lil' neenja, big attitude

A few people have mentioned the latest fandom drama to me, involving harassments and potential loss of yet another author.

I just want to say, about this situation specifically, that wow. These two people handled this SO WELL. I’m just really proud of the author speaking up, keeping records, and making time to speak to (and listen to) the offending party and their sister. (Especially with respect to the sister, who honestly seems to have some very serious mental issues and/or neurodivergence that did not warrant a public stoning.)

I am dealing with drama in my own life right now that involves a lot of people who are, like, 50 and 70 years old, and no one is handling their issues as well as these two people did, with their willingness to communicate, confront the problem, and work on a resolution.

What I’d really like to emphasize about this entire episode is that harassment is in the eyes of the beholder. It’s very educational to read all the comments (go read the gDoc link) and realize how they add up to significant emotional distress and also to see how the commenter might have… perceived many of them very differently.

What this means to you, readers, is tread very lightly when you comment. What you think may be simply informative or slightly chiding can be landing with an impact you’d never fathom. Go read all the examples of the comments to understand how nebulous some of them can be if taken individually, but how they can also turn into a very damaging deluge.  (I mean, lots of them are clearly hateful, but some are not.)

Most importantly, I think: EXIT A STORY THAT IS MAKING YOU ANGRY. This seems like advice we all need tattooed on our inner wrists. When it goes somewhere you don’t like, don’t tell the author. Just exit.  If you are angry or hurt or feeling negative:  DON’T COMMENT.  BACK OUT.

What the fuck is all this? How the EVER-LOVING FUCK do you look at that long-ass google docs—WHICH, BY THE WAY, SHOWS THAT EVEN AO3 LOOKED INTO THE ISSUE AND BANNED ALL ACCOUNTS RELATED TO SHINO—and go, “idk~ i feel like this shows that ‘harassment is in the eye of the beholder’.”

Marine life specialists noticed a spotted eagle ray mother was having trouble and helped her deliver two baby rays 

Wouldn’t it?

Blacklivesmatter.carrd.co

Now try imagining how hard it is irl for Black mothers, and Black people in general. Each encounter with the police could end with our death, even if we did absolutely nothing wrong.

I think most of us deal with it—bc let’s face it, we have no other choice—but I’d be lying if I said that every single time I come into close proximity to the police, somewhere in the back of my mind there wasn’t always the thought: “what if …”

“what if today is the day” … “what if this cop had a bad morning” … “what if this cop doesn’t like black people” … “what if he thinks my phone is a gun” … “what if he thinks I’m acting suspicious” … “what if he needs to fill a quota” … “what if he mistakes me for some nondescript black man but I fit the description anyway” … “what if my car insurance payment didn’t go through and I don’t know about it” … “what if I have a taillight out” …. “what if he thinks I have a bad attitude” … “what if it was a rough day for me and I do have a bad attitude” … “what if there’s not even any cops around but a white person thinks I look out of place” … what if what if what if

Obviously I cannot speak for everyone who is Black, but these thoughts flash through my mind every single time I see a cop. Every time. Maybe it only takes a microsecond, but it’s always there. Always.

LOL. I know we may make it look easy. But yeah, it’s still there.

And even though I’m very healthy and I manage to … adapt(?) to those fears, I figure that kind of constant on/off stress has gotta be taking some kind of toll on me, right? On Black people in general. It’s like perpetually unexpected games of Russian roulette. Or maybe like the Spanish Inquisition. (No one ever expects it).

Sometimes I wonder if white people understand the constant extra calculations that Black people are doing continuously as we’re out and about. Calculations for any contingency encounter with the police. Or with some white person who might call the police because they’ve mistaken my melancholy mood for “suspicious” behavior. Calculations that white people don’t ever need to do. At least, not because of simply being in the general proximity of the police.

So I replied to this gem of a post and then got blocked by OP, because apparently if you are a Chinese person explaining why the MDZS novel does not, in fact, read homophobically to a Chinese audience, then that qualifies as “clowning”. I am very tired of non-Chinese people consuming danmei works and then shitting on them with interpretations that do not take into account Chinese cultural context, so here you go, MDZS/MXTX fandom - my take as a Chinese person as to why this is a wildly misguided reading of novel LWJ:

OP, I feel like you are levelling these accusations about the novel (and by extension its fans) partly because you are not aware of Chinese cultural context, and frankly it reads as culturally insensitive at best and extremely ignorant at worst.

The “homophobic stereotypes” that you accuse LWJ of falling into are (1) not really supported by the text to my knowledge and tbh I assume you read an English fan translation so you can’t exactly argue points with any certainty here; and (2) mostly very Western stereotypes that don’t hold the same significance in Chinese culture. 

Let’s play ball with your interpretation here - if MXTX did accidentally write a character that lines up with these stereotypes (which I truly don’t think she did, per my first point), do you realize that for Chinese audiences, MXTX did not accidentally write an “age old homophobic stereotype”..? That maybe Chinese LGBTQ+ people have legitimate reasons for liking LWJ’s character that have nothing to do with internalized homophobia? Maybe our major concerns don’t line up with yours and maybe we find comfort in novel LWJ and WWX for reasons that you, a non-Chinese person, cannot understand? Like sorry, I had no idea what the fuck you were getting at with “LWJ is an age-old homophobic stereotype” because, as a Chinese person, I treasure this novel from the bottom of my heart since it flies in the face of our age old stereotypes. I got to see gay characters that were not portrayed as mentally ill, not throwing a family/marriage into total disarray through their unfilial romance, and actually getting a happy, orthodox marriage where they effectively co-parent a kid and mentor many others. This is my list of priorities in comparison to yours - the stereotypes I was happy to see broken down vs. the ones you projected onto a translation you read.

But that is really only scratching the surface at the main problem I have with this post, which is that for some reason you think CQL LWJ is comparatively ideal representation of a gay man. While I will always appreciate the way CQL went to extreme lengths to gay-code the fuck out of the show, the reality is that CQL LWJ is the product of CCP censorship. And this is what really convinces me that you don’t have the best interests of LGBTQ+ fans at heart, or at least not the Chinese ones: you praised a characterization of LWJ that was born from actual, material oppression of LGBTQ+ people while shitting all over a character and work that many gay Chinese people find comfort in. Again, I love and appreciate CQL (and even love CQL LWJ!) but your post is extremely tone deaf when you consider the realities for Mainland Chinese people and diaspora.

I also took a look at your other posts and was unsurprised to see fujoshi discourse, which of course misused a term in a language that you do not speak, shat all over a genre that (again) many LGBTQ+ Chinese people find comfort in, and assumed that MXTX is a cishet woman just because she writes danmei. There has been a lot written by both Chinese and Japanese LGBTQ fans about how this type of discourse is misguided at best and racist at worst.

Lastly - as a bisexual, I find it biphobic that you assume WWX only ends up developing feelings for a man simply because he was summoned into MXY’s body… If you don’t see how that is a biphobic assertion, then I cannot help you.