APIAstuck

Land of Homestuck and cute: for the bonus round 2b of the HSO, someone tell me if it's not okay to post this here

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:10:05 -0400

Land of Homestuck and cute: for the bonus round 2b of the HSO, someone tell me if it's not okay to post this here:

[Image Description: a “comic” featuring John and Karkat from Homestuck. Said “comic” is just random scenes inspired by the song Feathers and Down by The Cardigans. ]

It sure seemed like a good idea at 4:30 am, I realized that wasn’t that good halfway during it but whatever, even if it’s not…

Sollux's Backstory

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:24:48 -0400

His mother asks him, every time he calls home, whether he’s liking his organic chemistry class. What she means is, are you going to be a doctor? His father asks him, when the phone is passed over, how he’s doing in physics. What he means is, you’re going to be an engineer, right?

When the anemic envelopes from Yale and Harvard and Princeton had come in the mail, his mother had gone white-faced and disappeared into the kitchen. His father had started to offer some words of consolation, but couldn’t choke them out over the disappointment etched into every line of his face.

Sollux felt so, so ashamed of the way his heart thumped wildly against his ribcage in relief.

His roommate gets it, though. Sollux wonders sometimes whether they’d have gotten along at all if Karkat didn’t have an overbearing Taiwanese mother. Karkat is all spikes and sharp corners, assailed by fits of furious ranting that pass like Midwestern thunderstorms, but when he’s sitting on the edge of his crappy bunk bed, getting in the occasional “Uh-huh,” and “Yeah, Ma,” Sollux remembers how Karkat had stared down at the 82.5% on his midterm with that familiar terrible certainty on his face that nothing would ever be good enough.

Dave down the hall calls them ‘The Joy Luck Club.’ “I’m not racist, it’s ironic, man,” he says. Dave is rooming with his best friend John from high school, who looks a little uncomfortable every time Dave makes a crack like that but laughs anyway.

Sollux overhears John talking to Karkat one day about it. “Dave doesn’t mean anything by it, y’know? He’s just being Dave.”

“Well, maybe he needs to fucking realize that ‘being Dave’ means being a taint-sniffing douche,” Karkat growls back.

“You just gotta have, like. A thicker skin around him!”

Sollux wonders sometimes why Karkat even bothers, but he and John are getting to be friends of a kind, and Sollux isn’t about to abandon Karkat to a constant barrage of Strider when they’re hanging out.

Dear America,

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:58:43 -0400

d2fang:

(I’m going to talk about what I know, so most films/tv shows/etc listed will be from east Asia, and the 1990s and on)

Asia and people of various Asian cultures progress with the modern world. Deal with it. Or not, and stay on this track of yours where any successful Asian modern movie is remade and replaced with white people. It’s not like your pathetic attempts have garnered much prestige anyway.

Except for The Departed, which was utter bullshit. I don’t give a damn about it being an “epic masterpiece” or whatnot. It’s incredibly debatable. (TANGENT!) A short list of why:

Scorsese does not deserve an award for basically ripping the HK film scene-for-scene, and line-for-line. Especially since he said he NEVER watched the original.

White-washing. The amazingness of every actor in the film, including Eric Tsang finally rejecting his typecasted roles for a character he’s never played before, and excelling at it? GONE. Tony Leung? GONE. The Buddhist element that tied the entire film together and made it as incredible as it was? GONE. Other things I’m too lazy to list? GONE.

The Academy Awards calling Infernal Affairs a Japanese film. Yeah, fuck you, too.

And more, but, again, I’m too lazy to list them all here.

(/tangent)

This is an obvious trend I’ve noticed with how the US decides what foreign Asian films to bring over, and what to remake.

LIST OF SCREENED FILMS IN THE US WITH NO INTENTION OF REMAKING*:

Hero

House of Flying Daggers

Farewell My Concubine

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Shaolin Soccer

Kung Fu Hustle

Fearless

Red Cliff (maybe?)

Ong-Bak

Miyazaki’s works (Which I think could potentially be an outlier, depending on the movie.)

