anon · 22d
on the off chance you find yourself a little more south, a howdy bagel paired with a museum of glass trip also goes incredibly hard. best of bageling to you 🫡
anon · 23d
omg as someone who has ran the pnw bagel circuit, i must recommend the za’atar bagel @ rachel's bagels. also literally any bagel @ old salt, simple but done to absolute perfection.
anon · 1mo
okay hi i can't really open twt rn so i can't really quote things verbatim and i also don't know the guys mentioned but i do remember coming across op's callout (?) post on my tl before yours and going, urgh, yeah, that's kinda weird, but your inquiry did make me go, hmm, why's that weird? like why do i have a problem with explicit rpf being written abt an 18 y/o when i consume so much of it myself, some of it even aging down the characters to high school age lol. when i really thought abt it it really came down to a knee jerk reaction to age gaps (even though the "grooming" is imaginary) and sexualization of minors (i think the emphasis on him being a minor in korea is funny tho like its okay to write e rated stuff abt him the moment he steps out of there/turn 19??). anyways yeah writing this out made me realize how nuanced this discussion is and while i do still personally find it kinda icky out of vibes (i don't really have a desire to fanfictionally explore the body of 18 y/o) i also don't think there's a moral highground you can stand on if you also consume rpf yourself.
and it is absolutely fine if you don't like it and don't wanna read it. like no one is everrrr gonna strap you to a chair and force you to read a fic you don't like. no one is ever gonna strap ANYONE to a chair and force them to read fic about themselves. i hate established relationship fics i find them boring and stupid and they annoy me. some of my good friends only write that. we soldier on. for a while i hated reading cheating in fic. it made me feel verrrryyyy uncomfortable. so i just... didn't read about cheating... there is so much content on the internet we will absolutely hate. the thiing that would make us unbelievably triggered, crying and throwing up, exists right now somewhere online. and there's nothing we can or should do about it--besides know what it is and how to avoid it. you can't cancel the world into something better.
thank u for sending this cause like. this is what i think we should all be trying to do more. just go ew nah and move on. also mind you no one has written fic about haru and wumuti yet. there's 15 fics in the xlov tag and most of them are haojui. like these people are literally pre-emptively setting rules in this fandom and it's icky. and dont even get me started on how they're super militant, more than most fandoms, and it's for the actual queerest kpop group on our radar. its giving queerphobia, "gays are predators so lets be reactionarily against anything even remotely devious sexually" conservative neotrad bullshit.
anon · 1mo
No shade but we can kinda thank the lockdown for bringing forth the abundance and renaissance of fanwork and fans in general, but at the same time multiple fandoms now seem to share the same issue of reactionary, policing fans who got into the space during that time, witch hunting everybody and trying to censor everything
im absolutely gonna talk about this in my essay and lowkey i think it is lockdown + long covid brain damage + they didn't get to rebel as a teenager because they couldn't socialize. but also i have seen some people born in 1998, 1996, 1999 talking this way and i am GAGGED i guess there are people who have always had the cop in their head but it's just getting way way way more prevalent now and i'm worried fandom and rps spaces will turn into this uncritical hivemind of good vs bad. spooky. do yall remember that anon i had like a year ago who at first came into my inbox talking about being uncomfortable w gunwook fic and then later on admitted in their own life because they felt like they looked younger than their age (19 iirc) they were intensely uncomfortable with the idea of anyone being attracted to them? and they had internalized that if anyone was attracted to them, they were a pedophile??? that made me so sad. who told them that, like they were literally groomed into thinking that way. it's not okay!!!!!!!!
anon · 1mo
Oh tea, thank you for that answer. It was quite enlightening. And I also wished people would have a civil dialogue about this bc so far mostly what I have seen when it comes to something like this topic is just everyone just branding someone as weird/harmful etc and the conversation doesn't go anywhere afterwards
i think people are afraid to think about this because if they give even an inch in the other direction kill bill sirens start going off in their heads because they've got a cop living in their brain that will arrest them for thought crimes. and that makes me really fucking sad cause most of these people are young and/or queer. like you more than anyone, more than ever, need to kill the cop in your head. but i also think some of it is outrage farming. it feels GOOD to get mad at someone online and be mad together with your other friends. the issue is just that eventually, because there is no set line between "bad" and "good" rps to these people, eventually they will start to turn on each other. maybe one of them wants to write a high school au one day. maybe one of them wants to write a sex act that's kinda violent or degrading. maybe one of them wants to write an idol as a murderer. none of these things are the thing we're arguing about but they could be a line for Someone. and since these people can't articulate why they dislike something but are so so scared of liking the "wrong" thing, they will support in the anger of someone else without really interrogating if it actually bothers them. and then we just kind of will do that until fanfiction is subpar and uninteresting. it's already happening and i'm over it lol
anon · 1mo
I have had this thought for a while and kinda (un)related to the previous debacle, but do u think there are no limits in fiction? And does it actually apply the same way in RPS?
