#chinese american rep

[starrlikesbooks]

Sorry if this has been asked before but do you have a list of queer books that either have an Asian main character and/or written by an Asian author? (Preferably Chinese, since I'm Chinese and I'd love to see that representation, but other Asian ethnicities are also welcome)

I'll link some lists other people have made! x x x

And here are my personal recs :)

Adult:

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki 🌈 (Chinese, Vietnamese)

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li 🌈 (Chinese)

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu (Chinese)

On Earth We're Briefly Glorious by Ocean Vuong 🌈 (Vietnamese)

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho 🌈 (Chinese)

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo 🌈 (Chinese)

Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang 🌈 (Singaporean)

YA:

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao 🌈 (Chinese)

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim (Chinese)

Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert 🌈 (Chinese)

Not Here to Be Liked by Michelle Quach (Chinese-Vietnamese)

The Cartographers by Amy Zhang 🌈 (Chinese)

The New Girl by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Indonesian)

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang (Chinese)

Love & Other Natural Disasters by Misa Sugiura (Japanese)

[candiedblueberries]

if you could see the sun literally hits so hard like . ough. alice i understand u so bad

[revenge-of-the-shit]

Wonder what Jobu Tupaki would think if she just popped into Soo's body at the end of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings just to listen to Shawn and Katy's long-winded tales about what happened

[desdasiwrites]

For all that people in power claim to care about looting, it doesn't seem to matter when it's museums doing it.

– Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief

[fatehbaz]

In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain [...]. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers [...]. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...]. The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...] [T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019.

---

When the Haitian Revolution erupted [...], slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. [...] Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system. In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment [...] inaugurated [...] "a new system of [...] [indentured servitude]," which would endure for nearly a century. [...] Desperate to regain power and authority after the war [and abolition of chattel slavery in the US], Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. [...] Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. [...] When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.”

Text by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022.

---

The durability and extensibility of plantations [...] have been tracked most especially in the contemporary United States’ prison archipelago and segregated urban areas [...], [including] “skewed life chances, limited access to health [...], premature death, incarceration [...]”. [...] [In labor arrangements there exists] a moral tie that indefinitely indebts the laborers to their master, [...] the main mechanisms reproducing the plantation system long after the abolition of slavery [...]. [G]enealogies of labor management […] have been traced […] linking different features of plantations to later economic enterprises, such as factories […] or diamond mines […] [,] chartered companies, free ports, dependencies, trusteeships [...].

Text by: Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. "Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times". Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives (edited by Petitcrops, Macedo, and Peano). Published 2023.

---

Louis-Napoleon, still serving in the capacity of president of the [French] republic, threw his weight behind […] the exile of criminals as well as political dissidents. “It seems possible to me,” he declared near the end of 1850, “to render the punishment of hard labor more efficient, more moralizing, less expensive […], by using it to advance French colonization.” [...] Slavery had just been abolished in the French Empire [...]. If slavery were at an end, then the crucial question facing the colony was that of finding an alternative source of labor. During the period of the early penal colony we see this search for new slaves, not only in French Guiana, but also throughout [other European] colonies built on the plantation model.

Text by: Peter Redfield. Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana. 2000.

