Mod Verse : Hello!

Truth is- school dances are not typically a thing in France. No prom, no homecoming party.

In some really rare cases, there can be a prom night in some high schools, because it’s a thing happening in large amounts of american movies and people want to experience it, but it’s a very, very small minority.

And even that small minority has nothing to do with the school. If you want to organize prom, you organize it with your own funds, own funding activities, own rent, etc... It’s just a bunch of students who really want to do it and handle everything on their own.

Mod Maha : In my old highschool, it was a tradition that students from the Economic track organise prom, because it was a private school and we technically came from social classes that allowed us to have the means to fund such an event. We do everything on our own, but the school requests from us to have a few teachers supervising the event. Other than that, they didn’t care much about the rest and would care even less if we didn’t organise a prom at all in the year.

About a year ago, Mod Verse and I wrote a post titled “Common Fanfiction Mistakes.” Mod Maha never let that go past the draft stage because of how salty we made it. It makes me laugh because Mod Verse, Mod Arty, and I all saw the salt and thought it was a funny post. It’s been sitting in the drafts for a year. Some of the mistakes we saw have stayed the same as the fandom grew. Other new mistakes and continuity errors by the fandom have come about since then, along with new information about the show. It’s amusing to me to see how much the fandom has changed. I haven’t even rewritten and revisited half the stuff in that post because of how much the fandom has grown (about a third of the post was spelling mistakes such as “Marionette” and “Adrian,” but that’s since been taken care of as new authors learn to not trust their English dictionaries).

When I make a sequel to that post there’s so much I didn’t touch on, I’ll keep in mind to keep the salt down and just leave it as a gentle reminder that not everything upon which the fandom agrees is canon.

This blog is meant to be a resource to writers in order to help them. None of the mods here want to instigate a fandom war over what we’ve written. Some people like writing as close to canon as they possibly can. Some like creating AUs. Some accidentally lose sight of characters and characterization along the way. We’re just here to help guide people back on track. That’s why we have disclaimers at the end of every post that isn’t specifically about French culture.

Thank you, for reading, and reminding us to be gentle with what we write.

Hello, mod Verse here! For personal reasons, I decided, as stated above, to leave the box. If you need to contact me you can find me @versegm 

Please be nice to the remaining mods, and send lots of love to mod Maha, because she deserves it. 

Well Kryallaorchid made a really complete post here but in short: 

there isn’t really any concept of “dating” in France? (Not gonna lie, I have troubles understanding the concept myself.) Going eating with a man alone does not necessarily mean you’re romantically interested in him. You can’t ask a stranger for a date either. Relationships usually grow from friendships.

Here some more links to help you:

https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-dating-system-explained

http://hellogiggles.com/differences-french-american-dating/

Hi, speaking from a Chinese who doesn’t live in China, but since my country is kind of traditional with Chinese customs, it should be similar.

Why do you need this? I dunno. If you want to have Marinette doing Chinese stuff, then sure!

So the most popular Chinese celebrations are the Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival (otherwise known as the Mooncake Festival, the one with pretty lanterns and all).

The Lunar New Year typically starts around a range of dates, from the end of January to the beginning of February. You have to check the Chinese calender, which calculates months and dates using the moon, for the exact date. On the eve of Chinese New Year, families usually gather and have reunion dinner together. Most people working overseas will come back to their home countries to celebrate this. Chinese also clean the house thoroughly as a symbol of throwing away the old and welcoming the new. Some traditional households don’t cut their hair fifteen days before the celebration.

A few Chinese decorations include the Chinese character 福 (fortune/prosperity) stuck upside down on walls, as a pun for “fortune has come” due to the word for “upside down” sounding like “arrived” in Mandarin. Two columns of four-character prosperous phrases are usually displayed on either side of doors or TVs. Examples: 心想事成 (may all your wishes come true), 万事如意 (the same thing).

Now we come to the actual celebration. There are fifteen days of Chinese New Year, but Chinese usually go visiting relatives on the first and second day, and friends on the other days.

Kids and anyone without a job or is unmarried usually bring two oranges each to give to their elders, shaking their hands and wishing them a good new year (新年快乐 - happy new year) and good fortune (恭喜发财 - congratulations on making money). In return, elders give red packets or ang pao which contain money - for kids, it rarely goes beyond twelve dollars, unless it’s their parents who give it to them. Most of the time, the oldest members of the family receive red packets too, usually  (in my family’s case) fifty dollars.

If you want to describe the visitations, families and friends usually eat steamboat or buffet together. They’ll gamble, play mahjong, Blackjack, poker, stuff like that. The kids kinda just huddle up on the sofa or in a room and play Minecraft or whatever.

Lion dances are also fairly common. They’re basically large painted heads that don’t really look like lions and more like monsters with a cloth attached behind, providing as its back. One person will hold up the hand and another will bend down and hold the person’s waist, forming the body. Another group of people will bang cymbals and drums to provide the beat as the lion dancers dance around. (Actually, lion dances are used for any auspicious stuff like opening a new restaurant or something. Once they came into my tuition centre.)

We also do this thing called louhei, where there’s a whole bunch of food. We add ingredients such as fish (a pun for abundance), peanuts (a pun for growing to greater heights), and crackers (a symbol for gold). Then we use chopsticks and toss the food as high as we can while yelling more well wishes. The idea is the higher we toss, the more luck we get.

Then we have the Mid-Autumn Festival! (omg describing this is kinda tiring). The story behind this festival is a legend: In the beginning there were ten suns, who were coincidentally sons of the emperor dude in the sky. It was wayyy too hot, so this dude Hou Yi came along and shot down nine suns. Obvi, the emperor was hella mad, so he banished Hou Yi and his wife Chang Er (who were both immortals) to a mortal life on earth. Chang Er was pretty upset, so Hou Yi goes and searches for an immortality pill. He does, buts there’s only enough for one person. So he keeps it in a box. Then one of Hou Yi’s followers saw that, got greedy, and forced Chang Er to bring the immortality pill out. She refused and managed to swallow it before he could take it, but as a result she rose and flew to the moon. (Weird and long, I know.)

Hou Yi was devastated and from then on, every anniversary of his wife’s, um, flying away, he brought out her favourite food and celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival. (She must’ve regretted swallowing the pill, seeing all that food, but anyways.) We actually celebrate it to reunite with family.

On this day, we have reunion dinner. Kids make mooncakes with the help of their parents or grandparents - mooncakes are really pretty, Google it. Then we take lanterns and walk around for fun. (Side note, some are battery-powered but in my day, we used CANDLES). Yeah, I think that’s all for that one.

And that’s it!