*Where an attempt was actually made to market it to profit in the box office.

LIST OF REMAKES/POTENTIAL REMAKES:

Japan: Akira, DBZ, Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, Astro Boy, Gunnm (aka Battle Angel Alita), Battle Royale, Shall We Dance?, every fucking horror film in the world of Japan

Korea: The Host, My Sassy Girl, A Tale of Two Sisters, and again, every fucking horror film in the world of Korea

China + Hong Kong: Eat Drink Man Woman, Infernal Affairs, The Eye (the only semi-successful horror film in HK)

Thailand: Bangkok Dangerous, Shutter

So what do most of these replace-the-slanty-eyed-with-white-people movies have in common: the modern era setting. In the western gaze, Asians are not allowed to modernize. We can’t wear sneakers, t-shirts, and jackets. We can’t have double-crossing cop/triad plots that revolve around current-day Hong Kong. We can’t fight with guns. We can’t have Japanese students who read books and don’t know how to use samurai swords. We can’t have futuristic, end-of-the-world movies with Asians using advanced technology. We can’t have weird mutated sea creatures come out of the Han River and wreak havoc among modern Korea. And we deeefinitely can’t have our horror films (I don’t really understand this one. What is up with the frenzied obsession of remaking Asian horror films?).

NO.

We can have samurai swords. We can have Chinese calligraphy. Martial arts, karate, Shaolin monk clothing, long, silk gowns, ancient Chinese architecture, beaded, big hair, chopsticks all up in the beaded, big hair, and concubines. The most advanced thing we got in terms of modern day Asian/Asian-American representation? FUCKING SOCCER. AND ONLY BECAUSE STEPHEN CHOW WAS SMART ENOUGH TO ADD KUNG FU TO IT. (Even then, it is no where as successful as as the movie he made after that, KUNG FU HUSTLE. Probably because the latter had waaaaay more KUNG FU in the title. And in the movie.)

Seriously, America. We’re pretty okay/good as modern countries. We make better handheld everyday-use electronics than you do. When your 1st generation iPod could only play mp3s and was black-and-white, iRiver (Korea) had one with a color screen, could play (low quality) videos, hold photos, had a radio, voice recorder, and played music of various audio formats (.mp3, .ogg, .ogm, .flac, .wav, etc.). Korea also sells you frakking amazing televisions. (I think Korea is pretty much ruler of all everyday-use electronics, so I’ll stop the list here.) Chinese cell phones can hold two sim cards. They come with free dictionaries. ASUS (“rock solid, heart touching”), one of the most dependable companies for laptops, is from Taiwan. Toshiba, Japan, is the same. The only one that kinnnda sucks is Acer, and I think that’s because they’re pretty much the Asian version of DELL. SO. The list is endless.

We’re not perfect. We’re not the best. But with the types of mainstream movies you, America, output that gives us any spotlight, there’s absolutely no acknowledgment that the modern, independent, imperfect forms we exist as today—with our fancy cell phones and boys/girls pop groups—exists at all. Outside of martial arts and the old eras of our cultural history, to you, we are not people who have examined ourselves and made countless amounts of indie and mainstream media that reflects upon our own cultural identities today. There is no acknowledgment that the successes we have had at our own modern television series or our own modern movies exist, because you take those INCREDIBLE successes and white-wash them till I’m looking at an albino polar bear in a bleached snow storm set upon a white background.

And that sucks, cuz usually your “adaptations” (lol) suck. I feel like we’re your no-so-secret library when you run out of ideas. We are the books and movies you borrow for research and completely plagiarize. Except there is no teacher out there who will fail you for it, because they like the fact that you’ve added their western faces into the stories.