---

To control the desperate and the jobless, the authorities passed harsh new laws, a legislative program designed to quell disorder and ensure a pliant workforce for the factories. The Riot Act banned public disorder; the Combination Act made trade unions illegal; the Workhouse Act forced the poor to work; the Vagrancy Act turned joblessness into a crime. Eventually, over 220 offences could attract capital punishment - or, indeed, transportation. […] [C]onvict transportation - a system in which prisoners toiled without pay under military discipline - replicated many of the worst cruelties of slavery. […] Middle-class anti-slavery activists expressed little sympathy for Britain’s ragged and desperate, holding […] [them] responsible for their own misery. The men and women of London’s slums weren’t slaves. They were free individuals - and if they chose criminality, […] they brought their punishment on themselves. That was how Phillip [commander of the British First Fleet settlement in Australia] could decry chattel slavery while simultaneously relying on unfree labour from convicts. The experience of John Moseley, one of the eleven people of colour on the First Fleet, illustrates how, in the Australian settlement, a rhetoric of liberty accompanied a new kind of bondage. [Moseley was Black and had been a slave at a plantation in America before escaping to Britain, where he was charged with a crime and shipped to do convict labor in Australia.] […] The eventual commutation of a capital sentence to transportation meant that armed guards marched a black ex-slave, chained once more by the neck and ankles, to the Scarborough, on which he sailed to New South Wales. […] For John Moseley, the “free land” of New South Wales brought only a replication of that captivity he’d endured in Virginia. His experience was not unique. […] [T]hroughout the settlement, the old strode in, disguised as the new. [...] In the context of that widespread enthusiasm [in Australia] for the [American] South (the welcome extended to the Confederate ship Shenandoah in Melbourne in 1865 led one of its officers to conclude “the heart of colonial Britain was in our cause”), Queenslanders dreamed of building a “second Louisiana”. [...] The men did not merely adopt a lifestyle associated with New World slavery. They also relied on its techniques and its personnel. [...] Hope, for instance, acquired his sugar plants from the old slaver Thomas Scott. He hired supervisors from Jamaica and Barbados, looking for those with experience driving plantation slaves. [...] The Royal Navy’s Commander George Palmer described Lewin’s vessels as “fitted up precisely like an African slaver [...]".

Text by: Jeff Sparrow. “Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism.” The Conversation. 4 August 2022.

[chickenleafs-world]

Cannot stress enough how sad I am that Boothill was made so pasty, because he’s so interesting in every aspect of his story and it would be better if some of those bits were more visible. They made his story to deliberately parallel America’s history with Native Americans, and he’s a cowboy which is a job that had mainly black and indigenous people in its heyday. It feels hollow to make the point of his story that colonialism and racism are bad, only to fall in line with those structures to whitewash him. Sure, it’s physically possible for Native Americans to pass that well (one of my closest native friends is pasty with blond hair and blue eyes) but it’s not typical, and we don’t have enough dark skinned rep in general. It comes off as lazy more than exploring the life of a mixed/passing character.

And I know it’s to be expected with Hoyo’s continued disregard for poc, but it doesn’t make it less frustrating every time they write a character to be poc then just. Don’t make the poc. HSR hasn’t added another dark skinned playable character since release and already has issues with roma representation, HI3 has… everything with Carole, and Genshin went through a whole saga of mostly pale people in the Middle East/Africa equivalent.

Please Hoyo I am begging you to for once let your bottom line be risked for poc rep the same way you’ve tried to with queer rep. If you can sneak lesbians and femboys in after being used as an example of what not to do by government censors, you can make Boothill at least a little tan. Being a Chinese company doesn’t suddenly let you off on the bear minimum. It feels like they wanna have their cake and eat it by using other cultures and histories without acknowledging the people who’s cultures and histories they are.

This isn’t coming from a hater. This is coming from a disappointed Hoyo player who has slowly come across all the ways Hoyo has fucked up in this department and who is getting tired of it. I want them to do better (even if I know they probably won’t) before I (and many other players) can no longer justify supporting them as players.

[zvaigzdelasas]

A bipartisan House bill unveiled Tuesday would force ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, to divest the shortform video app or face a ban of the platform in the U.S.

Introduced by Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is the latest effort to ban TikTok over concerned about potential national security threats posed by ByteDance.

The “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” specifically defines ByteDance and TikTok as a foreign adversary controlled application. The bill also creates a broader framework that would allow the president to designate other foreign adversary controlled applications. [...]

The bill would give ByteDance more than five months after the law would goes into effect to divest TikTok. If the company does not divest from TikTok, it would become illegal to distribute it through an app store or web hosting platform in the U.S., effectively banning it even among current users.

