient greek #classics #classic civilizations #bagpipes #aulos #pipes #roman history #panflute #mediterranean #historian #antiquity #farya faraji #chants #Youtube #byzantine music #byzantine empire #byzantium

[acradaunt]

Acra's EO Guild Card Megapost

Guild Cards are a neat thing in the most of the Etrian Odyssey games. Sometimes, they're pretty pointless, but in some, they actually do some neat stuff. I… have a tendency to do multiple playthroughs, to try different team compositions (as seeing how different a game can feel based on your builds is one of my favourite things ever, and I also like abandon them before the big fights, on the hypothetical urge I want to re-fight a boss at an appropriate level an infinite number of times), so I've amassed a fair few of my own.

Why am I uploading these now? Apparently the Nexus database got borked a couple days ago, so this is the perfect time for me to get a few feet in the door. I also swear this is the last time I'll ever post about these, seriously.

EO Nexus -A total of 100 Guild Cards are needed to unlock the Vampire pseudo-class. Obviously, 100 is a lot, so they obviously expected the community, paltry it may be, to come together to make a database. And they did. And then they locked it the second they got 108. And then it died. So now I finally get a second chance to contribute.

Galeforce

-My first (main) playthrough. I actually uploaded a card weekly to help out, but I think only the first one made it on in time. It's not Heroic because it's like a NG+++++ file. This is the final card, but for the weekly set of them, um, here:

Week 0 || Week 1 || Week 2 || Week 3 || Week 4 || Week 5 || Week 6 || Week 7

Stardust

-Filled with all my C-listers that couldn't fit into Galeforce. I ran them as two separate teams; the Boss Killers (shown here), who fought the FOEs/Bosses, and Team Midriff, who did all the exploration.

Sunstorm

-A Guild consisting of classes I mostly avoid using, and portraits I hadn't (as of its conception) used before. As always, there's like another three members that get used that aren't here, including a Survivalist, Nightseeker, and an Arcanist.

Maelstrom

-An attempt at a Nuzlocke-esque run, and also an 'evil' party. Characters stopped being used if they died, but only until the end of the stratum, to not make it overbearing. Being an evil party lacking in support and healing, this was an absolute slog that I considered a total failure by the Jungle.

Brilliant

-An idea for a mage-guild that kinda went askew. Starting as a Sovereign, three Zodiacs, and a Farmer, I ultimately turned this into three single-element teams; Each consisting of a unique Sovereign, a unique Zodiac, two other characters that get earlygame elemental skills (Survivalist's Flame Arrow, Landsknecht, etc.), but the same Farmer (Hazel) across all three. Didn't take it all that far, but worked kinda well!

EOV -Definitely where Guild Cards are seen the most. About 2-4 times every floor, there'll be an event that'll use you GC database to have another guild interact with you in the labyrinth. If you have none, you'll be introduced to memelord Conrad of the Freeblade Guild about 110 times in your course of a playthrough. In stark contrast, Nexus only has GC events maybe a dozen times across the whole game.

Starlight

-Main guild. Not a lot to say. It's a Chain-oriented party, because I love Fencers/Landsknechts.

Bundt

-Cake pun. See, bundt is a type of cake, and the guild is filled with Brouni. As in Brownies, the fairy/pixie/sprite, but I'm punning off the--- ANYWAY. Horrific offense, but don't die easily. Kinda miserable against a few specific enemies like the coffin jerks on 15F, but otherwise worked astonishingly better than you'd expect. Which is; not GOOD, but totally serviceable.

Necrocosm

-My original 'evil' guild, featuring two Necromancers, and edge as far as the eye can see. Two Necros work pretty well together; typically Velvet summoned them and Rue made them explode. The fact Necros heal and have evil vibes let them succeed where Maelstrom would totally fail. I also didn't bench anyone for dying, so that probably helped too.

Firebird

-This playthrough is only saved at Amalgolem and took like a single weekend to get there, so I didn't remember squat about it. Amalgolem is like my single fave boss in the whole series, so I just had to leave a file there. It's heavily skewed towards non-humans, and the bottom deck of the guild is just full of nigh-on unusable cross-classed horrors, like a Celestrian Pugilist and Therian Warlock.

EO2U -Probably where Guild Cards are the most functionally useful. Lets you get the Grimoire Stones the attached character has on hand as many times as you can afford. Pretty nifty, as Grimoires are semi-random in spawning.

Skyquake

-So I didn't actually buy EO2U when it came out for a variety of factors, not least being unaware how different it was from the original EOII, my first EO game. So I've only started this and Untold I fairly recently.

Ironroot

-Holy Gift gives you extra experience, but each level costs twice as much to trade as the previous. That is, you need two level 3 Grimoires to get a level 4. Or 128 level 3s for a single level 10. So having a Guild Card with lowish level Holy Gift is actually pretty dang useful to have.

Untold

-Story Guild. Haven't… uh, haven't exactly been Motivated to do Story mode in Untold 2. On paper, I really dislike the team composition. In practice, hasn't been so bad, but still not enough to make me play them more than necessary.

Fellbloom

-Now legally required Evil Guild. Probably won't ever get past Chimaera.

EOU -Unlike the sequel, Guild Cards don't let you choose what to get from the friend's Guild Card. You just get given a random Grimoire Stone once per playthrough per Guild Card. Kinda lame.

Untold -Unlike later games, only one save file here, and the game nigh-on requires you to play through the Story Mode before doing Classic in NG+, so, that's where we sit.

EOIV -First game to use QR codes. III had Guild Cards, but I don't know how you'd trade them. They do serve a purpose here; each Card gets given a random treasure, and having a Card lets you find that treasure in the overworld. Most are crap, but some are circumstantially useful, and some are permanent stat-boosts, IIRC. I don't think mine was very good…?

Zephyr

-Uh, EOIV had a glitch where your Ventured Days would go up dramatically every time you paused. I think it comes into affect if you ever do NG+. So I haven't actually played for 48 in-game years. Truth be told, now knowing of a way to back up save files, I am admittedly tempted to make a new EOIV playthrough, since it's been like a decade, but for my own sanity, I really probably shouldn't.