there are things i personally do not like and judge people heavily for writing. for instance in my rentry i specify i don't want to interact w anyone who creates nsfw content about yujin from zb1. this is a limit i can place for myself, what i see, and who i interact with. but do they have the right to create that content? yes, and i will still defend it because once we begin to censor people's fictional content, there is no line we can draw. like right now, we could debate over whether or not explicit fic with hyj is considered CSM or not. so if it's debatable, would we just haul it over into the "bad" category just to be safe? what if then next week someone says that when i write an idol as trans, it's sexualizing trans peoples bodies, and we debate that, and then trans fic is thrown over to the bad category? then, what if a week later, someone comes to us and says it's wrong to genderbend and cisswap idols in fic. do we put the entirety of f/f fics in that "bad" category? then one day what if an author says they don't want any fanfiction written about their story. would we say you can't write fic about that story?
you see what im saying? unfortunately there is nothing that is universally bad. the fact that something exists or is done means someone didn't think it was too bad to create or do. there will always be that debate, but it's actively dangerous to begin drawing those lines when it comes to fiction.
the reason anything goes in fiction is precisely because it is fiction (even when it's about real people). if you don't like a fic you can close the tab at any time. there are tags to tell you what will happen. as you read, the story exists in your mind and therefore it's your responsibility to control whether or not you want to keep reading it. you literally can't be exposed to fic against your will. and neither can an idol!
we can agree on a line being crossed when that fiction comes into contact with the people who inspire it, but that should be true regardless of content. even once hyj is an adult, even once he's 35, he shouldn't read fic written about him. he should know, or be educated by someone close to him, that this is not something he should see and should avoid. this is not the responsibilty of someone creating fiction about him. imo it would be morally wrong for those two conflicting messages to come from the same person. the people who make fiction about someone can't also tell that person not to read it. but he, like anyone else, could choose to close the tab, to not search certain terms, to block websites. to do anything besides that would be to take away his agency, as well as the freedom of creation for everyone. and then we're just doing nazi shit. so yeah!
anon · 1mo
i don’t agree that haru is unshippable so idk if my thoughts would be useful to you.. but i’m very interested in ur essay!! 2 me it seems like these ppl are using “they’re 18 aka minors in korea” as a gotcha when irt haru… he’s japanese so like is that his belief as well. and these ppl being assumably american as well.. what does that have to do w us. and calling shipping grooming between members of ur group is wrong to me.. i’m sure there’s more nuance than i’m aware of but even if there’s a large age gap there’s no material power held against anyone in that dynamic. which seems inherent to grooming as a concept? age gaps are not inherently predatory between adults obviously which seems like common sense. these ppl also operate under the assumption like minors don’t experience romance or have sex at all.. while fully going thru middle and high school with both of those things happening in abundance LOL. it’s disingenuous while also just being wrong. by policing rpf/rpsers to this extent it comes off as conservative bc of like abstinence based sex education. idek if ppl are aware of that implication but that’s where my mind led me to.. that’s not the only reason and i don’t know a lot ab this to be completely honest but this is my little rant. let’s all have more discussions in good faith!!! and be nice to fic writers ♥️
"even if there’s a large age gap there’s no material power held against anyone in that dynamic. which seems inherent to grooming as a concept?" is totally right and i think is what we keep trying to say. grooming isn't just a status applied to a relationship if it fits certain parameters. we can't just say something would be grooming if it was two people who were not the same age, who met before one person was an adult, and who had a mentor mentee relationship. grooming is an ACTION that people perform regardless of age or experience gap. of course it's way easier to groom children and young adults so that's why we see a lot of survivors of grooming talking about their experience in age gap relationships. but that doesn't mean age gap = grooming. it's not like an algorithm that takes effect if your relationship hits all the necessary parameters, and thinking that that's how it's going to happen is really dangerous! grooming is a specific set of actions!
besides that, it's not real!!! wumuti is NOT grooming haru in real life! when we want them to kiss and fuck we are not ordering these real people to kiss and fuck. we are taking real life situations and experimenting with them in a fictional, hypothetical world that we choose to share with others. literally everyone does this. there is absolutely nothing about shipping these two guys that can materially make wumuti groom haru like it's just not possible.
