This is a đàn đá, one of the Vietnamese instruments I included in Better Left Unsaid. It’s a kind of lithophone, which, to explain very simply, is like a xylophone but made of stone. These things are one of the oldest musical instruments we know of - they’ve unearthed a few in Vietnam that date back about 2000 years. Unfortunately we don’t know what kind of music might have been played on them back then, but people have been writing new music.
This particular tune never fails to make me happy.
I first saw this video in a post somewhere here on tumblr a year or so ago and got super excited, because seriously, have you ever seen a more Earth Kingdom instrument? It’s Vietnamese so I was quick to incorporate it into my Nanyue headcanon.
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The jade burial suit for the ruler Zhao Mo of Nanyue #jade #jadeburialsuit #nanyue #china #guangzhou #museum #西漢南越王博物館 #广州 #中国旅行 （在 Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King）
hey are you ok with people using some of your worldbuilding in their own fics
Oh wow, I never thought I’d get an ask like this, lol. I have considered what my answer to this kind of thing would be, but figured it didn’t matter. XD I’m flattered, and thank you for asking instead of just grabbing my ideas and running! That’s very polite.
I’m a big fan of fanfiction and the death of the author and fanon, so it’d be kinda silly and hypocritical of me to say no. At the same time tho, it does depend on what you’re using, exactly.
I’d be cool with people borrowing basic ideas. The structure of the Dai Li, political situations, Sozin having a bajillion kids, Ba Sing Sean farmers being ridiculous, war children, that kind of thing - yeah, go for it! Those are adaptable concepts that fellow fans can easily make their own, and I’m happy to contribute to the fandom’s idea pool!
My OCs, however, are not available for anyone to freely use - Stingrae and I have put a lot of work into developing these characters, some of them are hers, not mine, and in many cases the audience doesn’t know enough about them yet for me to feel comfortable with anyone else playing with them. A cameo would be fine, but if anyone wanted to use them as a minor or main character in a story, they would need to have a deeper discussion with me than an anonymously-submitted Tumblr ask. ;)
One more specific thing I would be wary of people using - Nanyue and its corresponding massacre and survivors, all of which I made up from scratch. Due to an unfortunate comment I received on a recent fic, I am currently very protective of this piece of worldbuilding and the OCs that go with it. The Nanyue Massacre is based on war crimes committed in actual real world history and thus the subject material is extremely sensitive and I try not to sensationalize it. Its refugees have very valid reason to be upset with Ba Sing Se for not doing more to help, which I’m absolutely certain of because, again, I made the whole thing up from scratch myself. If anyone wants to borrow Nanyue or any of the corresponding OCs, I would, again, need to have a deeper discussion with them than an anonymously-submitted Tumblr ask. I would hope that anyone who enjoys my work would be respectful enough to reach out to me before borrowing this piece of it. I promise I don’t bite, unless you have a less-than-kind view on refugee populations.
TL;DR - basic worldbuilding ideas, sure, go for it. OCs and Nanyue, message me first. And if you do use any of my worldbuilding ideas, I’d like a shout-out in your author’s note so people know where you got the idea from, and I’d love it if you’d link me when you post your work so I can check it out!
Oh, hey, it’s September...and this is very much Tien Trung’s song.
So every line in this song is pretty much perfect for Tien and her people.
“summer has come and passed; the innocent can never last” - the Nanyue Massacre happened over the course of a single summer
“like my father’s come to pass” - Tien was very far across the battlefield when General Chien Trung fell, but she saw it happen
“wake me up when September ends” - summer is the worst season ever and Tien is in a really not-okay headspace for most of it
“drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are” - Nanyuese refugees are pretty defined by their trauma
“twenty years has gone so fast” - the first summer of the Gilded Green series will mark the 23rd anniversary of the massacre, and Hoang and the other war children all just turned 22 in spring
So yeah, in conclusion: Very much a Tien/Nanyue song
Also friendly reminder that you should NOT jokingly tell Green Day to wake up on October 1, Billie Joe Armstrong wrote this song about his father dying of cancer and it’s really not funny.
