爱上江厌离，温情，罗青羊，沙华铃和柳溟烟

hey can we talk. can we stop it with the white savior pinkwashing queer paternalism that white libs always seems to hold when talking about queer people/gender-nonconforming people from countries where gay rights isn’t a legislated reality (i.e. often developing countries/countries where the majority ethnicity is non-white).

you haven’t been on weibo, you haven’t ever been to China. you haven’t walked the streets of chengdu which is the unofficial queer capital in the country, you don’t know what slangs and jokes we use to talk about queerness.

you read whatever your war crime aiding and abetting news sources spoonfeed you because you never went out of your way to befriend Chinese people in real life, you accept whatever reality is easiest for you to stomach—that Chinese people, well, “the government and the mainstream social media” at least, are ontologically evil and are intolerant to a fault; that Chinese people are so different than you (who are so liberal and tolerant and queer and punk) that these “special few Chinese people who are queer” need YOUR approval and YOUR protection and YOUR help.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life living in China, I have family there. I have queer friends there. My parents had colleagues and friends who are officially or unofficially out at work. I met my first butch-femme lesbian couple in China. I met my first trans man uncle in China. A large part of my middle school friend group turned out to be queer and have found people who they care about and who care and protect them in turn.

The girls are back (from the grave)

This fact is probably more obvious to those who've read more xianxia novels (especially for Chinese readers, whom MDZS was geared towards), where demonic cultivation is a pretty common trope. Classically, “demonic cultivation” involves actual demonic actions, (ie. eating another cultivator’s golden core) - and MXTX deliberately used a subversion of that trope. Demonic cultivation in MDZS would require demons - something heavily lampshaded when Lan Qiren asks Wei Wuxian the difference between yao, mo, gui, and guai in the Cloud Recesses Study Arc. MXTX literally spoonfed the difference between demonic and ghost cultivation to readers in this scene, but I still see people perpetuating the belief that he was an actual demonic cultivator.

Demons come from living humans, so in the context of MDZS, the only true demonic cultivator we saw was Xue Yang, who use living corpses. Wei Wuxian only ever used the dead and resentful ghosts to do his bidding. The title of MDZS is a deliberate misnomer meant to act as commentary on how easily wrongful rumours and slanders spread, especially given how many criticisms tossed Wei Wuxian's way weren't even accurate - and somehow, 95% of readers fell for the same trap.

And yet no tears are shed as Palestinian archives and libraries are bombed.

Saint Porphyrius Church, built in 1150 and the 3rd oldest church in the world has been bombed.

It's not an accident.

Israel aren't simply killing Palestinians, they are trying to erase that there ever were Palestinians in the first place.

Destroying their livelihoods, trying to to destroy their culture and history and pretend this land was never there's.

It's easy to deny someone's existence when there's no record of them.

Which is why it's so important to look at the atrocities and bear witness to what's happening.

But to also recognise that Palestine is more than it's suffering.

There is a living breathing culture, of art, history, literacy which all come from the Palestinians.

Traditions they've carried for centuries.

So while we mourn the dead, we shall fight for the living. Fight for the preservation of their crafts, amplify their voices as they speak on their culture.