#etrian odyssey #guild card #etrian odyssey nexus #eon

[theworldoffostering]

Raising kids is not for the weak.

The good:

DS took his road test and passed it! It felt so nice to do a normal kid/parent thing and see him be successful.

The anniversary of his adoption day was this month. It’s been 15 years.

Ms. 6 was accepted into a university.

Ms. 6 is going to graduate high school next month!

We are progressing in attachment therapy with Baby.

School is almost done for the year.

The mediocre:

DD broke up with her fiancé and is already seeing someone else. I did not care for her fiancé, but already seeing someone else is a red flag.

I talked with the students with disabilities center on Ms. 6’s campus this week to try to get her some services. In turn, I had to request her IEP. Her IEP from fall was a train wreck so I reconvened the team this week and told them to rewrite it appropriately. Apparently the guidance counselor quit in the fall and no one has taken his place. For real, without a parent, most kids are completely lost.

I signed Ms. 6 up for college registration and orientation. Students have to bring a parent. I offered but she wants her mom to go which is fine. However, we don’t know if her mom will go. She was too hungover to take Ms. 6 to the hospital when she had knee surgery scheduled a couple of months back. Last week she didn’t get out of bed to take Ms. 6 to a somewhat major dental appointment. I told her I would go, but her mom insisted that she was going so I could not attend. I stood down and then she didn’t show up. Same thing happened with the knee surgery.

The challenging:

So much drama with Ms. 6’s family of origin. Ms. 6 lives over three hours away from us but is enrolled in a high school near us and her graduation will be where we live. I offered to throw her a graduation party and invite her mom. Ms. 6 was thrilled. Her mom told her to cut DH and I off and that she could no longer talk to us or receive mail from us. Now her mom is threatening to take away Ms. 6 attending her own graduation altogether.

Ms. 6 insisted she completed her FASFA. She did, but it was for the 23-24 year, not the 24-25 year. I straightened it out two weeks ago and filled it out for her (she’s an independent so parent income doesn’t count). Financial aid packagers don’t go out until next month so I’m hoping she will still get enough to be able to go to school.

Ms. 6 told me this week that she never obtained a new birth certificate or social security card despite me directing her in how to do both things multiple times in the fall after she left here unexpectedly. I finally just ordered (and paid) for a new birth certificate for her this week.

I feel incredibly burned out. Like maybe I need meds? My endocrin called and told me I need to start doing B12 injections because after taking oral supplements for three months, my b12 levels actually went down. I don’t know if it’s that, or wading through all of the drama, or both. Some days, I don’t feel like I can even put one foot in front of the other. It’s too much. How do you ever get a break from everything?

Tomorrow we are meeting with DD to try to work out getting her a $4k car from a friend of mine. It’s a 2006 Odyssey with almost 200k miles on it. The insurance (collision only) would be $2k for the year. She’s bouncing from one hourly job to another and not saving anything. She desperately needs a vehicle to get to and from work. Currently she’s relying on her fiancé and her vehicle, but now that they’re no longer together, it seems more important that she have her own. She has zero money saved, but I have a college fund set aside for her with about $10k in it. Clearly she’s not going to college right now so I think we are going to pivot with that money and pay for the car and the insurance for a year.

I was planning to drive 6.5 hours this weekend to meet up with Ms. 6 and her BF who she met online. Ms. 6 has really been pushing for this. I asked for his address so I could locate a nearby hotel. She said he didn’t want me to have it. Then I asked for his name. He apparently did not want to disclose that to me either. I did tell her that was super sketch, and now I do think he’s like a really scary person who no one has vetted. Ms. 6 has already stayed with him several times so maybe not a serial killer, but anything else is possible in my brain. He’s definitely older because he has his own apartment.

It’s so much, you guys.

#parenting teens #parenting is hard #adoption #parenting adult children

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Welcome to the Cave of Delphi!

I promote love, not hate on this blog.

Apollo love (platonic) in particular.

If 1,000 people love Apollo, I am one of those people. If 100 people love Apollo, I am one of those people. If 10 people love Apollo, I am one of those people. If only 1 person loves Apollo, I AM that person. If nobody loves Apollo, than I have left this world. If the world is against Apollo, I am against the world.

New followers, Please:

Change your profile picture;

Add a description to your blog; and/or

REBLOG!!!! THINGS!!!! :D

So I know you aren't a bot and I won't block you :3

Tumblr thrives on reblogs :3 as do us other bloggers :3

thank u <3

About Me

Age: 19

Nationality: American

Religion: Roman Catholic

Pronouns: She/Her

Romantic Orientation: Demiromantic (sometimes I use Panromantic)

Sexual Orientation: Asexual

Current Obsessions: Greek Mythology, Apollo, Trials of Apollo, Apollo, Ancient Greece, Apollo, Roman Empire, & Apollo

My Cohost

My Youtube Videos

My Posts

Favorite Posts

The Copollo Fic Masterlist

Fic Recs

🏹➳~My Fanfics~➳🏹

Fanfic Update Order

The Works of Apollo - RRverse Canon Compliant

Adventures in (Grand)Parenting: Featuring Koios - Our favorite grandpa and his many trials and errors at grandparenting

Alder's Mess of ToA AUs - RRverse Canon Divergent AUs within the series

The Crew of Dodona - ToA Pirate AU

Mythology Fics - The OG myths

Tag List:

#ramblings of an oracle - me spouting whatever i what

#the oracle speaks - asks i have answered <3

#my incorrect quotes - IQs from my own fanfics, not from the myths or ToA

#my art - self-explanatory lmao

#fic asks - asks about my fanfics <3

#ask game - responses to an ask game

Mythology

#apollo love

Duos

#sun n moon twins - Apollo n Artemis <3

#truth n lies - Apollo & Hermes

#logic n chaos - Apollo & Dionysus

#knowledge & wisdom - Apollo & Athena

#theives' hunt - Hermes & Artemis

#poetry and love - Apollo & Aphrodite

#light and fire - Apollo & Hephaestus

#plague and war - Apollo & Ares

#stepduo - Apollo & Hera

#harmony & order - Apollo & Zeus (mainly ToA)