The bill has more than a dozen bipartisan co-sponsors, with an even split down party lines, according to a committee aide. The aide declined to share the names of specific sponsors.

“This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Hill.

A Republican-backed bill last year attempted to ban TikTok outright but faced pushback from Democrats, who said the effort was rushed and could impede on free speech rights.

5 Mar 24

[contemplatingoutlander]

The House GOP is a circus. The chaos has one source.

Republicans spent two years sabotaging the U.S. House. Another two years would be ruinous.

Dana Milbank does a masterful job of describing just how dysfunctional the House GOP members have been in the past two years.

This is a gift🎁link for the entire article. Below are some highlights:

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Six weeks after his improbable rise from obscurity to speaker of the House in late 2023, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson decided to break bread with a group of Christian nationalists. [...] “I’ll tell you a secret, since media is not here,” Johnson teased the group, unaware that his hosts were streaming video of the event. Johnson informed his audience that God “had been speaking to me” about becoming speaker, communicating “very specifically,” in fact, waking him at night and giving him “plans and procedures.” [...] Today, Johnson’s run looks anything but heaven-sent. In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.

The above article was adapted from Dana Milbank's (2024) book: Fools on the HILL: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House.

[See more below the cut.]

And this is on top of the well-known pratfalls: The 15-ballot marathon to elect a speaker, the 22-day shutdown of the House to find another speaker, the routine threats of government shutdowns and a near-default on the federal debt that hurt the nation’s credit rating. They devoted 18 months to a failed attempt to impeach Biden, which produced nothing but Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly displaying posters of Hunter Biden engaging in sex acts. One “whistleblower” defected to Russia, another worked with Russian intelligence and is under indictment for fabricating his claims, and still another is on the lam, evading charges of being a Chinese agent. As soon as Biden withdrew his candidacy, they promptly forgot their probe of Biden’s “corruption” and rushed to launch a new series of investigations into Kamala Harris (over her record on border security) and Tim Walz (over his military service and “cozy relationship” with China). After a number of failed attempts, they did impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (the first such action against a Cabinet officer since 1876) without identifying any high crimes or misdemeanors he had committed; the Senate dismissed the articles without a trial. House Republicans created a “weaponization committee” under the excitable Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), but it was panned even by right-wing commentators when it produced little more than a list of conspiracy theories from the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. They lapsed repeatedly into fits of censure resolutions, contempt citations and other pointless acts of vengeance. In all of its history, the House had voted to censure one of its own members only seven times; in the two weeks after Johnson became speaker, members of the House tried to censure each other eight times. [...] In lieu of consequential legislating, they passed bills such as the Refrigerator Freedom Act, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act. On the House floor, the Republican majority suffered one failure after another, even on routine procedural votes. Seven times (and counting), House Republicans voted down their own leaders’ routine attempts to begin floor debates — something that hadn’t happened once in the previous 20 years.

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The US House of Representatives has launched an investigation into 20 nonprofit organizations that are currently funding anti-Zionist student groups mounting pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, an effort aimed at uncovering long suspected links to terrorist organizations and other hostile foreign entities.

As part of the inquiry, US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday, asking her to share any “suspicious activity reports” generated by the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other groups.

Foxx and Comer chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively.

“The committees are investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” Foxx and Comer wrote in their letter to Yellen. “This investigation relates to both malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations.”

The inquiry comes amid widespread suspicion that an eruption of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses, in which students illegally occupied sections of section and refused to leave unless their schools agreed to condemn and boycott Israel, was fueled by immense financial and logistical support from outside groups. Foxx and Comer said in their letter that the investigation’s findings will inform recommendations for new federal laws requiring increased transparency and reporting of foreign contributions to American colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, Foxx told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the investigation, that the protests were a symptom of a larger threat to national security.