so then to me it seems like (AND AGAIN I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM THESE PEOPLE HI!) what we're doing is essentially just thought policing. like it's bad to think of people a certain way because... it just is. but like. why? why is it bad? who makes this line of good or bad and why is it always the people who have the strictest line in the sand? the loudest, youngest, most conservative people get to decide what fanfiction tropes and ships are ethically correct??? nah!!! that's why it seems like a conservative impulse.
also like... i simply don't think these people have had sex as a teenager or middle schooler. because if they had this whole conversation would be so different. but these are covid-era teens who grew into adults that seem to be really misinformed, paranoid, and punitive when it comes to anything that doesn't suit their own morals. AND AGAIN i would love to be wrong, i would love to talk to someone about this and actually get to ask them questions but no one wants to talk to me about this so like what are we to do yknow.
anon · 1mo
this is very much giving "i'm getting off to arguing with people" hell nah
mmm sometimes i do that but this time it's cause im writing an essay and would really like to hear other perspectives besides mine. like i do think you're wrong but for me personally it's not really enough to just write a majority opinion off as "wrong" like i want to hear why they think it's wrong so i can further interrogate my own ideas and decide if the values leading me to this conclusion are working correctly.
i also wanna talk to you guys about it because its come up so many times but it never feels generative or worthwhile. like yall just shout at us, cancel us, and move on. realistically we're on the same side of the aisle on this. if we start from the baseline that CSA and grooming are horrible, and acknowledge that maybe we have to refine that definition together, at least we can actually do something with this outrage. im not really mad but it seems like yall are always mad. im just wondering if there's something we can do w that lol otherwise it's just gonna be you guys getting mad at us all the time and stressing yourselves out cause in the moment it feels good to have someone to be mad at online. so like... whats up!
anon · 1mo
can you explain how you DON'T see an issue with that stuff omg wtf
yeah actually i could lol! but first can you give me some more specific reasons why you think this is wrong so we can discuss them in more detail? this message is pretty vague. what about it is wrong, to you? i'm not asking because i want to fight, i just want to know exactly what to say to you, yknow? like on what basis do you think it's wrong? explain it to me like i'm dumb hahaha and then we can talk!
anon · 1mo
thoughts on unileague final/ahof?
i liked so many of the contestants but wasn't super invested in the show. i like the final lineup though i would probably replace chih en, daisuke, and jeongwoo. i'd put in kairi, li zhinuo, and kyungho or heejun. daisuke is good but he's 16 so he should cook a little longer. but honestly the group doesn't have a ton of yaoi potential imo so i prob will follow loosely depending on the music. i didn't like most of the songs they gave rhythym and since that's probably the direction they'll go i will prob not tune in... lol we will see. i haven't seen ep 8 or 9 yet and probably won't.
anon · 2mo
hi! thanks for your kind response to my last message. i get it if cia affiliation is a turn-off; i suggested cdt because it’s a decent entry point if you’re new to the world behind the great firewall, but if you’d rather look to other sources or rawdog weibo yourself, obviously that’s fine too.
of course you’re allowed to say you fuck with china. i’m really sorry if it sounded like i was saying you couldn’t. i’m not trying to make us seem like an unliveable hellhole lol. i guess i’m just paranoid because i’ve seen a lot of well-meaning western leftists sink into the trap of thinking the us is the only evil in the world, which makes them more likely to repeat chinese state propaganda on their behalf. but as long as you keep your critical thinking skills with you, you should be fine.
if you’re at the point where you genuinely believe 6/4 never even happened, then um…😬 i’m not sure what to say to you. like, nothing i say would change your mind. but that kind of denialism is a very easy way to piss people off, especially older folks from beijing, so if you’re wondering who you’d be hurting, that’s your answer right there.
on chinese imperialism: if you have any friends from hong kong, taiwan, vietnam, the philippines, anywhere else in the south china sea, tibet, altishahr & dzungaria, or inner mongolia, they might be good to talk to about this kind of stuff. you’d probably find them a lot more convincing than some random anon. if you don’t have any friends from those places, you can see if there’s a community centre or temple or mosque in your area where you can chat with some of the diaspora.