Groups

#the disaster trio - Apollo, Artemis, & Hermes

#queer quartet - Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, & Dionysus

#troublesome triad - Apollo, Hermes, & Dionysus

#raggamuffin kids - all of the second-gen Olympian sibs

#civilization trio - Apollo, Hermes, & Athena

#the music gang - Apollo & the Muses

#chaotic crew - Apollo, Dionysus, Hermes, & Persephone

#tasteful trio - Apollo, Dionysus, & Aphrodite

#delphic triad - Leto and her babies <3

#regal trio - Zeus and the twins

#raggamuffin parents - 1st gen Olympians AKA the children of Kronos

#delphic fam - the maternal side of the twins' family <3

The Stuff

#greek mythology analysis

#incorrect greek mythology quotes

#mythology aus

#greek myths

#greek myth fanart

#greek myth memes

#greek myth headcanons

#greek myth vines

#greek fam tree

#greek history

#apollocinthus - Apollo & Hyacinthus Supremacy Here

#apoly - Apollo's polycule because he is <3

Then just type in a god/goddess to find stuff with them in it. I can reassure you i will have plenty of stuff with Apollo, Artemis, & Hermes.

sometime tho i will put extra stuff behind it (ex: #pan the god)

for reference: I classify a "meme" as a funny post with pictures or something like that. A "quote" would be, well, quotes.

The Trials of Apollo (RiordanVerse)

*stuff that is exclusively from ToA*

#sunflower siblings - apollo & meg

#sibling shenanigans - apollo, artemis, thalia, & jason

#triumvirite holdings - the three nasty emperors

#prophecy pair - apollo & rachel

#incorrect trials of apollo quotes

#nero

#commodus

#caligula

#meg mccaffery

#python

#copollo - the guilty-pleasure, absolute TRAINWRECK of a ship between Apollo and Commodus. *slaps ship* i can fit so many ISSUES into this ship!

#toa fanart

#toa theory

#riordanverse headcanons

#toa memes

#toa polls

#toa fanfiction

#apollo fanfiction

#if i was a demigod

ToA Fanfics

#tsari: eclipse

Epics

#the iliad

#the odyssey

#the aeneid

#the trojan war

#trojan war memes

#incorrect trojan war quotes

then just type in a character's name (Ex: #diomedes) and it should pop up. However, some characters I've put extra stuff with like:

#prince hector

#helen of sparta

#jason the argonaut

so as i go/find those names with extras in them i'll place them above

Other

#not myths but it's related

#rome

#poetry

#music

#the haiku bot

#resources

#blood of zeus

#roman emperors

#sacred animals

#statues

#paintings

#notes for later

#not myths

#rhymes

i have a tag for other deities so just type in their name and then what religion they are (Example: #frey norse god; thoth egyptian god; bast egyptian goddess; ect.) <- all one tag

i won't do it often, but i also may reblog stuff from other mythologies like norse or egyptian (HA I SPELT IT RIGHT FIRST TIME WHOOP)

#apollo #artemis #hermes #greek mythology #greek gods #greek goddesses #hyacinthus #greek myth #greek history #greek heroes #greece #blog intro #introduction #introductory post #pinned message #pinned post #pinned intro #intro post #introduction post #pinned bios #intro #leto #zeus #hera #poseidon #hades #demeter #hestia #ares #aphrodite

[y0ur-maj3sty]

Project Blue Beam

Nasa has been working on aircraft that are real, but will become a part of the Global Holographic Alien Invasion/Light show. This may also include a staged 2nd coming of historical fugures; such as Jesus or Mohammed or Krishna.

BLUE BEAM Has 4 Steps:

Step 1

The first step concerns the breakdown of all archaeological knowledge. It deals with staging earthquakes at certain precise locations around the planet where supposed new "discoveries" will finally explain that the meanings of the basic doctrines of all the world`s major religions are wrong. This falsification will be used to make the population believe that all religious doctrine has been misunderstood and misinterpreted. For example, in the entertainment/movie industry, a falsification started with the film(s) 2001: A Space Odyssey, the TV-series Star Trek, the Star Wars films, and E.T., all of which deal with space invasion and protection. Another movie example is Jurassic Park which was released to push the Theory of Evolution.

Step 2

The second step deals with the gigantic space show: 3D optical holograms and sounds, laser projections of multiple holographic images in different parts of the world, each receiving a different image, according to its predetermined original national religious faith. This new "god" image will talk in all languages. As an example, the Soviets have manufactured the advanced computers and have programmed them with the Minute Psychological Particles based upon their studies of the anatomy and biology of the human body, as well as their studies on the anatomy, chemistry and electricity of the human brain. These computers have also been fed with the different languages of the world.

Step 3

The third step deals with telepathic electronic two-way communication, where ELF(Extra Low Frequency), VLF (Very Low Frequency), and LF (Low Frequency) waves will reach the people of the Earth through the insides of their brains, making each person believe that his own God is speaking to him from within his own soul. Such rays, from satellites, are fed from the memory of computers that store much data about the human being and his languages. These rays will then interlace and interweave with the natural thinking processes to form what is called Artificial Talk.

Step 4

The fourth step involves universal supernatural manifestations using electronic means. This step contains three different orientations:

The first one is to make mankind believe that an Alien Invasion is about to occur upon every major city on the earth. This is to push each major nation into using its nuclear capability to strike back. In this manner, it would put each of these nations in a state of full disarmament before the United Nations after the false attack.

The second is to make the vast Christian population believe that a major rapture is occurring, with a simple, orchestrated, divine intervention of an alleged "good" alien force coming to save the good people from a brutal satanic attack. Its goal is to get rid of all significant opposition to the New World Order.

