#chinastuck

[the-flesh-is-willing]

Chinastuck: the beta kids

tl;dr for the uninitiated: what if all homestuck characters were chinese people

John Egbert: 光勇 (Guang Yong). Lives in Beijing (im sorry /j). Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry.

egbert means "bright edge" and guang means "bright" and also sounds a little like john even if its the surname. john means god is gracious, which is not really a type of name chinese people give their kids so i just went with a common masculine name that sounds good with guang: yong, which means "brave" which i thought was fitting. i think dad egbert definitely calls them by the diminutive yongyong.

June Egbert might choose the name 小玉 (Xiaoyu), meaning "little jade", in reference to her sister.

Rose Lalonde: 刘秀兰 (Liu Xiulan). Lives somewhere in Jiangsu, probably Shanghai. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry.

i literally just went with a random common surname that vaguely sounded like lalonde here. xiulan means elegant orchid, so it's a flower name like rose and i think it fits her vibes. she shares the character xiu with roxy's name, tianxiu.

transmasc rose probably steals his name from a book character.

rose is very similar to canon i think, except she lives in a penthouse in central shanghai. i want to say initially she feels her heritage doesn't matter to her but later in life she tries to reconnect with not being "100% han".

Dave Strider: 赵大伟 (Zhao Dawei). Lives in Chongqing. Hmong, Jewish Han, and Kazakh ancestry (same as Rose).

zhao has a similar meaning to strider and was also a surname of the emperors so it has a connection to royalty. this works for both the lotr reference and king david. dawei is... a generic chinese boys name thats the name you give your kid if you want their english name to be david. it means "extraordinary".

david means "beloved" and every single chinese name like that is feminine. Dove Strider takes this as inspiration for the name Xinyan, spelled either 心燕 meaning "beloved swallow" or 心焱 meaning "beloved flame" instead of the more conventional 心妍 meaning "beloved beauty".

dave struggles with their cultural heritage more actively than rose does, and thus leans hard into their sichuanese identity. i headcanon them as making fun of chengdu (chongqing's rival in representing the cultural center of sichuan) in addition to making fun of northern chinese culture. SICHUAN RAHH

Jade Harley: 林玉平 (Lin Yuping). Lives in rural Shaanxi. Han, Mongolian, and some Korean ancestry (same as John).

lin has similar meaning to both harley and halley, meaning grove/forest. yuping means "peaceful jade".

Jude Harley might choose the name 洋 (Yang), meaning "ocean" in the sense of expansive, or he might not feel a need to change his name. swapping names with his sibling is also a possibility.

i think her upbringing just translates to the rural northwest well? also i think its kinda cool she'd grow up near a section of the great wall of china. i could see her engaging in cultural traditions like papercutting and folk singing :> also buddhist jade real and true im not projecting trust

thanks for coming to my ted talk be on the lookout for more posts like this ft me struggling with traditional characters and cantonese pronunciations

EDIT: @ask-chinastuck exists :)

[ask-chinastuck]

> Introduce yourselves.

[pt: Introduce yourselves.]

勇：啊……大家好～！我和我的朋友们，我们一起做了一个问答博客。

YONG: ah... hi guys! me and my friends made an ask blog together.

秀兰：说 《我和我的朋友一起》 就行了。无论如何，大家好。我叫秀兰，他的名字是勇。

XIULAN: It’s “my friends and I.” Anyways, hello everyone. I’m Xiulan, and his name is Yong.

大伟：yo wassup这是david strider，你可以叫我dave或者DJ大神

DAWEI: [yo wassup] its [david strider], you guys can call me [dave] or dj godhead

玉平：嗨～！我的名字是玉平，我很期待回答所有人的问题！！^_^

YUPING: hii! my name is yuping, and im really excited to answer everyones questions!! [smiley face]

// ASK BOX NOW OPEN!

[pt: ask box now open!]

// 问题需要用英文或文字。

// asks should be in english or mandarin.

[the-flesh-is-willing]

Chinastuck: the alpha kids

Jane Crocker: 王艳芳 (Wang Yanfang). Goes by Fangfang. Lives in Beijing. Han Chinese, with some Korean ancestry.

for the name i sort of went off of pure vibes. wang is ubercommon and means "king", yan means beautiful and i honestly just added it so all the prospit kids could have Y names, fang means "sweet-smelling" or "virtuous".

transmasc jane crocker real to me and he chooses the name 敏敏 (Minmin) meaning "clever" bc detective vibe??

still figuring out how to incorporate crockercorp.

Roxy Lalonde: 刘天秀 (Liu Tianxiu). Lives in flooded, postapocalyptic Shanghai among carapacians. Kazakh and Jewish Han ancestry.

roxy to my understanding means something like "bright dawn". tianxiu means beautiful sky. they share the character xiu with rose's name, xiulan.