besides that, i guess my main tip would be to learn at least a little bit of mandarin chinese. i can’t emphasize enough how much you’re missing if you don’t know the language at all. what else…avoid falun gong at all costs lol, they’re a cult notorious for right-wing views. generally speaking, always listen to a chinese person before you listen to a white person. listen to ethnic minorities before you listen to han chinese. listen to working class chinese, especially any migrant workers, before you listen to wealthy urbanites. all that good shit 👍
haha thank u for coming back with some concrete tips for me! this is what i was loooking for for sure. i just answered a way longer message about this n don't wanna repeat myself but i do work with a lot of immigrants from china, taiwan, the phillipines, mongolia, central asia, vietnam, who talk about china in various ways based on their own political affiliations. honestly one issue i keep running into is that diaspora who move to america are inherently more pro-america. like they have drank the american kool-aid because they want to live here. they are also often upper middle class, since it costs a lot of money to imigrate here. this makes their political perspective sort of skewed and still a reflection of what i've heard a lot before. it doesn't mean i will discount it, obv, but it is super different from someone who has not chosen, or is unable, to immigrate here. i seriously would love to talk to chinese people who aren't han chinese, people who are working class, and people who are migrant workers. i don't think those people are on XHS from what i've seen--i heard it's a lot of middle and upper middle class han chinese women.
you're definitely right that my best bet is learning a bit of mandarin. otherwise, how am i really gonna know what's up? but for now my views are just views, my thoughts are just thoughts, and my opinions are still percolating. but again, as someone who is a communist, it makes sense i will sometimes have positive opinions about a large communist country. whether or not i get into it as deeply as some other people... i don't know if i am ever going to know enough to have a strong stance. i'd certainly like to get there! but there's so many barriers, mostly economic, to me being able to go to places and talk to people who will give me other perspectives.
anyway thanks for coming back and giving me more to think about!
anon · 2mo
hello! I want to encourage you to put some attention into learning more about China before you start falling into tankie rhetoric. China is an enormous country with thousands of years of history and billions of people living in it. I would ask you to think - how much do you know about China? what do you know about the demographics, about the generational gaps, about the difference between city and rural life, about the pop culture, about the average person's life? how much do you know about the history and present of the CCP?
it's absolutely true that the American government has vested interest in manipulating information about China, and it's true that there is a lot of casual sinophobic mindset and rhetoric within America because of the propaganda framing of China as "evil communists." I ask you to consider your current level of knowledge not because China is inherently Evil (or Good) but because it is a country full of people that operates like every other country full of people. the casual sinophobia in America means that people are very prone to exoticizing it in one way or another, but it is just a country - a country with a lot of thriving culture and subcultures, and with a lot of beauty, and with a lot of varied ways of life. it is also a country that has been under a communist dictatorship for most of the modern age, and that is currently under the absolute power of a dictator who has displayed interest in further restrictions of freedom.
I would encourage you to learn about the mass surveillance, censorship, ethnic cleansing, and protest-crushing under the CCP - especially the human rights violations against Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang and the repression of the Hong Kong protests. I would also encourage you to learn about the beauty of Chongqing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi'an, and so many other cities. there is so much life in China, because it is a country full of people who are alive. I'm not saying you need to have memorized a textbook in order to have an opinion about a place, but sometimes you need to learn and listen and understand before you start speaking. what I am seeing right now is a lot of Americans talking about China as either an evil unknowable state, or a benevolent cute-innocent socialist paradise - and both of those things are not just orientalism 101, they also flatten a huge complicated country into whatever narrative serves you as an American best. I think the more you can learn, the more you can actually understand about the reality of a place - and the less you are in danger of slipping into tankie rhetoric and disregarding the humanity of the people who are subjugated under the CCP
you're absolutely right that it's impossible to generalize a huge country, and it makes sense that from an american perspective once you unlearn sinophobic propaganda, it's easy to swing in the other direction and think of it as some flawless communist utopia. i'm not really operating through either framework. i'm able to look at some things tankies say and acknowledge they are true and i agree with them. i hear some of the things the people i know who live in china/have lived in china/hk/taiwan say that are critical of the govt and i believe those things too. the thing is, my political principles make me a communist, and china is a large communist country, so of course i am going to agree with some of the actions of their communist government.
i like that you're encouraging me to just learn more about china in general because i think that's what i would like to do. if you have any non-CIA, non-Voice of America resources that I can use to learn more, please send them my way.
i know it's not the same but i am cuban and was raised in a household where the only time we talked about cuba was when my grandma complained about the revolution, about communism, about the senseless killing and looting of the upper middle class. of course, i believed her--after all, she was there! she saw it happen! she left on a boat with only a suitcase and a newborn baby! but then once i got older, i was able to take a step back and look at outside perspectives. i realized my grandmother is and has always been extremely conservative, racist, capitalist, and traumatized--and that lens is not the one i want to look through. i realized i had to also value the opinions and knowledge of people who were not connected to cuba through identity. they were able to see things my grandma, from a rich upper middle class farming-owning family, was not. i'm sure my family benefitted from the slave trade, and i'm sure they underpaid their workers after slavery was abolished. a lot of their trauma came from the destabilization of their perfect life that was built on the backs of poor people in punishing conditions.
