sweet lad

okay here’s the abstract, in case you want to hear their own words what the essay is about. 

now, the first thing i am going to get mad about (this is lateral asian american rage. so it’s okay) is actually the epigraphs. i know. we didn’t even get into the actual article before i got pissed off. but i think it really summarizes my gripes with the piece. 

the thing about these two epigraphs is that they directly contradict each other. steven yeun implicitly asserts that “nobody else” thinks about asian americans. but the essay the audre lorde quote comes from contains the following passage — which is cited later in eng and han’s essay, for the record — that: 

When I speak of women of Color, I do not only mean Black women. The women of Color who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us. If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister’s oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman’s voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed. 

so basically we have an asian man’s assertion that no one else thinks about him immediately juxtaposed against an essay by a black woman who is deeply concerned with the plight of all women of color. the irony is unremarked upon.

now, i am not trotting out audre lorde as a rhetorical move to go “see! black people care about asian people! asian-black race relations are rosy! checkmate!” but rather, i suggest that that steven yeun’s perceived feelings of rhetorical alienation from other people of color are in no small part due to his lack of familiarity with black feminists and other people who are deeply committed to the liberation of all people. 

i am not speaking on his lived experiences. lord knows i’ve had upsetting incidents with other people of color, including black people, regarding my race. but individual acts of harm do not change the reality that the reason i am able to speak on my experiences and theorize my oppression is due to the hard work of black scholars and activists like audre lorde. it is myopic, ahistorical, and anti black to pretend otherwise. i owe a vast intellectual debt to her, as well as writers in her tradition.

this is the shape of my dislike for the essay: you can not complain about the fruit of black activism against a white supremacist society (including the hypervisibility of black people) while simultaneously benefiting from the theoretical and real life gains it has achieved. again, this is not to say that you can’t criticize anyone black, to once more address a liberal asian american objection. this is to say that you cannot enter a conversation you have not been paying attention to, and confidently assert that 1) no one has mentioned you and 2) others are to blame for your inattention. (this is a criticism aimed at steven yeun, to be clear. critique of eng/han will come in due time.) let’s all read more, okay? 

now, you could argue that eng/han are aware of the tension between the two quotes, and that’s why they chose them. but their uncritical deployment of yeun’s sentiment later on in the essay means that someone needs to make the tension explicit, and it looks like it has to be me. 

alright. let’s try to make it past page one now. eng/han summarize beef (2023) as introduction, then they get to the thesis relayed above in the abstract. whatever. my main gripe is the composite case history that is central to the piece. 

look. i am aware that composite case histories are normal and good. patients probably should not be able to read a piece and see their deepest feelings flayed out on an international stage. there’s like. ethics and shit. my criticism is merely that this particular composite case history fails because it conjures up a person so racked with contradictions that she is incoherent. to be fair, real people are in fact also that contradictory. i mean, their piece is literally arguing that the racial dynamics that asian americans internalize are bad for them psychically. but i want to look at the rhetorical effect created by this impossible woman, and i argue that she is deployed in a way that i find disingenuous. 

let’s get into it. who is the patient? her name is clara, she’s 31, chinese american, and a wealthy professional (“middle manager at a prestigious financial firm”). she seeks therapy in fall 2020 in response to covid-19, violence against asian americans, and the trump presidency. it’s also important to note the context of this being immediately after the george floyd uprising. clara is incredibly stressed, depressed, and anxious. this is a pretty recognizable portrait, in my view. while eng/han never really get into class dynamics in the piece, other than that, this is a relatable experience to many asian american patients. 2020 was a difficult year. 

they relay her anxieties around her job, the racism she faces (being passed up for a promotion), and her endless guilt. but clara decides to try to make a difference. 

okay, before i comment on any of this, i want to draw your attention to the syllabus she creates. that’s pretty cool. social justice reading lists are awesome. now, i’m going to skip ahead to the next page before returning to the above passage. 

do you see the problem? 

