[ SECRET POST #5226 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5226 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.
[Gong Jun as Wen Ke Xing in Word of Honor]


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03.
[Scrubs]


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04.
[Back to the Future]


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05.
[Star Trek - Picard]


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06.
[Fire Emblem]


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07.
[Joy of Life]






Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 20 secrets from Secret Submission Post #748.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm only in for the eye candy.
damn, they were good at casting.

/not the point, i know

[(Anonymous)]

China, Japan and Korea in particular all have insanely high beauty standards for skin. Flawless skin or you're hideous basically.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah. I went in expecting to ship JD and Turk, but ended up not because they've got one of those really close platonic relationships that just doesn't flip over to romance for me. The real nail in the coffin for me though was Carla. I love Carla, and her relationship with Turk was so much fun. (Did not feel this way about Elliott and JD which was like pulling teeth for me.)

JD and Cox had an intensity to their relationship that made it an easy substitution when JD/Turk didn't work out. It was never a ship I expected to fall into though.

[(Anonymous)]

Five times. Giggity.

[(Anonymous)]

Same.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah the films even kinda went there just with his Mom.

Re: What are your personal lows when seeking and reading fanfiction?

[(Anonymous)]

...Wallace/Gromit out of drunken curiosity.



I'll get my coat.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

Yeah, it is CA, but as you said, it doesn't have to be a term for a grave offence, it's just a naturally occuring phenomena for cultures getting mixed. What I meant is that in English-speaking word, it has morphed into "something that coloniser cultures do to non-white cultures", so people don't mention it as a problematic issue in respect to white non-Western cultures, hence, the author can feel that it's "safer" to experiment with borrowing from Slavic or Nordic cultures, because there' less chance that you will become a centre of some controversy.

And it's mostly annoying that the work some authors do while "mixing" is so lazy. It really wouldn't take much to remove 90% of obvious irritating elements. I kinda hoped they would fix it a bit for the show, tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

No one is really "accusing" her of appropriation, she has appropriated things, but cultural appropriation is a neutral academic term and something that happens everywhere. And her having a parent or grandparent who was born to Russians or even in Russia before moving away doesn't change anything about how she constructed the world of her books.

(The fact that you have some ancestry from a country in which you never lived, whose language you don't speek, and with whose culture you have little connection, does not make you magically of that culture - this is one of more tiring American myths - if you ciltuvate this culture at home, than yes, but the mere fact of birth of your parents or grandparents - not really... I'm honestly baffled when people tell me I'm Russian too when what they mean is I have some percentage of Russian blood - it' in no way the same as being Russian in the sense of living and growing up in the country.)

[(Anonymous)]

Uprooted is okay, it doesn't feel partciularily Polish to me (I'm Polish), for reasons that are too complex to list here and probably half subjective, but she definately uses the names and references correctly (unlike Bardugou, she doesn't mix male and female names, for example), names things in a way that makes sense, quotes actually well known lulaby correctly, etc. She did her work.

Same for Spinning Silver - it's an allgamation of cultures, but a lot of it feels familiar and true to its roots.

[kribban]

Oh man, this reminds me ofvny brief timevin BTTF-fandom. There were a few BNFs who shipped George/Marty.

[(Anonymous)]

You can speak for your own experience, but every member of a culture's diaspora has a unique relationship with their mother country. The author of this book series has the right to determine her own place in relation to Russian culture, and I'm not sure everything you've said about her connection to the culture or lack thereof is even accurate. How are we to know? The fact is, many children of the diaspora grow up outside of their parents' culture and struggle to reconnect to varying degrees, but my stance is that all attempts to interact with one's mother culture are valid if done in good faith. We can certainly criticize these attempts on literary merits -- lazy research is lazy research, no matter who's doing it -- but coming from my perspective as a person living within her birth culture and seeing many gatekeeping efforts directed at diaspora writers, this isn't really something I want to get behind.

And cultural appropriation may be intended to be a neutral term but its usage in this comment thread (and in most places on the Internet, honestly) certainly isn't. And that's why I think we should stop throwing it around casually when it's neither helpful nor accurate.

[(Anonymous)]

That I agree with, but I think that's a pitfall of her craft. And it could happen with anything, not just cultural details, if you fail to do your research.

[(Anonymous)]

he was basically tailor made to get panties wet in today's fandom

And there's nothing wrong with that!