I often feel bad that Tien (and Bian) are always so Sad And Serious when I write them so here’s a snippet from when Hoang was 6 and Zan was 7 featuring absolutely no need to bring up the war or refugees for plot or character-developing purposes.
Mama had a hand held over her nose, mouth, and chin, but it didn’t hide her amusement. “Darling, you’re a mess.”
Hoang looked down at her mud-soaked ao dai and winced. “Sorry?” she tried.
“Sorry, Cousin Tien, we were playing!” Zan said, gesturing at the rain-soaked practice pitch. Her own robes were equally muddy. The storm had passed just an hour ago, and the stir-crazy little girls had been quick to run outside and practice their earthbending in the soft dirt.
“I can see that,” Mama said, hand still holding half her face.
Beside her, Master Bian wasn’t even trying to look stern. Sure, her arms were crossed, but she was looking at Hoang with an impressed grin. Hoang grinned back. “Jeez,” Master Bian said, looking Hoang and Zan up and down. “What were you two doing, rolling in it?”
“Grandpa says that to become a great earthbender, you really need to feel the earth,” Zan said.
Mama hung her head and raised her other hand to her face. “Somehow I don’t think this is what Uncle Shanyuan meant,” she muttered, and then she looked up and gave Hoang and Zan an exasperated smile. “Alright, well, you’ve had your fun, but Hoang, you need to go get cleaned up now.”
Master Bian burst into laughter. “Oh, sure, tell her to clean up before her earthbending lesson!”
Mama stared at Master Bian, biting her lip for a moment before she hid her head in her hands again. “Good point,” she said, stifling giggles.
Hoang grinned at them and looked down at her muddy dress. “Actually,” she said, “Niran showed me something the other day, I wonder if I could…” She splayed a hand over the worst muddy patch and stuck her tongue out in concentration.
“Hoang,” Master Bian started, still snickering, “what are you - ”
Hoang flung her hand out, and half the mud on her person suddenly dislodged and flew forward with enough force to whip her skirt up as it left. There was a series of quick splats in short succession, and Mama and Master Bian were suddenly quiet.
“Oooooooh,” Zan said.
Hoang sheepishly looked up to find Mama, Master Bian, and half the porch splattered with mud. “...Oops,” she said.
“Oh my spirits,” Mama said, and she finally dissolved into laughter.
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why did Phuong go to ba sing se when she did, so long before the rest of her (surviving) family? or am i missing something?
Political strategy, her family’s worries, and the fact that I needed to justify Quy having a Vietnamese name.
No, seriously, Phuong and the entire Trung family and history of Nanyue was born out of the fact that when I was spitballing ideas and picking out names for my Dai Li directors I was just going through lists of names from various Asian countries without much thought on the cultural ramifications and the name I happened to grab for the Director of Administration was Vietnamese. Later I realized I should probably at least attempt to keep the cultural influences not-super-mishmashed, which meant I needed a reason for Quy to have a Vietnamese name. Okay, so his mom’s from a Vietnamese-based province. Wait, why’d a refugee girl marry into a highly-ranked Dai Li family? Okay, she’s not a normal refugee, she’s a governor’s daughter and she was in Ba Sing Se for REASONS.
Btw I totally tried to write a ficlet response to this ask but the words weren’t coming and I would’ve had to solidify too much worldbuilding and stuff that I’m not ready to yet. So maybe I’ll be able to pull that together later, but for now, here’s an infodump.
Nanyue is located in the northwestern part of the Earth Kingdom (I haven’t pinpointed the exact location yet, but I’m pretty sure a decent chunk of it became part of the United Republic), so it made sense to be one of the first places for the Fire Nation to attack, especially since they were already up in that area of the world attacking the Northern Water Tribe (the NWT has 85-year-old FN uniforms in Siege of the North).