it’s basically this: why the hell is clara leading a BLM group if she only reads books by white people? how the hell did she create the syllabus? how come at no point was she able to connect with the books by black authors that she recommended such that she still believed the only real literature was white? 

the answer of course is probably that she isn’t real!!!!! she’s the composite of many patients. and it’s likely that one/some patient(s) were involved in workplace support groups, and one/some patient(s) were able to diversify their reading and develop racial self-esteem thanks to mirroring dr. han. but the fact that she is both simultaneously creates a deeply uneven portrait of a woman. 

the problem with her lack of racial self-esteem, the reason why she doesn’t assign texts by asian authors in the support group, is clearly not that she is taught to minimize her suffering vis a vis black americans but that SHE DIDN’T READ ANY ASIAN AUTHORS TO START WITH. clara. babe. your hypothetical mind is so colonized. and you can’t blame black people for that. 

now. let’s pretend for a second that the composite case history was a little more realistic. what if clara really did exist, contradictions and all? there is a case to be made that someone does identify with clara. they feel they can only talk publicly about anti black racism because racism against asians is less serious, and yet they are deeply wed to white culture and values which inhibit their flourishing (setting aside for a moment that most asians dgaf about anti blackness clearly.) this person is plagued with what we’ll call “asian guilt.” it may be valuable for this person to hear: “wake up! embrace your own culture! live with pride, dignity, and a commitment to ending all oppression!” 

but the essay is so committed to clara’s psychological state, its validity, and its causes, that it kind of.... fails to do that. for instance, much later on in the essay, eng and han reflect on the asian american subject writ large: 

i’m cool with the first part. asian americans do often hold both righteous rage and culpability in our racist society. but then we bring steven yeun out again. and we know how i felt about him. the phrase that stuck with me was “commensurate racial reciprocity.” and i want to sit with that a moment. what does that look like? what, if anything, do black people owe asian people? 

my answer is to that question is simply this: asian people are owed the dignity and basic consideration that all humans deserve. so in turn i ask eng and han: is your point that black people as a whole do not give asian people basic consideration? or is your point that black people as a whole owe asian people more than that? because either of those points are unsubstantiated by the essay. for instance, careful readers will have noted the footnote to that clause. what is that footnote? 

it’s the surprise tool that is helping us later: the audre lorde quote about how, while difficult to hear, she must pay attention to the specificities of oppression of non black people of color. so this quote does the awkward work of simultaneously accidentally disproving that literally “nobody thinks of asian americans” as well as serving as proof that “well audre lorde says black americans must care about asian americans. so.” is audre lorde exceptional in her empathy and racial solidarity? is she being used as a theoretical cudgel against other black people? we never quite figure that out. 

this is the problem. there are other sentences in here that directly contradict themselves. how does “nobody else [think] of you” while also you “[have] to hold a vision of [yourself] in relation to how both Blacks and Whites view [you].” clearly people are thinking about you, if you’re internalizing their projections. gotcha man. okay, in all seriousness, this is likely a failure of word choice. perhaps “nobody else thinks about your subjectivity” is what the authors mean. that is, people think about you, but don’t care about your psyche. but then the argument for “commensurate racial reciprocity” falls apart. because dooooo asian americans care en masse about black americans’ psyches? well. 😬. the argument plays on the double meaning of “thinking” of someone, offering a double standard to asian americans. it’s a view of a world wherein we all care about racial solidarity, and no one wants to extend it in return. which is. self-evidently false. go outside. 

the thing that’s heartbreaking about this argument is that it almost works. let’s return to clara for a second. i cite in my recent essay on rage, the one that got me thinking about this piece again, the bit in this essay where clara reflects on a childhood memory: 

now, aside from the use i put it to in my essay, i also find this anecdote interesting because it was incited by clara connecting to and elaborating on toni morrison’s sula. there is probably something really interesting you could argue about complicity, anger, and the development of black feminism, and why clara might connect to it as an asian american adolescent. this essay is already too long, so i’m not going to do it. michelle stephens’ response to the eng/han paper kind of does it. go read that. but for me this was emblematic of a moment where clara’s consciousness of interracial solidarity and connection is attempting to form, but is sabotaged by a racist white teacher and unremarked on by asian american observers. 