The third orientation is a mixture of electronic and supernatural forces. The waves or frequencies used at that time will allow supernatural forces to travel through fiber optics cable, coaxial cable, electric and telephone lines in order to penetrate all electronic equipment and appliances that will by then all have a special microchip installed. The goal of this step deals with the materialization of satanic ghosts, spectres, and poltergeists all across the globe in order to push all populations to the edge of a wave of suicide, killing and permanent psychological disorder. After that night, humanity is believed to be ready for them to enter in a "New" Messiah to re-establish peace everywhere at any cost, even at the cost of their freedom.

#project blue beam #NASA #government #UFOs #jesus #holograms #aliens #alien invasion

[lyselkatzfandomluvs]

Zhèng YèChéng 鄭業成

Waves 漫潮 - 2023 Winter Issue

Magazine editorial and BTS pictures (1/3)

Ahhhh... I'm so looking forward to watching Hero Legends 英雄志, An Eternal Thought 一念永恆 and The Assassin 隱娘!!!

#zheng yecheng #chinese actors #desire catcher #enlighten your life #stealth walker #hero legends #my sassy princess #love of thousand years #the sleepless princess #love under the full moon #love o2o #the assassin #an eternal thought #mirror twin cities #royal nirvana #an oriental odyssey #let's shake it #the degenerate drawing jianghu #bu liang ren #wen cang mang #cdrama #waves magazine #tw: flashing video #cat #a moment but forever #modeling dà chéng

[bao3bei4]

my very special odyssey through thirty years of gay asian porn

aka me talking about the asian american studies context for white people who are into gay asian porn and the bind that gay asian people who are also into it experience for 5500 words.

i thought i was done writing on/participating in wider fandom after my you know. but actually i have more to say. so here’s something chatty and casual, in which i’d like to bring some theoretical context to what we see today, and make some of my own interventions and commentary. because i don’t think there’s a great sense of how we are situated in this time of… shall we say… extreme interest in america in how and why imagined gay asians have sex with each other. 

let’s start with richard fung’s seminal work, “looking for my penis” (1991). it's available online, on his website, so i definitely recommend checking it out if you’re curious. but it’s his analysis of how asian male sexuality is popularly understood, through examination of the few asian men working in gay video porn at the time.

brief background: he begins by recounting how race and sexuality have been constructed in a mutually informing way, contemporaneously with the development of colonialism and slavery. he argues that “asian” emerged as an undersexed category, juxtaposed against “black” as hypersexualized, with of course “white” in the center with its pretensions of racial neutrality. he offers the obvious caveats: this tends to apply to the “oriental” stereotype of asians; nationality affects the sexual stereotypes applied to an individual; and the fetishization of asian women results in different stereotypes than those applied to asian men. 

but at any rate, the central assumption remains. and as he puts it, “if asian men have no sexuality, how can we have homosexuality?” 

fung recalls his experiences of needing to prove his gayness as an asian man in the 80s, because it was assumed so unthinkable. and he describes his desire to find and build gay asian narratives and community. this is where we arrive at the titular quest for the asian penis. fung mentions one in particular that he’s seen: that of the vietnamese american porn star, sum yung mahn. 

now, i should note here that it seems self-evident that thirty years later we exist in a different media landscape. people can name gay asians. like… real ones. celebrities. ones they personally know. and in fact, there’s even a notable amount of thought devoted to the possibility of gay asian life, even from outside the community. lol. 

and certainly, this is a different milieu. fandom demographics are different in gender than that of the locations fung describes. and the form this sexual content takes is a different medium from that which he analyzed. [contemporaneous asian american erotica, what little of it existed—i’m thinking here of the 1995 anthology on a bed of rice—tended to be heterosexual.]

but i do think there are important insights we can derive from his work. so let’s jump back into it. 

fung is clear that these works weren’t necessarily intended for asian consumption. the distribution company of these tapes reported that “90 percent of the asian tapes are bought by white men, and the remaining 10 percent are purchased by asians. but the number of asian buyers is growing.” so, like… what does that audience want to see? 

he starts with the 1985 “below the belt.” it takes place in a karate dojo. two white men are talking, and one recounts his fantasies of being fucked by their white teacher. we see this acted out in dream sequence, as his narration continues. but there’s a reveal onscreen: once his dream self is being fucked, he finally turns and you can see his face. and the man bottoming is actually an asian actor in a matching costume, not the original white narrator. after the scene concludes, the original two men have sex— this time, with the narrator topping. 

this work was fascinating to me. first, because it seems that the martial arts context has long been a rich source of erotic pleasure for white audiences. fung speculates it’s because “the hierarchical dojo setting is milked for its evocation of dominance and submission.” this means to me, that in a transnational context, xianxia and wuxia’s erotic appeal feels almost inextricable from everything i’m about to talk about. because i think a lot about how power functions in fandom sexual fantasies. there’s a lot of id-y stuff that, to me, begins to carry a different resonance in a racialized context. 

i’m not saying this in a “white people shouldn’t write about different races!!!” way. rather, look at this essay about how juggernaut slash fandom ships are overwhelmingly white. and when they’re not, in stitch’s words, “one of three things happen: white prioritization… racist stereotypes… [or] whitewashing.” (it’s a good read.) these tendencies can and do creep in. that’s all.

in danmei fanfiction, it’s mainly the latter two phenomena. and they intertwine in a really interesting way. things that might be unremarkable in the unrelenting whiteness of mainstream slash fandom begin to be inflected differently, in ways that trouble me because of their omnipresence. 

like, take “below the belt” again. it performs a transformation that for me, is echoed enormously by danmei fandom, taken in aggregate. in my view, the tendency to use an asian avatar for white fantasies of passivity is very much alive. this is something i think about a lot in context of the typical fandom refrain that many people explore their gender and sexuality through m/m content. again, like. it’s true, it’s not objectionable, it just is. but it is something that, in this context, is implicitly thoroughly white. 