Phuong was technically a grown woman when the first attacks came, but still young at age 18/19 (her birthday is toward the end of the year so exact age is iffy), and not a bender or especially combat-trained - she really doesn’t like fighting, she’s a gentle person, and back then she was rather timid. There was also the matter of her 12-year-old brother, Chien. Phuong’s parents and older sisters were worried about the younger two’s safety, and they also knew they needed to get messages to Ba Sing Se and have someone there who’d speak on their behalf and ask for help.
At the time there also happened to be a pair of Dai Li agents in Nanyue - this was decades before Long Feng made the organization his personal bogeymen, and cultural preservation was still their main objective. With a war looming and artifacts at risk, the Dai Li were traveling throughout the Earth Kingdom and saving whatever they could. Agents Shanyuan Dai and Daiyu Fei were assigned to Nanyue, where they met and befriended the Trung family. They spent about a year living in the province, witnessed the first of the Fire Nation’s attacks, and when they prepared to return to Ba Sing Se Governor Cuong Trung asked them to please escort his younger son and daughter to the city.
Phuong took up the project of trying to convince comfortably isolated nobles and army officials to care about her far-off homeland. She had some successes, but for the most part the government proved pretty uncaring, and over the years her timidness was overcome by anger and frustration. Chien wasn’t happy with the political situation either and swore up and down he’d go back to Nanyue and help the fighting when he was old enough. In the meantime he attended Ba Sing Se University, worked on his earthbending, and helped his sister with her networking as much as he was able.
Somewhere in there, Phuong developed a romantic relationship with Agent Shanyuan Dai, and the two got married after she’d been in Ba Sing Se a few years. Quy was born a few years after that.
Chien graduated from university and continued his earthbending training and meeting with political masterminds and helping Phuong get support for their homeland. Over the years they had some successes, some setbacks…much like Nanyue itself. There was a lot of back-and-forth, the fighting was on-again-off-again. The Trungs and the Nanyuese troops never stopped fighting. The Fire Nation treated Nanyue like a particularly annoying side project - after several years of leaving it alone to focus on other areas, they’d suddenly be back at it again. As the war continued to spread and the Fire Nation expanded the list of areas they were attacking, it became harder and harder to get support for Nanyue specifically, and, well, Nanyue is strong and its people keep fighting, surely they don’t need that much of our support right this moment, there’s other places we’d rather send troops to…
When Quy was about 8 Chien finally got completely fed up with Ba Sing Se’s politics and went back to Nanyue. Phuong couldn’t follow - she had a family now, she was waist-deep in the political quagmire, and unlike Chien she would’ve been completely useless in combat situations. She was a far greater help to her family by staying in Ba Sing Se and voicing the concerns of Nanyue, garnering what support she could. She still had some successes, especially as it became clear that Nanyue was the main thing blocking the Fire Nation from taking over that entire portion of the continent, but there was a growing undercurrent of well, they’ve lasted this long, they’re fine.
Eventually, the Fire Nation got tired of playing cat-and-mouse, and Azulon ordered the entire province crushed once and for all. It happened so suddenly there was no time for the rest of the Earth Kingdom to react - the Fire Nation consolidated its military on Nanyue, wiped out the province’s entire government and army within a month, and spent the rest of the summer destroying what was left.
It’s a pretty terrible ending, but from the first attacks to the final massacre, Nanyue held out for about fifty years thanks to the fierce stubbornness of its defenders, including one little lady wearing fancy ao dais in Ba Sing Se’s ballrooms, insisting to generals and nobles that they should consider supporting her homeland’s fight.
In 111 BC, the Han Dynasty, during its expansionary phase, invaded and conquered the semi-independent Vietnamese kingdom of Nanyue, and made it formally a province of the Chinese Empire, renaming Nanyue as Giao Chi. This conquest began the long process of the Sinification of much of Vietnamese culture.