i'm talking about this because it's the reason i'm not inclined to take all my opinions of a place from the diaspora. if you had asked me as a member of the cuban diaspora if i was a communist, if i supported the cuban revolution, up until a few years ago i would have repeated the same lies and biased opinions my grandma told me!
i'm not saying that's exactly what you're doing here. i'm not saying that you're even wrong or i know more than you. that's not true and not really what i care about. what i am saying is there's a chance you're motivated to send this message because you can't take a step back and be objective. that's not a bad thing necessarily, but it does change how you view things, and why you'd choose to send me this message.
fwiw i'm not uncritical of tankies either because i find some of them are patronizing and cynical and obsessed with theory. but i keep being told to focus only on confirmed history (confirmed by who?), only on history that i've already learned, only on history reported by news outlets funded by the CIA, and i am not super interested in that right now. it's literally the only kind of history i've ever gotten on china. please understand i don't have an uncritical lens even if i talk like i do sometimes. i want to know the whole truth, the good and the bad. i just think it's impossible for me to not compare what i learn with the truth of living in america, and how america comes out worse every single time. like i cannot stress enough how so much of my unlearning of american propaganda is focused on how america is a singular evil in this world, genuinely. because of that, i can look at almost any other country and find the good things about it.
also this isn't just a specific focus i have on china. i also feel this way about cuba too. i've read and listened to a lot of info about cuba, but i know in the end i won't truly know what it's like until i go and see for myself. i'm excited to have the chance to unlearn things i thought would be true, to demystify this place that i was so propagandized about. hopefully i can get to china someday too and see the good, bad, and everything in between.
this has been an interesting topic to discuss w anonymous people for sure, but i would like it better if it was more generative rather than these "warnings" i keep recieving. i am well aware that i should be critical and question things. it feels a little patronizing to recieve these messages where you're well meaning but kinda talk down to me. i don't think i'm in danger of slipping into a place of no return idealogically. in future if you (or anyone else who wants to talk about this) want to send me a message on this topic, please come with some links to things i should be looking at, reading, listening to. if you don't want to do that i understand, but if you had the time to type this message out you could probably have made it shorter and just sent me a few articles.
also, my dms are open! i would rather talk about this with You, a Person, instead of someone anonymous on a website that won't exist in two months. have a good night!
anon · 2mo
hi, i'm a longtime follower on your priv but don't feel comfortable DMing, which is why i'm writing to you here since i'm not sure how else to reach you. you don't have to respond to this and i get it if this feels like overstepping, but i felt like i had to say something. with the recent hype around XHS, i noticed you recently RTed some accounts which minimize 6/4 (aka the tiananmen square massacre) or support the one-china policy. and as a chinese diaspora person who is a leftist but still has a healthy distrust of the ccp...please. please, try to keep a level head on your shoulders. you seem cool and adept at cutting through american propaganda, which is nice. but please know chinese propaganda also goes crazy. i get that it's exciting to talk to leftists from around the world, but we have our fair share of problems, and anyone who uncritically paints the PRC as some kind of fantasy socialist utopia should be viewed with skepticism if not outright contempt. a good rule of thumb is to remember chinese imperialism exists and is just about as awful as american imperialism. please learn to apply that lens if you want to speak on asian politics. if you really want to learn more about the PRC, i recommend china digital times and made in china journal; both have solid english-language coverage and analysis, and you can continue exploring from there. CDT in particular is great for learning about chinese memes and online culture. i genuinely think it's nice you're interested in learning more about us, but it's also important that you don't go hurtling off in a weird direction
hi!! ty for sending this message. ur right that i don't know a lot about chinese imperialism yet although i do know a bit about chinese propaganda and corruption. im honestly very open to learning from any source that doesn't have ties to the CIA. Unfortunately CDT is funded by and run by people affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a defacto department of the CIA. China Journal doesn't seem to share those affiliations, so I'll check that out. believe me when I say i'm trying to come into new information with an open mind, but at this time i've heard prevailing narratives from america, and even from chinese leftists, for my whole life that are being challenged. i obviously don't want to hear misinformation but i do want to hear the truth, yknow? it's so hard to find One Truth and i don't think i can, but i want to at least gather as many sides as i can and hunt down a truth that isn't state-sponsored in any way. i keep asking myself: who does it serve for me to believe this? who does it hurt? and my retweeting of some things from an account isn't an endorsement of everything someone says.
but thank you for sending this message, i am well aware that no country is a perfect country, and that no system with poverty exists without repression, and i do know that china implements state repression. however, it does seem like some of the things presented here might still be american propaganda, ngl!