Dirk Strider: 赵强剑 (Zhao Qiangjian). Lives alone in postapocalyptic, flooded Chongqing. Jewish Han and Hmong ancestry.

qiang means "strong" or "surpassing" and jian means "sword/dagger", tying into his character and one of the meanings of dirk, a type of dagger. he may be from the mainland, but since He's Dirk he uses traditional and even archaic characters for the ✨vibe✨, much to the annoyance of the other alpha kids. he spells his own name as 趙彊劍 lmao

i feel like doll strider would choose the name 雪莲 (Xuelian), which both means "snow-white lotus", suggesting purity, and is the name of a rare and precious herb. lotuses also have religious significance which she is aware of although dirk is a lil bit of a snooty reddit atheist to me. again she'd spell lian as 蓮 for Dirk Reasons

dirk is as much of a weeb and brony as in canon. he likes yapping abt chinese/japanese/western cultural comparisions and tries to teach himself japanese.

Jake English: Angli, sinicized as 洋格李 (Yang Geli). Lives in rural Inner Mongolia. Mongolian.

mongolian names typically are only the given name. jake's name is literally "english"; post scratch jade named him this to spite the condesce, similar to her taking on the last name english in canon. this also reflects a somewhat old fashioned mongolian naming practice of giving a child a strange/inauspicious name to drive away misfortune. (i am not mongolian myself apologies if this explanation did not make much sense) the sinicization of his name starts with a Y to match all the other prospit kids, with the character 洋 meaning the ocean with a connotation of vastness. this references him growing up in the middle of the ocean.

i like transfem jake english choosing the name lara. in china its spelled 勞拉 👍

idk what other details to change abt jakes life... the general arc of it is similar obviously

[the-flesh-is-willing]

Chinastuck: kids' accents/dialects/speech

most of these just correspond to where they live lmao. the rest of their typing is close to canon (emote usage etc) ill put context for how chinese texting slang works if anyone asks for it

John: the most typical beijing mandarin you ever heard. talks in a fairly enunciated manner. when typing, sometimes uses kaomoji, number abbreviations, and uppercase latin letter abbreviations. occasionally uses single tildes after normal punctuation like this!~

Rose: shanghainese + kinda accented mandarin. hears john is from beijing and is like TEACH ME HOW TO SOUND LIKE U

uses abbreviations very occasionally. will sometimes use lots of tildes after messages~~~

Dave: bro raised him primarily on chongqing dialect, and he picked up other stuff on the internet. nearly incomprehensible to the other kids when they meet irl. frequent english loanwords. types with lowercase latin letter abbreviations even though they're a pain in the ass to do on a chinese keyboard.

Jade: jin mandarin, picked up some mongolian from grandpa harley. types similar to john but more tildes and kaomoji

Jane: uses some antiquated/outdated phrases like in canon. also very standard beijing mandarin, less enunciated than john. tendency towards using multiple punctuation marks!?!?!

Roxy: what would one sound like growing up without hearing other humans. uses lots of abbreviations like in canon. mayhaps the lots of tildes is a lalonde thing~~~

with gender stuff i could see them referring to everyone as TA in writing unless asked otherwise

Dirk: again, what would one sound like growing up without hearing other humans. uses traditional and sometimes even archaic spellings, unlike every other kid (he isn't taiwanese; he's just dirk). occasional "ironic" kaomoji. semifrequent japanese loanwords, sometimes english loanwords.

Jake: uses frequent antiquated phrases like in canon. jin mandarin + mongolian. sounds and types sort of like john.

[ask-chinastuck]

dawei, what kind of music do you listen to?

DAWEI: im into some real [obscure shit] man

DAWEI: all these [rap artists] you never heard of

DAWEI: stuff i can [vibe to]

DAWEI: i also listen to vocaloid and idol stuff its super [cool] because its super ironic you wouldnt get it

[the-flesh-is-willing]

Chinastuck: the guardians

the guardians' life stories are very similar pre- and post-scratch.

Dad: the average office worker in one of Beijing's business/financial districts. Is employed by Crockercorp post-scratch.

Mom: grows up in Xinjiang. Finds financial success (Rose as an author and Roxy as an entrepreneur or something) and moves to Shanghai. Rose is heavily censored by Crockercorp.

Bro: grows up in rural Sichuan or Guizhou. Moves to Chongqing; Dave gets famous for his movies and then is censored by Crockercorp.

Bec: is a dog. specifically, he and halley are some kind of herding dog

GCat: is a cat.

wtf does doc scratch do. i dont have chinastuck!alternia fleshed out much so um. 👍

[the-flesh-is-willing]

im thinking of how to translate chinastuck!terezi's quirk... maybe replacing every "yi" with 1, "san" with 3, and "si" with 4

that doesnt make numbers happen in her speech nearly as often as replacing i/e/a in english though. maybe if she also replaces parts of syllables with numbers and spells the rest out, for example writing 英 (ying) as 1NG? no idea how readable that is but yknow. troll typing quirks are not always meant to be that readable

[the-flesh-is-willing]

need to work on chinastuck,,