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I think she chose a white/Slavic culture because she herself has connection to that particular culture. Authors from non-white diaspora do create pastiches that borrow from their own cultures as well. I have a friend who is a YA writer of Hmong descent, and her fantasy series takes inspiration from various Asian cultures. It's far from uncommon, it's just that some do it better than others.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but considering it's not actually *Russia* we're reading about, I don't see the big deal. I myself read works from diaspora writers of my own culture and notice mistakes pretty often, and I know it's because many of them grew up in other cultures and don't know the language. It doesn't bother me the way that offensive portrayals of my culture would.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I honestly don't think you can get how silly and unnutural things seem unelss you acctually speak the language very well. There's nothing really wrong about it, but a Russian speaker wouldn't use this as a moniker. And I doubt an ENglish-speaking fantasy writer would call the mages of her books "Joies" or "Timmies" or something like that when they're supposed to be treated seriously in the text. There are certain patterns in the way people use language, certain emotive qualities that decide why this or that way of phrasing things get adopted, and Grisza, as a word, is not doing anything that would textually work here.

[(Anonymous)]

Or they could hire one ro two Russian people in minor roles* and use their pronunciation...


/*they managed to do that for The Witcher, bless them, even though there's really almost noting Polish in the whole thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

She has the right to claim many things, but if she doesn't distingush between male and famale names and doesn't know that you can't get drunk on kwas then I can call bullshit on her deep connection and I'm really tired of seeing the "well, she has some X ancestry" as some sort of argument that means that "ut's okay" that her writting is lazy and she did not are about the culture enough to do her research properly.

I have no desire to turn it into a deep discussion about disapora writers, because it's complicated, varies between racial and ethnic groups, and I do think there is a lot of difference between fully formed diaspora cultures and people who just happen to have some sort of ancestry, so let's say we agree to disagree and end it at that.

CA as a term might not be useful, but the whole discussion is tiring, because it keeps getting rephrased into "has she done something wrong" or "is she allowed to do this", when I'm mostly here being annoyed that she found Russia interesting enough to use it to get her (let's be hoenst, fairly standard) YA novel stand out, but did not take any care with how it looks to people who actually know this culture. This feels very annoying. That's all.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, Michael J Fox had extremely good chemistry with everyone in those movies.

[(Anonymous)]

It's using a culture you're not familiar with to make your work seem more exotic and different. It might not be oppression, but it's definitely a disrespect. It wouldn't have hurt her to proof her work with a Russian beta before publishing it.

[(Anonymous)]

I think another part of what feeds that white/white shipping trends is that there are larger systemic problems that mean there are usually way more white characters who actually get developed, three-dimensional personalities. Not the case with Turk here as far as I'm aware, but I'm sure that factors into shipping behaviours.

Re: What are your personal lows when seeking and reading fanfiction?

[(Anonymous)]

omg

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for replying to my long winded mess! Here's another one, sorry.

I agree that Claude is genuine in his friendliness towards Byleth, even up to the end of the game. I just feel there's two layers to his relationships - "I like / admire / respect this person, we should be friends" and "this person is powerful and influential, I need to cultivate this connection so I know our goals are aligned". If Claude were real, he would be a very good politician because my impression is that he would always value the latter more. Even with the person he marries, there would be that calculation. Which isn't bad!

But then there's a third layer of calculation- "is there someone who would benefit me more?" And I think he would always be running that calculation too, and couldn't trust someone else enough to ever risk his end goal or fully rely on them.

None of that is bad either! It's really sensible given his position. It's even a major reason why I like him so much! He is a fantastic character - I'm just shallow and want a happy ending, and I don't think he's ever going to have the time or ability to relax and enjoy one.

Edelgard is weird as a character; she's very obsessive and contradictory, and you can tell that she would have been a powerful villain route if she hadn't been waifu'd. She's power-hungry with a focused world vision and she'd trample on anyone to see it fulfilled - except for her old professor, because... romance? Gameplay means she stalls for 5 years until Byleth wakes up, but also makes zero sense when considering her dedication, competence and the sheer power of her empire.

I honestly prefer the theory that she's drawn to Byleth because of their Crests only, and at the conclusion of Crimson Flower they're just - left with each other, and Edelgard will have to figure out what to do with this blank of a person.

Dimitri is in the middle of a mental breakdown after the timeskip, and you're right that it's really stupid to follow him when he's so intent on self destruction just because he's king. I loved how it seemed like the only reason the group was holding together was because of a festering pile of guilt, loyalty and obligation because that's peak enjoyment for me, but that's only good in a story. I liked Felix and agreed with his perspective on the mess too. I did like the happy end though.

Now, I love Sylvain. He is a total trashfire but so useful on the battlefield! But more seriously, I appreciated the worldbuilding between him, Ingrid, Dorothea and Lorenzo's differing attitudes to marriage and relationships, and how duty/self-preservation vs emotion/wellbeing typically played out in favour of the former until or unless they could reconcile the two in supports. Other than that, both he and Ingrid are people who, if I met, I'd avoid.

[(Anonymous)]

It still is a beauty standard in a lot of Asian countries. Hence all the beauty product with bleaching agents in them. I just hate it when dumbasses say it's because they want to be white or some shit. It stems - as you said - from a class thing.