eng and han repeatedly gesture towards the formation of an asian american “us,” one in which an intersubjective alliance must form between asian americans in order to externalize our rage, rather than internalize it. but i argue instead that an intersubjective alliance between asian americans and only asian americans relies on denying the porosity of race (for example, what about black asian americans? should they just go fuck themselves?) and the denial of the harms that our rage has created for black americans in the past (including #stopasianhate, the movement that clara found so radicalizing, and its reliance on invoking “public safety”). 

i leave you with some final words from the audre lorde essay both eng/han and i have been referring to: 

I am not free while any woman of Color is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. And nor is any one of you. 

and i charge that we as asian americans have a duty to live by this, just as others do, with an awareness that our communities in turn have often rendered black and indigenous people in america less free. and that should we seek “commensurate” racial reciprocity, we must first evaluate what commensurate would look like, in that light.

---

now, addressing some final possible objections to attempt to stave off bad faith criticism. because if eng and han can make up people to make a rhetorical point so can i.

“is this your socialization as an asian american expressing itself? are you minimizing your feelings of racial rage because you’re concerned about the optics of expressing it against black americans?”

i think that any theory of racial triangulation in asian america that doesn’t address our complicity in anti black racism is deeply flawed. and this piece does not do that. 

“is this essay of yours motivated by an oedipal desire to kill your psychoanalytic father (david eng)?” 

yeah sure what the hell. 

“michelle stephens, the caribbean american theorist they cite on the dynamic of white guilt-black rage wrote a response to this paper (“undoing the dissociation of the unthought subject”) and she thought it was fine. why are you doing all this?” 

i thought her response essay was a good extension of this theory that avoided the pitfalls that i critique here. so what her essay actually proves is that better theory is possible, not that eng/han are unimpeachable. 

“do you think their essay shouldn’t have been written then?”

no like i’m glad it exists. i think an independent theorization of asian american subjectivity is vital and urgent. i just wanted to change the conversation around this particular paper a little. 

---

I once wrote, discussing whitewashing in fandom and the public spectacle it produces: 

but the fact of the matter is that despite all this–i do feel [pain], and i feel compelled to evoke it. maybe it’s some sort of petulant resistance to theory/via theory. i cannot prove to you anything i say about my own experience of pain; i talk around the shape of the pain and the places we have warped around it. 

It is almost grotesquely vulnerable, in retrospect. That is the performance that made sense, in response to injury. I hurt. Let me tell you how. Please believe me. I offered no steps for redress. I think I already knew, at twenty-one, something I feel more acutely at twenty-five: public vulnerability often just gives people more ways to hurt you. I did not want to be disappointed again. I think I wrote it anyway, even anticipating it would change nothing, because I wanted to make visible that there was an emotional toll to whitewashing. I wanted at least to cry out in pain, to do my due diligence as a victim of sorts, even if I don’t think of myself in those terms. 

There is no catharsis for me in that essay anymore. Noble suffering has little appeal to me anymore, emotionally as well as practically. Now that I rarely post publicly, I express myself more honestly as well as, frankly, rudely. On private accounts, I mock fanartists who lighten the hair and eyes of their favorite characters. I ridicule fanfiction writers whose fantasies trivialize the suffering of people of color (whatever type of fantasy you’re imagining right now, it’s worse). I vent my frustration. But paradoxically, the more I express myself, the more powerless I feel. Because when it comes down to it, I’m just a hater. 

Nietzsche calls this ressentiment. In Genealogy of Morals, he names “a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge.” This concept has often been used in popular discourse today to put down what its detractors might call “grievance studies,” laughingly imagining modern social justice as nothing but a “slave morality” that emerges out of jealousy towards the white upper class. 