These movies and shows you have remade or plan to remake were extremely successful in their respective countries for a reason. They’re not necessarily the best (Death Note, tv series+movies, is one of the biggest jokes on the internets), just as some US box office successes were utter crap. But they’re our successes. They’re a part of who we are today. They’re one aspect of our modern identities that the western world refuses to acknowledge. And if you can’t acknowledge that, when are the stereotypes going to end? When are we going to be more than just Engrish-speaking, martial-arts fighting, geisha performers for you? When are we going to be more than just “collectivism” and “Tiger moms?” Addressing the issues of Western media taking from Asia will not address all of the problems that white people have with us, but I do think it would be a pretty big step to have us represented accurately on tvs and in movies.

Oh. Thank goodness you haven’t tried to take from our terrible/terribly good tv dramas yet. I’d hate to see you try to come close to replicating what FOUR REGIONS OF ASIA have tried to do with Hana Yori Dango. Or our hella famous pop artists. Not that you would know, because pop artists aren’t from the era of KUNG-FU-ALL-UP-IN-MUH-MERIKA-MOVIES.

Not that this, of course, excuses and ignores the Asian remakes of western films. Although, I would definitely like to see Japan’s interpretation of that disaster of a fetish film, Memoirs of a Geisha. If for nothing else, just for the fucking ability of the actors and actresses to speak fluently in their own respective language.

I will end this with: I WANT TO DESTROY EVERYONE WHO IS INVOLVED IN THE REMAKE OF “THE HOST.” YOU GUYS OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED.

(TW for verbal descriptions and illustrations of a violent hate...

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:13:56 -0400

(TW for verbal descriptions and illustrations of a violent hate crime.)

oh hey y’all should watch this, it is up on youtube for a limited time.

The Cast of Vriska's Story

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:03:05 -0400

Dr. Spades Slick runs the hospital with an iron fist, but Vriska is always looking for ways to challenge his authority. Casual onlookers might think she’s angling for his position, but honestly she’s not that great of a planner; she just does what feels right! She is, however, one of the best ER doctors on staff, and she can get away with damn near anything.

Karkat is head nurse. Patients are constantly complaining about him but he has seniority and for some reason Dr. Slick likes him so he never gets fired.

Tavros and Gamzee are also nurses, but they are infinitely better at it. Usually. Karkat has a sneaking suspicion that Gamzee’s come into work high more than once, but he keeps passing the goddamn piss tests. It drives Karkat up the fucking wall.

Aradia and Sollux run the pharmacy, and between the two of them it is the most efficient and well-managed and slightly spooky place in the entire building.

Kanaya is head of the OB/GYN department. Fef and Jade are med students.

Nepeta is in pediatrics, of course, and is actually one of the more capable doctors on staff; however, the very same traits that make her so appealing to kids make it hard for her to get along with most of the others.

Terezi, Eridan, and Equius are surgeons. Eridan specializes in plastic surgery.

Of course, Rose is the psych consultant. John and Dave are paramedics; John gets to drive the van! He keeps trying to flirt with Nurse Karkat, who is persistently oblivious and just rants about Gamzee all the time.

(…yeah, this is going to be shippy.)

Okay I have come to the conclusion that a Real Story is not going to happen. I am sorry, that is...

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:45:00 -0400

Okay I have come to the conclusion that a Real Story is not going to happen. I am sorry, that is just how things are. (and I am sorry to all the people who started following this account, presumably expecting things to happen! feel free to unfollow.) Instead I am going to use this as a dumping ground for snippets of worldbuilding (and hopefully art) in my APIAstuck ‘verse.

So…I guess I will be posting backstory and whatnot, probably starting tomorrow because I need to finish some last-minute school stuff tonight.

[image: brown-skinned human Vriska in rolled-up jeans and a...

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:40:33 -0400

[image: brown-skinned human Vriska in rolled-up jeans and a loose blue t-shirt, balancing on one hand and kicking out to the side]

oh yeah, forgot to drop this here.

if you were wondering what a less whiny version of...

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 03:44:54 -0400

if you were wondering what a less whiny version of APIAstuck!Eridan’s accent sounds like…

btw, near the beginning he is saying ‘Hongky’ like ‘from Hong Kong,’ not ‘honky’ like ‘White.’ jsyk!

