At least 30 writers have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer tells the BBC.
I encourage anyone who sees this to share it around and discuss it with others as much as possible. These danmei writers who do so much for us are being imprisoned and publicly humiliated and we all need to be in solidarity with them.
Being a danmei author in China has always been dangerous but so many of these women continue to write to make a living and to express themselves through their stories. The least we can do for them is to make sure people know what's happening to them and say out loud that we don't agree with it.
This, of course, also points to a much larger issue of the enduring censorship and persecution of the queer community in China. As pride month wraps up, please remember to keep these people in mind. It's hard for us to make a difference in another country, but what we can do is make sure everyone is talking about it.
Pride month is drawing to a close and I am certainly late on giving my own recommendations for books with Queer themes. This year, my recs are focusing on books that deal with intersecting identities and having a romance arc/HEA is not a requirement. This is far from an exhaustive list and I plan to give more recs exploring Queer themes through a variety of lens soon
A YA tackling themes of grief and a Bi/Pan lead whose identity is explicit but never labelled:
On the Wings of la Noche by Vanessa L. Torres
At night, high schooler Noche transforms into a Lechuza, an owl who guides the souls of the dead to the afterlife. But the only soul she’s been unable to guide is the soul of her girlfriend, Dante, who died last year. Trapped in her grief, she meets Jax, a new kid in town who helps her move on and deep her other relationships.
A Sapphic trans Hawaiian sc-fi heist:
Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto
After eight years beyond bars, Edie is ready to return to their family and restart their life. But Angel, Edie’s former friend and flame, has a job for them. The last job. But can Angel be trusted or is she playing Edie once again?
A West African-inspired fantasy with elves and fae, politics, and Sapphics:
Faebound by Saara El-Arifi
When elf Yeeran is exiled, her sister Lettle follows her and the two stumble upon the most well-kept secret in their world: the fae are still alive and they’re ready to come out of hiding.
A sweet YA Sapphic romance that is also a love letter to Black cinema history:
If We Were a Movie by Zakiya N. Jamal
With one last chance to add something to her college applications, Rochelle takes a job at the local movie theater. But her rival (and the daughter of her mother’s best friend), Amira also works there and the two are going to have to work together if they’re going to save the cinema.
An AroAce lead in a cozy fantasy that also explores the nitty-gritty of immigration and anti-Asian microaggressions:
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
Tao has sworn off telling large fortunes and goes from town-to-town telling her customers small ones. But when a father comes looking for his daughter, Tao decides to help him and finds the family she’s been looking for.
The Little Mermaid MM reimagining but set it in New York in the 1930s and have discussions around racism and immigration:
When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley
Employed on Coney Island, Puerto Rican Benny has been struggling to find his place in the US as he faces constant microaggressions from the world around him, including his own boss. When he’s selected to go on a trip to pick up a merman and bring it back to the circus as an attraction, Benny and the merman become close and Benny finds someone else to fight for.
Sapphics in space with a blind lead and a love interest who can turn into a giant snake and eats people:
Redsight by Meredith Mooring
Korinna is a Redseer, a blind priestess who can manipulate space time. After years of being led to believe she’s the weakest member of their order, she meets Aster, a space pirate with a vendetta against Korinna’s order. Korinna and Aster will unlock a lot of truths about their orders and themselves.
An exploration of Queer Platonic Relationships in a SEA-inspired setting and an Autistic-coded lead:
The Serpent Called Mercy by Roanne Lau
Lythlet and her childhood friend Desil lead a life of poverty with little chance of escape. In a last-ditch effort to change their fortunes, the two agree to join the arena and fight against increasingly challenging monsters to gain the funds to get out. But Lythlet isn’t as prepared for the arena as she thinks she is and her past is ready to come back to haunt her.
A speculative that explores the Queer Asian man identity in historical and modern contexts with no HEA:
The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang
In three different timelines in China, two men are reborn time and again and are drawn to each other. But no matter how much they might care for each other, they will need to decide if their love is worth fighting for or if it’s better to choose to separate.
as someone with aragorn's kind of face framing layers i just know the front pieces are hanging in his eyes all day every day... "my path is hidden from me" you are 4 bobby pins away from utter clarity.
It’s not a cuck chair. It is a throne. Her position of power. She tells them what to do and when. She likes to watch. It brings her pleasure. Obviously.