this is something fung actually writes about, incidentally. he critiques the idea “that in gay as opposed to straight porn ‘the spectator's positions in relation to the representations are open and in flux,’” with an amendment that this is only true “when all the participants are white.” while greater identification is possible for gay asian men in gay porn (than in straight for instance), it’s hard to escape the marked position that you occupy. 

now, it’s at this point that you might (rightfully) point out that danmei fandom is about two asian men having sex with each other, and i’ve only alluded to interracial relationships thus far. 

so let’s move on to the second videotape fung talks about, which is the 1985 “asian knights.” i’m focusing on the first sequence of it, in which two asian men see a white psychiatrist because they can’t manage to have sex with each other. as fung describes, in typical porn fashion, this problem is quickly overcome. what’s interesting is what comes next: the film begins to be edited from the white psychiatrist’s point of view. he eventually joins in, as the new center of the sexual encounter. 

fung is clear that the psychiatrist is a stand-in for the viewer at home. and it’s that white observer’s perspective which dominates the video. as he writes, the initial premise was just a “ruse.” 

brad and rick’s [the asian couple] temporary mutual absorption really occurs to establish the superior sexual draw of the white psychiatrist, a stand-in for the white male viewer; who is the real sexual subject of the tape. and the question of asian-asian desire, though presented as the main narrative force of the sequence, is deflected, or rather reframed from a white perspective. 

i think there are clear parallels in the figure of the often white author, who writes for a presumed white audience. now. i want to be clear—and thank goodness for this—that ummmm. i personally haven’t seen anything quite as literal as asian knights in fandom. you may take this to mean that therefore there isn’t a problem. and to some people who are easily satisfied, this may be the case. 

——————– 

unfortunately for everyone, i’m a bit pilled by david eng’s 2001 racial castration. wonderful book. changed my brain chemistry when i read it years ago and now i talk about sigmund freud all the time. eng’s simple thesis builds upon what richard fung had written of a decade previous, that “asian and anus are conflated.” he is deeply concerned with how asian american male subjectivity is circumscribed on the psychic and material levels, and how investment in those limits maintains the dominant social order.

like, here’s a silly joke for you. i’ve edited the infamous powerup comics panel on gay marriage to be about critical race theory. 

funny stuff, no? that’s racial castration for you. 

anyway, the chapter in this book that stuck with me most profoundly is “heterosexuality in the face of whiteness: divided belief in m. butterfly.” (quick note here: if you get into asian american studies, you’re going to hear a lot about that play. for your reference, it’s the 1988 play by david henry hwang, a rewrite of puccini’s opera madama butterfly. it’s actually pretty good. the 2017 update is worse, though.) 

anyway, the play takes the real life case of bernard boursicot and shi pei pu, and mashes it up with madama butterfly to make a point about this one white guy’s investment in fantasies about beautiful oriental women. he imagines the relationship between east and west in such strongly heterosexual terms that his colonial fantasy must be maintained, whatever the cost to him. in the end, he dies trying to become the geisha he wanted so badly. 

now, eng’s approach to the play is rooted in his background in psychoanalysis. and i try not to psychoanalyze people in fandom because i think that’s a bit rude. but—because there’s always a but—i think that transformation that eng details is useful here. because let’s be real, the ubiquity of the asian bottom in porn isn’t borne out in real life. it’s not as if irl white queer people as a demographic are super invested in exclusively topping queer asian people as a demographic. well, okay, your experience may vary. lol. 

my point here is just 1) that no sexual position is a racist/anti-racist one and 2) obviously sexual fantasy (as detailed in fung’s videotapes) and sexual reality (as detailed by umm. going outside?) don’t necessarily have a straightforward relationship. 

that is, the pornographic fantasy i see is being the asian hole, not having the asian hole (this, freudpilled readers will note, is a tacky play on lacan’s formulation of the phallus). (of course, since the latter is a bit more true in white men’s heterosexual fantasies about asia, to be unfairly rude, it reads as fetishization of being the abject sexual subject that one’s forefathers invented. )

“below the belt” and the racial transformation it performs on its asian bottom, combined with the use of asian-asian couplings to enhance the white viewer’s primacy as sexual subject in “asian knights” can easily be synthesized into my facetiously named “anus envy” theory. that is, there is a clear pornographic tendency for white fantasies of inhabitation of an imagined abject asian bottom. in this tendency, the orient is just a receptacle for white meaning. 

this is something i’ve been on about for literal years. to save myself some time, i’ll refer to my early attempt at theorizing this, although i’m now trying to make a different point here about a different demographic: 

it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires…

the thing is, in fandom, there’s a lot of projection at play. this isn’t bad and it’s not true for everyone. but like. think of the language and practices that get thrown around—comfort characters, and kinning, and literal self-inserts! but also things as simple as writing your own kinks and drawing from your own experience. again, not bad. it just, again, oftentimes can take on a troubling valence in this transnational context. 

in case you can’t tell, right now, i’m running into the same problem as my last essay, where i’m trying to avoid specific examples because i don’t want to get mired in discourse or direct unfair scrutiny to any one individual. it’s tricky to do this publicly. this is why i stopped writing fandom essays!! either you’re beginning to recognize the patterns i’m describing or not. 

here, let me try to make it more clear—let’s quote m butterfly instead. gallimard, the french diplomat, concludes the play with his fantasies: 

there is a vision of the orient that I have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally. it is a vision that has become my life.

he then does his level best to project himself into that vision of the orient. 

in an unrelated note, did you know people draw shang qinghua blond?