“It’s no coincidence that the day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, antisemitic mobs began springing up at college campuses across the country,” Foxx said. “These protests have been coordinated and well organized, indicating that outside groups or influences may be at play. American education is under attack. It’s critical that Congress investigates how these groups — who are tearing apart our institutions — are being funded and advised before it’s too late.”

Foreign links to the anti-Zionist student movement have been the subject of numerous comprehensive studies.

Last week, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a report showing a connection between the anti-Zionist group Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) — a group formed immediately after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7 — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). NCRI explained that SID4P, which organized numerous traffic-obstructing demonstrations after Oct. 7, is an umbrella group for several other organizations which compose the “Singham Network,” a consortium of far-left groups funded by Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans. The report describes Singham and Evans as a “power couple within the global far-left movement” whose affiliation with the CCP has been copiously documented.

“The Singham Network exploits regulatory loopholes in the US nonprofit system to facilitate the flow of an enormous sum of US dollars to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level,” the report said. “Alternative media outlets associated with the Singham Network have played a central role in online mobilization and cross-platform social amplification for SID4P.”

In 2022, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) revealed that one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bazian, is also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group which, NAS said, “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian Territories.”

NAS added that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel — which has been influential is steering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in academia — is “structurally linked” to Palestinian terrorist organizations through the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee which comprises Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“On the one hand, BDS is designed to secure political legitimacy vis-á-vis Israel, with boycotts and divestment offering Palestinian activists and terrorists new domains to assert their cause,” NAS senior fellow Ian Oxnevad wrote. “On the other hand, BDS, along with the formation of multiple NGOs and nonprofit organizations, offers the Palestinians new avenues by which to access funding in a post-9/11 international financial system designed to curtail funding for terrorism.”

[jesncin]

Evening! I'm a young chinese/indo american and plan on reading your comic soon, but beyond that I've frankly just been desperate for any decent rep in DC/Marvel - are y'all aware of any comics / comic characters / runs that handle an asian character's background well? I feel like I'm slugging through quagmires braving search results. All of them are just talking about racism but I want the good, and process of elimination feels like a bad strategy. Thank you

Hello fellow Chindo! Thank you for planning to read my book (which obviously I recommend for great Indonesian representation, heheh)! :) They're probably pretty mainstream choices, but regardless! I have a couple of recommendations:

New Super-man: Kong Kenan, written by Gene Luen Yang

This comic run has a bit of a typical start before jumping into some truly refreshing and fun wider worldbuilding! My biggest criticism to Superman legacy characters is that they should expand on his inherently political themes, and they mostly just stay stuck in science fiction silliness. But not Kong Kenan! His world, cast and even powers are steeped in politics and culture, just an absolute treat.

2. Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story written by Sarah Kuhn with art by Arielle Jovellanos

My all time favorite canon reimagining of Lois as Asian (she's specifically Japanese American in this version)! A perfect marriage of Lois' character as a hard working, career-focused, jaded girlie with the struggles of model minority as an Asian American woman. She stands out on her own here without Superman and has a fantastic cast system that builds her character wonderfully. I especially recommend this graphic novel if you were disappointed with the wasted potential of Asian Lois Lane in MAWS.

3. Superman Smashes the Klan written by Gene Luen Yang with art by Gurihiru

Need I say more? I will anyway. This is the best Superman story of all time, to the point it will actively ruin your enjoyment of other Superman stories for you. It seems so obvious to pair Superman's inherently immigrant allegory with that of actual immigrant struggles, especially with an Asian American family- who are perceived as the perpetual foreigner- and yet this is the first time that story really commits to that comparison. A fantastic reimagining of the original radio show arc that actually centers the Chinese American family being harassed by the Klan. My perpetual recommendation to anyone looking for their next favorite superhero story.

4. Shadow of the Batgirl written by Sarah Kuhn with art by Nicole Goux

Okay I haven't read this one yet, but I keep hearing good things about it! And It's written by Sarah Kuhn, who delivered for Girl Taking Over, so I don't doubt she did great here too. I do generally wish Cassandra will get to be written by a Chinese woman specifically since so far she's been written by Japanese writers. No shade to them of course, but I want cultural specifically. Cassandra tends to be in the vaguesian void and that's a disservice to her character.

