r is for rotten

i don't really like it when western mythological terms are applied haphazardly to essentially unrelated ideas. this is a completely lost battle but a lóng is really not a dragon, it is its own thing with only surface level similarities

i especially dislike many works that try to fold all sorts of different mythologies into a single consistent schema because they tend to heavily privilege western conceptions in doing so- see 'dragonology' books twisting basically every mythical reptilian under the sun into the mould of 'a species of dragon', implicitly centring the beowulf-style firebreather as the default from which all other mythologies derive, or basically anything that does worldwide vampire bloodlines

relatedly a qílín is not a unicorn, a fènghuáng is not a phoenix, and a jiāngshī is not a vampire, and it can impede understanding when they're approached from the standpoint of being the 'chinese version' of these concepts from western myth

Feels like there's a significant intracommunity divide between those of us who were already living on the outskirts of life and those who see themselves as temporarily embarassed average citizens

Ok but when you say "restorative justice" do you mean "hegemonic power structures need to provide ways for people who've done bad things to reintegrate into society" or do you mean "you, personally, someone with no hegemonic power whatsoever, need to keep forgiving people who've hurt you forever" because those are like. Pretty different.

Do you mean community as in "broad coalition of people united by some shared material interests" or do you mean "Discord server"