——————– 

brief sidebar: i always have a thousand billion caveats when i write things like this. normally i try to edit my hedges and apologies out because i think they look insecure lol. but i’ve already established this piece is kind of silly and chatty. so i’ll clarify here. 

for the record, i don’t want to have pessimism about white people writing asians, particularly asians having sex, particularly gay asians having sex. like i legitimately don’t think these dynamics are inevitable. but i think there’s so much defensiveness around these topics that it’s hard to get a conversation about it started in the first place. 

that’s why i’m taking this format. i want to make it apparent that this conversation has already been happening for decades, and to make some small parts of it more accessible to people who may be interested in what’s already been said. we, in fact, do have the language and the canon to address this in a gay asian pornographic context. which is incredibly and wonderfully specific! 

i think about these problems particularly because i'm a bitter person, and i'm often preoccupied how for white people, harming people of color gets to be a phase. like, remember those quirky years of quarantine when you were briefly super obsessed with fantasies of asian sexual passivity?— people aren’t going to think about it in that light, if they think about it at all. 

but being harmed by this is not a phase. and there are like... no consequences. because people of color don't get to humiliate white people as a harmless phase. so the asymmetry of investment in these representations is something i think about.

by the way, this is also why i’m not touching on “having anti asian slurs in your danmei fic is bad!” or “deliberately evoking historical war crimes committed against asians is bad!” or any of the other… more obviously harmful things i’ve seen in fandom. i’m just trying to make visible how “normal” fandom attitudes appear even more white against a background of color, and how they have a connection to these obvious pornographic predecessors. this is the stuff that benefits from theory the most, in my opinion.

——————– 

anyway. that’s enough of imagining white people to be mad at. 

let’s talk about something a little more productive. if we have these implicitly raced [white] frameworks for fandom, it raises several interconnected questions. what does it mean when a person of color inhabits that white viewpoint? how could a person of color find their own? is it even possible? how do these fanon referenda on desirability and asians as vessels for white meaning seep outside these texts?

because the pervasiveness of the white gaze is something asian american writers have been attentive to. as well as—let’s be real—how sexless and heavy-handed attempts to avoid it can be. take, like, greg pak’s 1999 short film spoof asian pride porn.  

so here we arrive at our latest text, nguyen tan hoang’s 2014 a view from the bottom. nguyen takes a different view of things. he’s writing a defense of male effeminacy, of bottomhood as challenge to sexual, gender, and racial norms. 

this isn’t necessarily visible because i’ve been working so heavily with queer sources here, but mainstream asian american activists have often been concerned with a “remasculinization” project. think frank chin’s insistence in the 1975 anthology aiiieeeee! (as well as the rest of his career) that asian men can be men. this, of course, combined with his belligerent attitude, led to often bitter debates with asian american feminists over the decades to come regarding what is the asian american place in redblooded american heteromasculinity. this is the context from which queer asian americans began their own theoretical movement in the 90s. 

the other intellectual line that nguyen is indebted to is the defense of bottomhood and anality that (white) luminaries in queer theory in the last quarter of the 20th century took part in. nguyen lists off guy hocquenghem, leo bersani, da miller, and lee edelman here. i won’t get into the specifics of their work here, but suffice it to say— there’s a lot of cultural baggage attached to getting fucked in the ass. 

nguyen has the sharp insight that there’s an important connection between the attempted remasculinization of asian men and the attempted remasculinization of bottoming in their respective mainstream discourses. both want to fit into an assimilatory schema. nguyen instead argues that there’s got to be a way to talk about how asian men [especially queer asian men] and bottoming function and exist within these matrices of power, without scapegoating femininity. 

anyway, back to the original question: so the white gaze is pervasive, especially in porn. what next? darrell hamamoto called for a “joy fuck club,” in a 2000 article. that is, a counterpornography, created by asian americans for asian americans. but nguyen’s objection to this is that “while this point appears self-evident at first glance, a closer reading uncovers the problematic assumption that there exists an authentic, unalienated sexuality prior to racist regulation and discrimination.” or: who’s to say how asian americans necessarily fuck?

but the appeal of hamamoto’s assumption is something i personally struggle with. i think there once was a utopian sentiment among a lot of diaspora asians in fandom (myself included, at various points over the past few years). the idea that look: we can write about asians! like us! we can write about asians who are queer! like us! and the stories we’re inspired by, are like… good to read. and the joy that this can bring is something that, pure and simple, is hard to ignore, even to the most irony-poisoned “i’m over representation as a goal” asian (myself included, at various points over the past few years. lol). 

the sentiment is seductive, right? we can write stories about us, for people like us, grounded in the culture we grew up hearing about and/or living in. this is an idea that gets bandied around in fandom at large too—but imagine feeling at times as alienated by white queer fandom as you do from cishet programming. 

but there’s two criticisms of this that have long complicated my desire for representation of that “authentic” sexuality. the first one is something that’s become obvious as danmei and c-entertainment fandom has grown. a lot of people are attracted to it because of a toxic idea of who “us” constitutes. 

that is, let’s be real—part of the fantasy of it all for some is that these casts consist of pale, skinny, nonblack east asians. like i don’t think it’s an accident that the rush of love for asian media exports rose alongside greater pushes for diversity in american media. this is something that’s much more explicit in anime fandom; but let’s not pretend that the relentless colorism in danmei fandom is an accident, or wholly attributable to the source material. for both a segment of white as well as asian people in fandom—it’s part of the point. 

the second criticism is an extension of nguyen’s—namely, that we can’t really pretend that there’s some untouched version of our self and sexuality that exists outside of observers, outside of our experiences with racism, outside of the history and the structures that built our present. 

so, let’s take one of his examples: brandon lee. umm not the brandon lee you’re thinking of. the gay porn star with the same name. if we read his oeuvre as a successor to sum yung mahn’s (the porn actor whom fung covered), we can learn some interesting things. 

first: back to his name. brandon lee’s name is a reference to that brandon lee, bruce lee’s son. nguyen points out, again, the significance of the martial arts genre. as fung did, nguyen unpacks how martial arts is the one venue in which asian men have ever been portrayed as desirable to american audiences. 

now, for the record, i am aware that martial arts-related genres are also popular in asia. mxtx’s novels were runaway successes even before her international popularity became notable. what i’m trying to point out here is the predictability of these fantasies. the eventual international success ought to be tinged with a little “oh of course these would be the type to take off.” 