The way this list is switching between Gene Yang and Sarah Kuhn is telling of the writers I trust haha.

I've got a heavy DC bias so I can't recommend much of Marvel, but I do remember enjoying Kamala Kahn's Ms. Marvel 2014 series under G. Willow Wilson's writing. Kamala is an endlessly charming character, and I don't think the MCU did her justice tbh!

Those are my reccs that I feel pretty confident recommending! I know there's other prominent Asian characters and writers in DC/Marvel, but they're a hit and miss for me.

[genericpuff]

I can't remember exactly what chapter but early on when Persephone went to talk to Hades during the "one day of the year the citizens get to see their king and file complaints" and side lines it (and the citizens time) to talk about Tori and Alex and his missing eye and they eat lunch... didn't Hades just conjure food instead of making them lunch or am I misremembering?

so this ask sent me on a bit of a ride because i went to go find the scene you were talking about, i knew exactly where it was but i had actually completely FORGOTTEN about the whole lunch bit that came with it

and oh, my fucking god-

MAN'S IS EATING AN ENTIRE STEAK ALL TO HIMSELF. AND HE GIVES HER JUST A COUPLE PASTRIES ???

and yes, he does basically magic it out of nowhere because he casts an 'illusion' to change her outfit and they're basically in a secret room right now. So he definitely didn't prepare this by hand or ahead of time (unless he lied about the whole 'illusion' thing and he really did knock her out and change her clothes against her will, oh god no-) And yet despite this being the "woman of his dreams", he STILL feeds her like a squirrel.

This is more proof as to why Persephone was never plus-sized rep and is written purely through the male gaze. For some reason Rachel is DEAD SET AGAINST feeding this poor girl or letting her chew food onscreen, and that's just the BARE MINIMUM of like, healthy fucking behavior.

Seriously, stop reading this post RIGHT NOW and ask yourself, "When has Persephone actually eaten a meal onscreen?"

Go ahead, I'll wait.

THAT'S RIGHT. SHE NEVER HAS.

The CLOSEST we've ever gotten to her eating a meal was that time she ordered takeout (fucking Chinese takeout???) and we never actually see her eating it. She's stirring it around in one panel and then by the end of the conversation, the food is gone.

Even in scenes where you'd think she'd be eating, like in the scene where she stays at Hera's for dinner, they come up with some random excuse as to why she can't have a full meal.

(I just noticed writing this up btw that they're all eating the same thing she is so why are they so apologetic as if they're all feasting on meat and she's just eating lettuce and cheese??? But it looks like all they're eating is greens and toast, what the fuck is happening-)

It's astounding to me at all that a Greek family wouldn't have anything more in the house for a vegetarian to eat than lettuce and halloumi. Need I remind you that Greek food is Mediterranean, it is primarily vegetarian. Beans, veggies, fruit, breads, and cheeses make up much of the foundation of Greek food so why don't they have anything else in the house; and why in the world is Zeus being all judgmental over her being vegetarian when most of what he eats - AND WHAT HE'S LITERALLY GOT ON HIS PLATE RIGHT NOW - is vegetarian???

And when she DOES eat, it's always the tiniest morsels, like she's a squirrel or a delicate little baby who's never seen food before and whose teeth haven't grown in yet. She'll be holding utensils, she'll have a plate in front of her, but will she eat the food? Will there even be food on the plate?

Anything we see her legitimately consume is juice. Happy little baby needs her juice, her sippy sip.

This is honestly so indicative of how Americanized LO is. From the lack of actual Greek food to vegetarianism being treated like an inferior diet to the main female character not being allowed to even CHEW food onscreen let alone eat, like... what year is it ??? Being a vegetarian isn't a radical idea anymore, and for fuck's sakes, Greek food is readily available even in North America so it shouldn't be this hard to get right! Can we please throw out this 1950's misogyny bullshit of the man stuffing his face with steak while the woman eats nothing but grapefruit skins, hard boiled eggs, and wine??