But I think there’s something productive to salvage from this term. I turn next, actually, to Frantz Fanon. Brief note here: I am not comparing fandom racism to the institutions of slavery or colonization that Fanon critiques in their violence, dehumanization, or intensity. Rather, I am suggesting that since we already have a theorist of psychic structures that impose feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, and resentment in racialized subjects, we should look to him. 

Anyway. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon argues that the Hegelian lord-bondsman dialectic (in which “Self-consciousness exists by itself and for itself,” always seeking recognition from the other) fails to be applicable in Fanon’s contemporary Black context. After all, while Hegel acknowledges that mutual recognition is impossible in an unequal relationship, in Hegel’s dialectic, it is the lord’s desire for recognition from the bondsman that elevates the bondsman. There is no such desire for recognition by white men vis a vis their Black slaves; moreover, when some semblance of recognition ultimately came in the form of abolition, it tended to be a unilateral white decision rather than the result of the dialectic being resolved. 

Fanon continues that while white men will claim there is no difference between them, Black men will know keenly that there is. Those who have been subjected want a fight, Fanon writes. “Unable ever to be sure whether the white man considers him consciousness in-itself-for-itself, [the Black man] must forever absorb himself in uncovering resistance, opposition, challenge.” He urges that therefore one must not be simply reactional, trapped in that cycle of constant opposition, but actional for liberation to occur. He cites active revolutionary movements around the world in his conclusion, building solidarity with those who fight against oppression everywhere. 

Now it feels very dramatic to recount all this to you. I suppose I am trying to legitimize and universalize my desire for a fight today, while acknowledging its limits. I have been trapped in a cycle of constant reaction for the past five years. I see something, I get angry, and I vent my frustration. I see something, I get angry, and I vent my frustration. This is fine, on some levels. This is kind of how social media keeps you engaged in general. And I don’t think the answer to my problems is to follow Fanon literally and take up armed struggle against people who draw Shen Qingqiu looking like green eyes white dragon. And, finally, fandom is inherently a space for reaction against a canon. The real question is whether I can do something transformative with my anger. 

The problem, of course, with that question is that it pisses me off. A lot of things do, and I’m not particularly sorry about it. But that question upsets me because it’s the responsible thing to do. I’m tired of being responsible. I manage my feelings as best I can. I phrase my complaints in ways that will make people think I’m reasonable. I write long vulnerable essays that I design to protect the very people I’m criticizing from being hurt the way they hurt me. 

And while I’m writing the most honest thing I can manage, I also feel that it’s the useless thing to do. While I’m writing a namedrop-y essay, let’s bring out Marx: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” And do my essays change anything? I don’t think they change anything more than my private venting does. I never intended them to change anything, actually. I wrote them because I wanted to feel less alone, and I wanted people like me to feel less alone too. But feelings can only get you so far. Especially when you can’t acknowledge all of them. 

How does change actually happen, then, if not through Tumblr essays? Realistically, we all need to learn how to speak so others will listen. The burden of minimizing one’s feelings in order to be taken seriously ought to fall primarily on white fans, to call in their friends when they inevitably misstep and to be called in, in turn, when they also inevitably misstep. I need other people to be willing to risk relationships and reputations to do the right thing. Which is a big ask. But I’m asking it this time. 

I didn’t even really want to write this essay. I actually wanted to write about how we perform race in digital spaces, with an eye to sinophilia, cultural appropriation, and extraction (I promise my take would have been new, for those of you who also thought you left those discussions behind in the 2010s). I didn’t want to write to white people, for once. I really wanted to spend time with a flawed text, pick apart its failures and slippages in meaning, and see what I had to say back. People of color rarely get to “talk back” in these spaces, and that enforced silence on racial performance is very frustrating to me for a lot of reasons, including selfishly because I find critique to be as central to my writing practice as my creativity.