the gay asian porn white people enjoy and make has looked the same for forty years. this is something that all those xianxia explainers in 2020 missed: those arcane oriental rituals of dominance and submission and hierarchy and punishment and violence aren’t a barrier to entry for white audiences—they’re oftentimes the big erotic point. 

anyway, nguyen is just pointing out that brandon lee’s porn name is a remasculinization strategy attempting to evoke asian virility rather than any of the other traditional stereotypes. 

second, onto his videos themselves. unlike his pornographic predecessors, brandon lee had managed to eke out (or realistically, someone corporate determined it marketable) a distinct asian american masculinity. and it’s like someone tried to sexualize the oft-heard refrain, “too asian for americans, too american for asians.” in his “asian” genre videos, he and he alone gets to be american. nguyen explains this by way of listing some of his professions in these videos: 

he is an american real estate agent to the japanese house buyer; he is the new owner of the boy brothel, where other asians are sex workers; he is a porn star, a role model for another asian character’s porn ambition.

a big part of brandon lee’s marketing was this “he’s not like the other asians” appeal. oh, he’s a top, oh his dick is bigger than you’d expect, oh he’s got this babyface but look how he fucks. (note that the actor as a biracial [white] filipino man also enjoyed a level of ethnic ambiguity that many of his costars lacked.) the way we know it worked is he eventually started getting cast as just another white twink top. so he could be the masc asian among classic fobby bottoms, or he became the one guy of color in a video, his difference unremarked upon, even as his body was marked by contrast.

third: you may be going “i thought this book was about BOTTOMS. brandon lee is a top.” yeah hold on. so brandon lee took a break from porn for a couple years. and when he came back in 2004, he was even more masc looking. but by 2005 he was also a bottom. nguyen recounts the whole plot (“plot”) of that comeback, the 2005 wicked.

the whole concept of it was that brandon lee was playing himself… that is, his fictionalized porn persona, diva-fied. the fictional brandon lee has an intense ego, and a refusal to bottom that meant he wasn’t getting the jobs he wanted. he’s visited by the ghosts of porn past and present, who help brandon lee realize that teamwork is magic, or something. with their encouragement, brandon lee finally bottoms… and loves it. 

now, as nguyen acknowledges, challenging tops to bottom is like. a common trope in gay porn. this in itself is not notable. what is fascinating is how dramatically his porn persona changes from pre-wicked to post-. wicked retroactively casts his top persona as hysteric and bitchy, with a decidedly affected masculinity—it feminizes it. and the roles brandon lee took afterward aren’t the “all-assimilated, all-american twink” anymore. 

he began to inhabit the more “stereotypical” roles that were once reserved for his asian bottom counterparts: think accented english and racialized professions. all of a sudden, he wasn’t the protagonist anymore, but an extremely campy villain. 

nguyen is invested in this being not all there is to it—like, forget what white people get out of it for a minute. what would an asian person watching it get? because, as nguyen points out, lee is clearly having fun. and the fakeness of lee’s accent aside for a moment, let’s be real here: even ”inconvenient” or “embarrassing” asians (with regard to the futile assimilatory fantasy) do have sex and feel good doing it. 

and there is something to be said for pleasure and sexual agency as goals in themself. stepping aside from the narrative aspect of porn as well, we should be clear that performing bottomhood in porn even logistically doesn’t really resemble bottoming in real life. nguyen recounts lee’s interview about his first time bottoming on camera: 

lee replies that unlike in real life, you can always say “cut!” when bottoming in front of the camera. he goes on to say, in real life, “i just take it,” whereas on a video shoot, “i had time to get used to my partner.” 

this discrepancy means we can’t just limit our analysis to just “brandon lee got more stereotypical roles, which means he had less agency.” the man does exist outside of the narrative roles he played.

but i do want to be clear here that affecting an asian accent and roleplaying a laundromat owner to have sex, is not like. a liberatory project. let’s not get carried away here. self-orientalization is not going to save us lol.

——————– 

to unify these two points, nguyen has a quick reference to yiman wang’s 2005 work on “yellow yellowface” that i think is worth following up on. wang is writing about anna may wong’s legacy. she argues that it’s important to reevaluate it, because a lot of scholarship—and popular opinion of anna may wong—had to do with how she did or didn’t fit into stereotypes like “the dragon lady.” as wang phrases it, “simply fitting them into an a priori asian american cognitive map.” 

which for the record, has kind of been my project here with my study of porn. which i won’t apologize for. if we don’t even have the map, it’s easy to get turned around into “everything i like is good, and everything i dislike is bad.” 

anyway, wang argues that contemporaraneous reception of wong’s acting, while positive, tended to assume that it was “mimetic instead of performative.” and hollywood at least saw her as unproblematically and authentically chinese—despite being third generation chinese american. i’m cutting out all the orientalist prose but you can imagine what they said about her. and while contemporaneous chinese press also saw her as nonproblematically chinese, they also um. often completely fucking hated her for the roles she took. in response to a photo of her in a feathered headdress: 

“the so-called chinese film star wong liu tsong who is traveling in america—how can she represent china in this way?”

this, wang points out, is a two step process on both china and euro-america’s part: 1) “wong was consistently identified and conflated with her roles” and 2) “these roles were seen as directly reflecting the orient.” 

it’s fascinating to look at how white actresses could affect her iconic hairstyle and on-screen mannerisms and be praised as performers—the assumption was always, this must be natural for wong, but talent for anyone else. but again, not to shit on third generation chinese americans (am sort of one lol).... but anna may wong was one in a time when information about china in america was mediated by like. fucking. pearl buck. she was making shit up too!!! 

and not necessarily in a wholly regressive way—wang offers a really sharp reading of the 1930 piccadilly, the flame of love to make the point that wong deliberately and subversively was able to smuggle her own commentary about her onscreen performance compared to the character she played. so her reenactments take on an ironizing tone to any observer willing to credit her with the ability to do so.