NO, SHE HASN'T. SHE HASN'T BEEN EATING ENOUGH, WE HAVEN'T SEEN HER EAT A GODDAMN MEAL ONCE SINCE SHE LEFT THE MORTAL REALM. CALL SOMEONE.

NO DON'T FALL FOR THE DISTRACTION PERSEPHONE, IT'S A PLOY TO KEEP YOU FROM EATING, PLEASE JUST TAKE ONE BITE YOU'RE SO CLOSE-

YOUR DAUGHTER IS HUNGRY. SHE SCREAMS FOR THE CHICKEN NUGGER. FEED HER.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Let's be real and say the reason Aang having a crush on Katara is considered 'predatory' and Katara liking him back is considered 'an incel fantasy' is because of racism.Lil boys of color being accused of forcing themselves on girls their age with no basis is nothing new and neither is the idea that lesser known kinds of asian men are inherently less attractive than easian men as pretty much every asian culture that's not japanese,korean or chinese is seen as lesser and not good enough to be an aesthetic by westerners due to orientalism and it extends to how they treat and view asian folks and we see this in the Atla fandom nonstop with the demonization of the Air Nomads and the glamroization of the Fire Nation.The title of the show is literally about how the FN did a genocide on the AN but somehow 'they keep retconning things to make the Air Nomads look better and the Fire Nation look worse' is a direct quote from 2024 of all years,in the middle of multiple irl genocides and Aang as a tibetan person being a survivor of one is something that actually happened irl as China did an etchnic cleansing on Tibet.Aang hate in the name of shipping Zutara cannot be seperated from racism because that's entierly what fuels it,including the fetishization and infantilization of Zuko as a japanese person and the sanitization and agency removal of Katara as a brown native punk girl.Zutara is racist towards Zuko because it turns him palpable for westerners and he deserves better just like Aang and Katara do.Zuko is not white-adjacent but he's viewed as such by Zutradras and that's where his 'appeal to women' comes from to them and it's extremely obvious by how he is talked of,written and even drawn by them-Rip Zuko's beautiful monolids and goth-y japanese drips in favor of making him dress like a white altie.Katara is not digestable for normie women and this is where the rage at her canon writing originates,that she's for misfit women and they consider her threatning and 'wrong' and 'no girl would choose Aang over Zuko' because they've been taught the kinds of girls who'd choose Aang over Zuko are 'doing girlhood wrong' and should be alienated and isolated and punished for it-See the mass hostility towards trans/neurodivergence headcanons and rampant misogynoir/black female erasure in Zutara circles despite the interracial rep claims.Hating Kataang with the justification that 'Aang dosen't appeal to women'(a white take)and 'Zutara is empowering to Katara'(also a white take)is racist and this includes if you're a poc yourself as Aang is a very unpapable to americanized/whitewashed experiences take on an asian mc and Zuko is too.Period

[mariacallous]

Political insiders like U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips have been expressing doubts about Joe Biden for years. Yet Biden just keeps winning. Voters have elected him to national office three times in four elections. Those voters also gave him the biggest midterm win for a Democratic president in 60 years. Biden has earned those votes by delivering the strongest domestic leadership since LBJ, and the strongest international leadership since JFK. He is the best candidate we have in 2024, and the only thing holding him back is the doubters in his own party.

The very fact that Biden was able to beat Donald Trump and be sworn into office in a peaceful transfer of power met an important test. Peaceful, you ask? Certainly former President Trump's actions, and those of his mob, were not peaceful. But Biden sailed through all of the calamity with apparent calm, acting as though there was never any question that the Constitution and the rule of law would prevail. He was always confident in us.