But I’m writing this instead because things got in the way. I had the same hesitations that I did four years ago when I wrote the essay I referenced above. I was concerned, like many fan studies scholars before me have been, with the ethics of directing undue scrutiny to a single amateur fan. Because, as always, others’ safety supersedes my anger. Which, naturally, made me angrier. Which, therefore, led to the creation of a piece where I could express it, theorize it, and do nothing about it. 

“IDK GUYS I JUST FEEL SO CASTRATED SOMETIMES.... “ I wrote this afternoon, in reference to my own anger. “and i know that's just what being asian american is like. but who's up feeling castrateddddddd,” I continued, a tongue in cheek reference to David Eng’s Racial Castration (which is more about Asian American emasculation generally). I was mostly talking about my feeling of powerlessness and my inability to feel like a whole person because of it. But there’s a much more relevant recent piece by Eng, one he did with Shinhee Han: “Racial Rage, Racial Guilt: The Uses of Anger in Asian America.” In it, they extend the historical framework of Asian racial triangulation between Black and white labor to the psychic dimension. Asian Americans, they argue, tend to internalize and carry the guilt and shame of others. 

I’m still working out how I feel about the piece as a general theory, for the record, because I have serious concerns with how they position Asian interests in relation to Black interests (if the two can be so wholly separated). But part of the composite case history they relay was deeply affecting to me. Clara, the composite patient, at one point confides in Han: “I am sick of beating myself up for every single thing I do. I live in terror of making mistakes. Even when I do something well, I doubt myself and don’t trust myself.” When the two explore the feeling, it is rooted in a childhood accusation of plagiarism, in which her teacher believed she was not capable of creating high quality writing because English is her second language, while her parents deferred to the teacher. Although eventually exonerated, the hurt stayed. “When I suggested that all this time she had been holding her parents’ guilt for failing to protect her innocence as well as the teacher’s shame projected onto her, Clara burst into tears,” Han explains. Clara struggled to feel angry, as she deserved to, because she internalized the consciences and projections of others. She is a receptacle for others’ emotions; this is true on multiple levels since she is also a constructed case history. She was born to hold others’ feelings. 

I don’t just struggle with the affect of anger, one’s reaction to a threat. I also struggle with shame, or one’s reaction to failure. It is rooted in my feeling that I have failed to change anything. I once hoped that if I simply catalogued enough, learned enough, wrote enough, that the knowledge would find a way to coalesce into some meaning so undeniable in its truth that— Look, it’s an infantile fantasy. All that really resulted is that I have an incredible mental Rolodex of racist Twitter artists that I can never put to use. Knowledge wasn’t power itself, just knowledge of power. 

The marketplace of ideas is a bullshit concept. But I wasn't even trying to win in it. I was approaching it obliquely, in some form of trickle-down narrative change. If I simply write good fic, characterization I like will win. If I simply write good essays, politics I like will win. It's only when I say my innermost desires plainly that it’s obvious to me how naive they are. Like, hooray, you’re disenchanted with incrementalism. Should we throw a party? Should we invite Lenin?

I’ve been circling the problem of catharsis in this essay. How will I help you process my feelings of rage and shame? (More importantly, how will I process them for myself?) What is to be done about any of this? In some ways, I gave the answer away halfway through: I need you to say something too, because there are a lot of people who don’t listen to me who will listen to you. This is true no matter who you are, reading this. So I suppose the reason this essay continued past that solution, is that I want to make visible the stakes. 

The vast majority of my posts are now on private accounts. I miss talking publicly, making new friends, seeing new art and fics and fannish joy. But the fact of the matter is that I cannot express myself freely as it currently stands. I am forced to manage others’ racial failures for them. I am not alone in this. Like, I’m not the only person who notices or experiences racism in fandom!!! The toll that your silences have taken is spread across countless people of color, who have slowly begun to withdraw from public life. Because, frankly, it’s embarrassing to love something so much that does not love you back. It is embarrassing to be hurt by something that never loved you at all. My heart is resilient enough to bear this. But we all have limits. 