but wang notes that there’s a danger here: what happens if no one realizes? have you just been doing all that for nothing? now, as you may be expecting at this point, wang uses m. butterfly to make a point. look, i’m trying to capture asian american studies to you right now!! it’s not complete unless you get the grasp that this play/movie has on people. anyway, wang’s whole point is that m. butterfly is about how you die if you can’t recognize the counterstrategies deployed by people affected by orientalism lmao. 

and wang has a quote from ien ang that i want to close my discussion of her piece with: 

in short, if i am inescapably chinese by descent, i am only sometimes chinese by consent. when and how is a matter of politics.

anyway to be clear, wang’s piece isn’t about “therefore you should do this.” her argument is “well i think wong did this.” so i don’t think—as i think she would agree lol—that this yellow yellowface is the answer to our questions, which if you’ll recall thousands of words back basically boil down to “so what asian people supposed to do with all this?” 

but analyses like these, and like nguyen’s do kind of coalesce into one thesis. and it’s that there’s a point, they seem to argue, at which you simply just have to take the gay asian subject as he is. 

as celine shimizu writes in her iconic 2005 “the bind of representation: performing and consuming hypersexuality in miss saigon,” “it would be futile to speak for the ‘asian american woman spectator’ as there is no single desire, projection, identification, or coping mechanism that can be declared for any ‘us.’” we instead have to talk about the set of relations that form against the backdrop of the pervasive perceptions affecting asian american women. her analysis of the production and the reception of miss saigon is so so so so good. you really should read this one. 

she ultimately makes the point that in her framework, any representation “is understood as misrecognition, especially for marginal subjects.” if we understand each and every production as a “site of power relations… as a map of historically situated relations made evident” we’re better able to understand the contested desires and identifications we feel in response to the panoply of imperfect images we receive—and how still others can mis/interpret them. 

so yeah. i know that’s not helpful by the way. maybe all this is helpful if you want to know how to write better criticism. but that’s… about it. like, what is anyone supposed to do now? 

it’s frustrating because nguyen’s book (while excellent!) sometimes feels too broadly reclamatory. this is something i often struggle with.

we don’t want to relegate the parts of us that are easy to stereotype or denigrate to the uh. proverbial closet. like, we don’t want to live our lives worried about our every desire being good representation. 

but we also feel an obligation to ourselves and our communities. at some point we can’t throw up our hands and say “well it’s fine as long as i personally feel good or profit from doing it!” [or to take the bit even farther, “well what if i LIKE being affected by racism? then what?”]

and a lot of times in my essays i end up arriving at the inevitable problem of “well how do we solve racism. how do we feel alright in a racist system.” and it’s like. whoa there. um.

the solution obviously isn’t just capitulating to the white scripts for asian porn i’ve rehashed again and again. it’s not taking refuge in assimilation. it’s certainly not yellow yellowface lol. we’re left with this wiggly handed, we do the things we like and we try not to harm others in the process. i don’t know. 

and in this particular instance, we… try to reaffirm the attempts at independent sexual subjectivity of people of color while also acknowledging the white appetites that constrain our imaginations. maybe. 

——————– 

final note:

i use “asian american” a lot here because i am one and also because it rolls off the tongue a lot faster than “diaspora asian living in a euro-american country,” which is more technically what i mean. i hope everyone can either forgive me or let me know what a catchier phrase is lol. sorry to the canadian (richard fung) and australian (ien ang) i grouped as american in the meantime.

#x

[seaofpoppies]

#poppies #floral photography #floral #floral enrichment #poppy feild #oriental poppy #floral pink #the floral odyssey #floral odyssey

[lyselkatz]

This happened last night, well, not exactly...

...☕?/commission

A coup took place in my brain's parasocial bubble last night, dà-Chéng stopped by in a dream, all charm and smile, fake-pouting and complaining that I've been neglecting him lately (and kicking YáoYao out) 😆.

Then I woke up to this nice photoshoot so I felt compelled to move a drama of his up my watch list and started binging An Oriental Odyssey 盛唐幻夜. If that's what the Universe wants me to do... Who I am to refuse appreciating Zhèng YèChéng's good acting, very nice original voice and handsome face? 🤭

#fu jiuyun #di feisheng #love of thousand years #the killing of three thousand crows #mysterious lotus casebook #cdrama #fanart #lyselkatzcreations #cdrama crossover #fandom nonsense #lysel's ramblings #chibi #that will keep my brain entertained before the next episodes of A Journey To Love

[dick-helmet-magneto]

#tbr #reading list #bookblr #books #reading #polls #book polls

[haggishlyhagging]

Because women have been taught to believe that men have protective feelings toward women (men have protective feelings toward their functions [property], not other human beings!), we women are shocked by these discoveries and ask ourselves why men took and continue to take advantage of us.

Some people say that men are naturally, or biologically, aggressive. But this leaves us at an impasse. If the values of society are power-oriented, there is no chance that men would agree to be medicated into an humane state.

The other alternative that has been suggested is to eliminate men as biologically incapable of humane relationships and therefore a menace to society. I can sympathize with the frustration and rage that leads to this suggestion.

But the proposal to eliminate men, as I understand it, assumes that men constitute a kind of social disease, and that by "men" is meant those individuals with certain typical genital characteristics. These genital characteristics are held to determine the organism in every biochemical respect thus determining the psychic structure as well. It may be that as in other mental derangements, and I do believe that men behave in a mentally deranged manner toward women, there is a biochemical correspondence, but this would be ultimately behaviorally determined, not genetically.

I believe that the sex roles—both male and female—must be destroyed, not the individuals who happen to possess either a penis or a vagina, or both, or neither. But many men I have spoken with see little to choose from between the two positions and feel that without the role they'd just as soon die.

Certainly it is the master who resists the abolition of slavery, especially when he is offered no recompense in power. I think that the need men have for the role of Oppressor is the source and foundation of all human oppression. Men suffer from a disease peculiar to Mankind which I call "metaphysical cannibalism." Men must, at the very least, cooperate in curing themselves.

-Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey

#ti-grace Atkinson #female oppression #male violence #sex roles #male domination #male oppressors