The immediate task of the new president was grappling with a nation divided over COVID and the need to provide economic support to families struggling through the pandemic. The American Rescue Plan put billions of dollars into the hands of working-class Americans. The economy boomed, driven by demand from workers and families spending money on necessities. Child poverty dropped by 40%, and American families have seen wages rise at levels not seen since the 1960s. Today, the strength of the American economy is pulling the rest of the world forward, despite the global struggle with inflation.

It is easy already to forget the size and scope of the Biden infrastructure bill, which will modernize American communities and our economy for a generation and more. Roads, bridges, transit, the electrical grid, water infrastructure, broadband — the whole platform for growth in the nation will be built out and create millions of American jobs.

Perhaps most significantly, Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act will transform our energy economy and enable America to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals. This will put us in the driver's seat for pushing other nations to meet their goals. There is no larger threat to our nation and the global economy than rising global temperatures, increased severe weather and the loss of a precious ecological and cultural heritage. The pandemic was a light breeze compared to the impending storm of global climate destruction, and the Inflation Reduction Act was a strategic move to allow us to lead in stopping it.

The Inflation Reduction Act could also be called the Chinese Divestment Act. Not only does the energy policy address our need to transition to renewable energy, but it creates enormous incentives for companies to invest in technology and manufacturing in North America. No other president in our lifetime would offer an American working family $7,000 to buy an electric car made in America. The Inflation Reduction Act is exactly the industrial policy this country has needed for so long.

Just a few years ago, Chinese economic power coupled with Russian weapons of war appeared to be a genuine threat to the American-led international order. Autocrats were rising while traditional Western democratic institutions were in disarray. Some people were comparing America to Weimar Germany and seeing similarities to the weakness of democratic nations in the face of fascism.

Russia's illegal and inhumane invasion of Ukraine came at exactly the wrong time — for Russia and China. Putin threw down an enormous challenge in front of the American-led alliance. We advanced as one against him. Biden worked with Europe to accept major economic pain as a price of confronting Russian aggression. The Biden response to Russian aggression simultaneously revived the democracies' power in the world and reminded us that autocracies are always fundamentally weak.

In just three years, Joe Biden's leadership has revived democracy, defeated a pandemic, raised millions of Americans out of poverty, revitalized American infrastructure, addressed global warming and weakened authoritarian nations. He also keeps winning elections and confounding all his critics. Congressman Phillips: What more do you want?

Ryan Winkler, of Golden Valley, is the former DFL majority leader of the Minnesota House.

[omgthatdress]

Ivy is the best friend doll with the smallest collection- only three outfits and no play accessories. So yeah, AG really sucks when it comes to Asian rep. Ivy’s New Year outfit makes appearances in both Happy New Year, Julie! and Good Luck, Ivy! The style of dress is called a qipao if you speak Madarin or a cheongsam if you speak Cantonese. The earliest qipao was worn by ruling-class Manchu women during the Qing dynasty as a way of separating themselves from Han commoners.

The more modern qipao emerged in the 1920s after Imperial China fell, gender roles changed, and the country began to westernize.

(1920 Chinese fashion video restored and colorized with AI)

During this time, the qipao became the go-to dress of women of all social classes all across China and the Chinese diaspora.

(1stdibs.com)

It was favored by Chinese-American film star Anna May Wong

legendary Hong Kong actress (and I’m pretty sure Ivy’s namesake) Ivy Ling Po:

and modern Chinese actress and fashion icon Fan Bingbing:

[collegetennisoriginstory]

I wanted to throw in my opinion on the Trans MC if you want it! Option 3 would be a lot of extra writing and coding, so I get that it wouldn't be a decision made lightly and it would be added pressure to get it right and it's a sensitive topic for sure. I will say that if you chose to go this route tho, it would make a huge difference and mean a lot to us. I'm a trans athlete, and the lack of representation can be really discouraging. It's time like these where we are receiving so much hate, especially when it comes to sports, that allies could really step up and make a difference. Reading can really open people's minds! It may be difficult and uncomfortable, and take extra work, but that's our everyday tbh. We out here living on hard mode 😂 that's just my thoughts on the matter but I will respect you and read your story either way. Much love 🏳️‍⚧️♥️

Hey! Thank you so much for sending this! This gets long, forgive my wordiness.

