#special interest hell

[battledeer]

Kira and Cretak should have lezzed out

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

Series of somewhat related thoughts that are on my mind but I can’t seem to synchronise into one thing, so here they all are in bullet point form.

I’d recently watched this documentary about how Lego developed their Journey to the West themed IP as a way of breaking into the China market. And it’s like, interesting. But I guess I don’t feel super jazzed about the whole thing even if I enjoyed the cartoon that was made, because both Legos and Journey to the West have always just been around since I was a kid, and I do know that this is all effectively a way for a company to make more money, at the end of the day.

Some stuff from the documentary stood out for me though. Like, mostly because this was all very framed as Westerners trying to ‘understand’ Chinese people and Chinese culture. It’s pretty clear who the assumed audience of the documentary series is. And I kind of want to see how a Chinese team would make such a documentary.

There was also the fact that the Chinese executives were very much framed as like upholding ‘the standard’ for Chinese cultural products. Which does raise some questions in my mind. Namely, how do we define who is Chinese, and who gets to be the ‘gatekeepers’ of Chinese culture? It’s a group which encompasses over a billion people. Which standards and ideological wells are these executives drawing from?

In particular there was talk about how they wanted to portray Mei. She was included to balance out the (still very male-dominated) gender ratios, and to ‘modernise’ the story in that regard. And she did get some notes about irreverence/impoliteness and how that may be jarring to Chinese audiences. Which is like. Hm. So this is something I think about a lot. Something something Singaporean Chinese autistic woman with an interest in feminist thought and action, as well as writing female characters.

Kind of want to take a look at how other Lego properties write their female leads, the ones aimed at a ‘western’ audience. See what the differences are. (Mei seems a bit more respectful of her ancestry than average, is my current impression.)

There was also a comment about how initially Sandy (the Sha Seng stand-in) came off as a little ‘feminine’ at first. That was a note that the executives wished to change as an attempt to appeal to Chinese children (boys really; their test audiences were all boys). Which is like, interesting. Coming from someone who is familiar with what the local queer community does, I know for a fact that Journey to the West themed drag is very much a thing. (Granted, they tend to riff more on like, Tripataka/Tang Seng, and Sha Seng is deemed as more ‘masculine’ these days, but still...!)

The thought of picking up drag or crossdressing is coming up to me again. Should I do Sha Seng themed drag if I ever do?

It was interesting watching mostly white writers trying to ‘portray’ Chinese culture. Doing all this research. Going to China and getting their scripts reviewed over and over again by Chinese executives. In the sense that when I watched the cartoon with my retired Primary School Mandarin teacher godmother, she did say that the cartoon ultimately still felt very USAmerican. (And I was with her on that lol, it still very much felt like it was drawing on the trends and traditions of that genre of work more often than not.)

I also recently read this article about cultural authenticity by Vietnamese-American Som-Mai Ngyuen. And some points that were made in the article being fresh on my mind + the documentary talking about trying to authentically represent China is well... making me feel a certain way I can’t really put to words.

Incidentally I’m reading a book about Chinese factory workers published in the 2000s. China’s moving away from that now, and the race to the bottom means that a lot of Western companies are looking for work in different countries. Like Bangladesh and yes, Vietnam.

Lego has at least one Vietnamese factory coming up. It’s apparently carbon neutral and costs a billion dollars. They’re using biodegradable sugar cane plastic now. Who’s farming the sugar cane?

It’s a good cartoon and I had fun with it. I watched the Mandarin dub. Should I watch the English dub? I kind of want to. Maybe some day my Mandarin will be proficient enough such that I could compare and contrast and see how the experience differs.

It’s very emblematic of a lot of things still. A lot of things.

I should read like Beowulf or something and try to see if I could write something weird with it.

I dunno man. These are all just brain noises, and I guess I am only one perspective on these things. I hope someone gleaned something interesting from my thoughts though.

[xiki-pupper]

Not to self-diagnose,

But,

Judging from my youtube history...

Over the past SEVERAL MONTHS...

I might have a very specific special interest....

[orangememesicle]

i would like to thank my longtime mutuals for tolerating my revolving door of special interests that none of you followed me for

[chicago-geniza]

reading andy robinson's "a stitch in time" (Garak's Epistolary Autobiography Novel) in the waiting room, already made more margin notes & annotations than i did in the last book i wrote a paper on for grad school

[andymorin]

ive seriously been obsessed with death grips for so long what swrong with my mind

[metapianycist]

me: i should perhaps finalize my list of things to pack for this trip I'm leaving on in two days, especially since i won't have internet access for a whole week

my brain: no. install a LEMP stack on your raspberry pi. make your tiny arch linux computer box into a nextcloud server. write pkgbuilds for nextcloud apps that aren't in the arch user repository.

me: why??

my brain: no ask, just do

[friendraichu]

can't wait for october so i'll have a valid reason to reblog until dawn posts nonstop