Okay, that’s enough of “one day I’ll be gone and you’ll be SORRY!!!!!” 13 Reasons Why type bullshit. That’s my FOR REAL final expression of ressentiment, my desire to make other people feel the guilt and shame I do. It’s beautiful how writing can bring people together. Or something. 

I leave you now with something concrete you can do to temporarily allay that feeling, and materially help some of the most vulnerable people around us: some good friends over at @kfsf-initiatives are raising money to help a young man named Ahmed keep his community sheltered amidst adverse weather. Here is the link for the campaign. It’s very close to its goal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=943USDAM3Q2D8 It is efforts like this that keep me believing in the people that participate in fandom. I would like to help make our online spaces more equitable, and addressing people’s offline needs first is a prerequisite to that. Thank you. That’s all from me.

the TRUTH is embarrassing. i got into philosophy in high school because i did competitive debate and it was really popular at the time to argue shit like “there’s no point in debating at all as long as we’re engaging in capitalist frameworks. so whoever best deconstructs it in this round wins” and hope that your opponent wasn’t ready for the marx bomb. so i read marx, nietzsche, baudrillard, and so on. this probably scared the hell out of exactly one person who grew up in that same milieu, so whoever you are, sorry. 

i read more philosophy in college for classes, but about partway through i came to realize i did not care about the nature of truth or the meaning of goodness or life and other philosophical questions. i just liked making spurious arguments and calling things gay. by this point of course it was too “late” (it’s never too late) to do anything like change my course of study and so instead i just terrorized people by getting really into freud for fun and bringing him up at every possible opportunity. incidentally, why freud? well i read gender trouble and mx dr butler made him sound so seductive and exciting. like [guy who’s extremely depressed and dysphoric voice] what if you get a gender because of melancholic identification. and it has something to do with your mother. 

but doing a lot of self directed reading didn’t really come until i had started writing for fun and was continuously bumping up against the limits of my knowledge. for instance, i had written a version of my kpop fanfiction essay early on, but without having read david eng, i was reinventing the wheel. so when i encountered him it was transformative. the thing about theory is that yes i find it beautiful like literature but also. it’s also really a means to an end. a tool for making sense of the world, telling stories, making meaning, whatever you want to call it. 

SO. my personal history aside (i’m just sharing it because i find it funny) my number one suggestion is just to write. it doesn’t have to be original at all. you can just summarize things you find interesting. but once you start researching for fun—which can involve reading academic books, zines, blogs from former philosophy students, whatever—it becomes easier and more interesting to read. at this point, several years into my bullshit, i do also reference stuff i’ve already read. but actually, maybe half the time i cite something i got into it specifically to write that essay. imagine it like a cat bringing you a dead rat as a gift. except the rat is something new i’ve learned. 

this may seem unhelpful, considering that the one time someone asked me how to get into writing, i suggested reading. like. omfg bitch chicken or egg. PICK ONE!!!!! but reading and writing are like a conversation to me. you can and should listen to the existing conversation, but if you wanna have fun, you also can and should start talking!! the most important tip from THAT post imo is the suggestion to liveblog theory like it’s something with a fandom. screenshot your favorite lines. add reactions. make memes. i have terminal poster’s brain and that’s what helps me personally digest difficult things. 

How many works on AO3?

THIRTY SIX.... wow. it adds up. in my head it's like. ten. there are also a couple fics floating out there on a different secret pseud.

2. Total word count on AO3?

167,219. again, wow... it adds up.... this number is kind of low considering that i have THIRTY SIX fics (<5k each), but i could have written a novel or two in the past five years. but i didn't want to. so i didn't.

3. Top five fics by kudos?

shen yuan and original luo binghe’s epic adventure in the modern world - 3541 kudos

sweet as honey - 3398 kudos

put me in, coach - 2621 kudos

white amaranth, purple eggplant - 2139 kudos

two point perspective - 2086 kudos

well i suppose that tracks. it's kind of funny to me that all my top fics by kudos were in the year i started writing. did i peak with beginner's luck. but realistically these all benefited from being written relatively early on in the fandom. actually i had been convinced that scum villain fandom had PEAKED in 2019 and no one was going to read my shit. oh how the tables turn. now I'M the hag.