First off, I really feel your statement to the bone, the part about how allies could step up and make a difference, and how positive rep in media, games etc. is insanely important.

So many stories, TV shows, movies have shaped my experience of being queer and POC, and while some of them have been nice just so I could see someone like myself being represented, the ones that really made an impact are of course the ones where these identities were explored in a sensitive, thoughtful way. (When I watched Saving Face for the first time at 17, about a queer Chinese American doctor, I bawled my eyes out and dont think I've been the same since).

I would absolutely love if CT:OS/my IFs could do this for trans athletes too.

I've seen/heard so many worrying statements about trans athletes (both in real life and in the media)—and it makes me so sad.

Some that really get me really riled up are: The idea that a trans athlete's accomplishments mean nothing because they "have an unfair advantage" (or putting it down to "just hormones" or whatever instead of recognizing the hardwork, skill, and dedication behind EVERY successul athlete, trans or not). Or the idea that trans athletes shouldn't get to choose to be trans if they want to be athletes. Or the idea of policing trans athletes' bodies or forcing them to undergo surgery in order for them to be "valid"...

Well, FUCK THAT. FUCK those people.

If my IF can help celebrate trans athletes, and combat/shut down the really harmful (and ignorant) rhetoric out there? I'd love to do that.

But since I am not trans myself, it feels doubly, triply important that I wade really carefully here. I'd really need to spend time making sure I like and can stand behind what I'm putting out. I don't think it'd be responsible representation, otherwise!

I'm not really a perfectionist about my writing and that's how I make progress on my IFs while working a full time job. I'm more the... "slap shit tgt, get it out there, get feedback and edit if I feel like it" kind of writer. And I don't think I'd be able to finish CT:OS / Merry Crisis any other way. But when it comes to race, gender, and sexual identity? I really. Really. Wanna get things right.

(I rewrote that Rayyan convo about being a POC athlete with Deepal so many times haha and it was already marginally less scary, since I am a POC athlete.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I agree it's so goddamn important to have trans stories, and rep, especially in sports, where views are often so toxic and polarized.

But I don't think I know yet whether I see my IF being more a simple "yay, trans rep" kind of space or an actual deeper exploration of what it means to be a trans athlete. I was quite prepared to add the option to be trans (+ any accompanying scenes etc.) when I have the complete CT:OS 1st draft, but I was also toying with the idea of just putting something imperfect into the game earlier.

Faced with indecision, I've opted for: procrastination. I am still waffling, but it was helpful to hear what you guys think. Thank you so much for your message.

Lots of love, keep being awesome ❤️

[d-nobile]

Get loud about this and make sure nobody can scroll without seeing it.

This is what the rising tide of fascism looks like.

The "ban TikTok bill" (officially called the RESTRICT Act) was never about TikTok or national security. It's a prelude to the construction of a "Great American Firewall", just like all that propaganda about a "Great Chinese Firewall".

A few highlights.

- This bill will call for the appointment or a chairman to form a committee with the power to ban just about anything that can be thought of as 'supporting a foreign adversary' with no voter input and no warning. This includes but is not limited to chat clients, media, and digital storefronts.

- You could face a minimum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for using a VPN to bypass these bans.

- It allows for the mass monitoring and censorship of chat clients and media outlets, basically making this the PATRIOT Act 2.0

Read the full bill, please.

Contact state reps. Inform them that you will vote against them in the next primary if they vote in favor of this bill.

Make noise. Make sure that not only Americans, but the international community knows what's going on.

Share the bill around. We can't afford to let this slip by. It will set a very dangerous precedent for the future of the Internet and international trade and communication.