I just don’t understand where this concept of ‘fake geek girls’ came from. Like, AT ALL.
Cus when I look for fandom related stuff like 90% of the fan art and the fanfiction and the meta, zines, comics, etc. Like 90% of the shit that I’ve seen is created by women & girls.
And all that stuff take’s a lot of work and research and critical analysis and staring at reference photos for hours.
We are literally the most well versed and invested group in the fandom. So, like, What the fuck boys? You mad you can’t keep up?
I saw an argument, and I can’t find it now, but it totally made sense, that there’s a gender split in fandom. Male fandom tends to be a curator fandom; male fandom collects, organizes, and memorizes facts and figures. Male fandom tends to be KEEPERS of the canon; the fandom places great weight on those who have the biggest collection, the deepest knowledge of obscure subjects, the first appearances, creators, character interactions.
Female fandom is creative. Females create fanart, cosplay, fanwritings. Female fandom ALTERS canon, for the simple reason that canon does not serve female fandom. In order for it to fit the ‘outsider’ (female, queer, POC), the canon must be attacked and rebuilt, and that takes creation.
“Male” fandom devalues this contribution to fandom, because it is not the ‘right’ kind of fandom. “Girls only cosplay for attention, they’re not REAL fans!” “Fanfiction is full of stupid Mary Sues, girls only do it so they can make out with the main character!” “I, a male artist, have done this pin-up work and can put it in my portfolio! You, a female artist, have drawn stupid fanart, and it’s not appropriate to use as a professional reference!”
In the mind of people who decry the ‘fake geek girl,’ this fandom is not as worthy. It damages, or in their mind, destroys the canon. What is the point of memorizing every possible romantic entanglement of heterosexual white Danny Rand if someone turns around and creates a fanwork depicting him as a bisexual female of Asian descent (thus subverting Rand’s creepy ‘white savior’ origins)? When Danny Rand becomes Dani Rand, their power is lessened. What is important to them ceases to be the focus of the discussion. Creation and curatorship can work in tandom, but typically, in fandom, they are on opposite poles.
This is not to say that there aren’t brilliant male cosplayers or smashing female trivia experts, this is to say that the need of the individual fan is met with opposing concepts: In order for me to find myself in comics, I need to make that space for myself, and that is a creative force. Het white cis males are more likely to do anything possible to defend and preserve the canon because the canon is built to cater to them.
reblogging to add: all the queer males i know are creative rather than curator fan types. self included.
i think the keepers-of-the-canon thing comes easily to het males because they’re the ones mostly represented by the canon. they don’t look at the current state of things and go “but where am i in this?” because they’re front and center.
but when you look at something like, say, steven universe, suddenly they’re going “why aren’t there any male gems, what would a male gem be like” and making up male gemsonas. i don’t blame anyone who sees this as kind of diaper baby tantrum behavior, because like, guys, you have damn near every other sci-fi cartoon, let women have this one. but at the same time, i think it’s just a normal human instinct, to look at a story and try to see yourself in it. and if you’re not there, to try to imagine how you could be.
extrapolating from that, i reckon when canon works are more representative of the population at large, the curator/creator fandom types will be more distributed as well.
conversely, i’ve seen a lot of women behave like curators around steven universe, pushing for dogmatic adherence to facts and events in the way i’ve only ever seen men do. the gender disparity between creators and curators in fandom is bound to level off a bit as more works get created that are so genuinely about women and for women.
as is, since most properties are still made mostly by men, for men, and about men, and curators enshrine and protect canon rather than deconstruct and transform it, obviously most curators are men.
one thing i’d like more attention drawn to though is how unequal the barriers to entry in any given media field are for women and men, and the way whatever work women do is devalued specifically because it is done by women. the fact that so many cannon creators are men, while so many fandom creators are women, says some pretty fucking ugly stuff about our society.
This happens all the time post-canon when they are doing their little cultivator sidequests, and everytime wwx goes on a rant and start to babble endlessly about how hot he was and how he got the fourth place in the young lords ranking and blablabla...
One day he decides to draw a selfportrait and is a breathtaking and unnecessary sexy portrait, so lwj takes it for himself because nobody should have a picture of his husband *like that*
Next day wwx draws a more tamed one but the juniors refuse to spread the copies, too embarrasing.
Later that day poor Wen Ning appears with lots of copies because wwx can be very persuasive
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