4. What fandoms do you primarily write for?

scum villain! and a couple other random fics for mxtx. but THIRTY ONE out of thirty six. are scum villain. again also there's my disowned lovechild fics that aren't mxtx out there somewhere.

anyway it's funny originally i thought i would just write a couple of sv fics and then move on to like. naruto. or fe3h. or whatever else i was thinking about in 2020. but now the characters are like old friends to me and it's very easy to imagine them in situations. i should really push myself out of my comfort zone. well i'm doing that for my fandom trumps hate gift. so!

5. Do you respond to comments?

i used to! they used to be my only outlet for talking about fandom. now i have fan friends and it's not all repressed. but the main thing is that a lot of my popular fics were written five years ago, so i don't have much to say in response other than. THANK YOU I LOVE YOU MWAH. i respond a bit more right after i post a fic when all my thoughts on it are fresh.

6. Angstiest ending?

the ones that are canon compliant. isn't that funny? every road leads to an end is i miss shen jiu whump lowkey, as told through ning yingying's eyes. the qing jing ghostbusters and the ten great mysteries of cang qiong mountain sect is i miss binghe whump. and the good, the bad, and the terror of the unjust is also "goodbye shen jiu" whump. well this one was supposed to be a comedy but i couldn't figure out how to make shen jiu stop abusing binghe so i just made it canon compliant.

7. Fic with the happiest ending?

my post canon fics! white amaranth, purple eggplant is about being depressed and getting a happy ending anyway. and forever hold your peace is about getting MARRIEDDDDDDD. so i'm very dedicated to sappy bingqius.

8. Do you get hate?

nope! everybody loves me. for now.

9. Do you write smut?

yes! i love physical comedy and what is sex, if not the ultimate act of physical comedy.

10. Do you write crossovers?

does the failed collaborative attempt at a saw fusion count? check it - the saw villain's self-saving trap.

11. Ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! Saettore did with Шэнь Юань, оригинальный Ло Бинхэ и их эпическое приключение в современном мире !

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

the aforementioned saw fusion fic. and also an exquisite corpse style fic with the now defunct cumplane server - con men. i kind of want to write co write something now. damn!

14. All time favorite ship?

i don't.... think i have one.... i love all my ugly children. bingqiu by numbers, but they still only make up 19% of my oeuvre.

15. WiPs you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

get home safe, my wangxian modern au set in the bay area. my wangxian juices aren't activated, and also i wrote that while missing home. then i moved home for a while and all the hazy romantic nostalgia evaporated. i feel like between what IS written and grandmaster ranked in demonic cultivation, i've gotten a lot of the "let's put the mdzs guys in san jose" juice out of me.

16. Writing strengths?

i think i'm funny. i like my dialogue. i like my fast pacing and comedic timing i have. i joke a lot that my fic at its strongest is really just stand up comedy.

17. Writing weaknesses?

everything else :) no seriously, i have a hard time slowing down a scene, building a setting, or even describing anything.

18. Thoughts on mixed language dialogue?

at first i used to translate everything - e.g. Shizun -> "Teacher" but for the past several years, i just do fandom house style where titles are untranslated. especially for modern aus, the bits that you would say untranslated even in an english sentence, those stay.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

scum villain! well i do also have a fe3h fic i was writing about the same time as my earliest scum villains. it was a post black eagles fic, where petra returns to brigid and becomes involved in masses of political intrigue and an arranged marriage. it was going to be a long fic, so naturally i ran out of steam and full pivoted to yaoi instead.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

atttt the moment. maybe because of recency bias. or because i've been thinking about it for literally five years, the entire time i've been writing fic. possession. she's my baby. this fic anticipated me going to grad school, and is so much fun to think about and theorycraft with friends about.