I have a giant WIP text post sitting in this tumblr’s Drafts, fleshing out each backstory a...

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:55:00 -0400

I have a giant WIP text post sitting in this tumblr’s Drafts, fleshing out each backstory a lot more and laying out who’s who in each setting. there are still some characters I haven’t written at all, and one of them is Aradia; I am just not familiar enough with her setting! and I don’t have popular media to draw from. :/

(…I may be drawing 90% of Vriska’s setting from things like Scrubs and Nurse Jackie. I know weirdly little about hospitals for someone whose parents both went to med school, and who worked in a lab at a hospital for 2 years.)

anyway that all is just to say that I am contemplating changing Aradia’s setting to law or engineering or something.

mimicre: [image: Hmong-American human version of Terezi,...

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:46:56 -0400

mimicre:

[image: Hmong-American human version of Terezi, wearing a teal shirt reading ‘TZ,’ speaking into a mic and clutching a smartphone in a pink case]

taking a shot at drawing APIAstuck Terezi. I’ve been writing a ton of stuff for her that I’m not totally ready to post yet, but basically my plan for her is that she gets introduced to slam poetry in her junior year of high school.

unfortunately I have literally just remembered that I set Terezi’s story in the early 90s, way before smartphones became standard at slams. or anywhere. so…whoops, I guess this is a weirdly young-looking Terezi in her late 20s? idk.

soft intelligence: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)

Tue, 31 May 2011 18:16:21 -0400

soft intelligence: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI):

wthellokitty:

Asian American is a term used to describe American individuals who have origins in one or more of the 28 Asiian nations that include the following:

India

Bangladesh

Cambodia

China

Indonesia

Japan

Korea

Laos

Malaysia

Pakistan

The Philippines

Sri Lanka

Thailand

Vietnam

It is also important to note that there are a great many Asian ethnic groups within Asian nations to which people may identify, irrespective of national origin, such as the Hmong. The Hmong people are an Asian ethnic subgroup not represented by any particular nation, but whose diaspora is spread across large portions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

Pacific Islander is a term used to describe native Hawaaians and others living in the U.S. portectorates, as well as Ametrican individuals with origins from one or more of teh 19 pacific Islands, which include the following:

Fiji

Guam

Hawaii

Marshall islands (including the Chamorro People)

Micronesia

Northern mariana Islands

Palau

Samoa

Tahiti

Tonga

AAPI is therefore an inclusive umbrella term that seeks to connect and unify both the Asian American and Pacific Islander populations in the U.S. and U.S. protectorates. At the same time, it is important to note the vast differences that exist within the AAPI population and the variety of languages, dialects, ethnic groups, religions, and cultural beliefs represented.

[Independent School, Winter 2011]

(via titotito)

this is a big part of my motivation for APIAstuck that I...

Tue, 31 May 2011 17:56:00 -0400

this is a big part of my motivation for APIAstuck that I didn’t post earlier—Bao Phi is one of my favorite poets/people in the world, and I love the format of this poem. I don’t think this particular vid gives his context, but the basic idea is that Nguyen is a super common Vietnamese last name, and these snapshots are a way to show a bunch of different lives and different ways of being family.

One story for every Vietnamese body

One song for every voice that sings

Every Vietnamese name is like a tattoo we all wear,

A proud burst of color we dig deep into our skin.

I guess I will just start posting random headcanony stuff here? ...

Mon, 30 May 2011 19:58:35 -0400

I guess I will just start posting random headcanony stuff here? or just a bunch of APIA artists I love (I have SO MANY of them, y’all have no idea.)

so Theresa Vu’s voice is accurate to my APIAstuck!Terezi headcanon. tbh Magnetic North isn’t really my favorite, but I got love for their mission.

> Re: Blather on endlessly: so here is my big derpy post on my motivation for APIAstuck.

Sun, 29 May 2011 12:59:42 -0400

> Re: Blather on endlessly: so here is my big derpy post on my motivation for APIAstuck. :

mimeticheresy:

so here is my big derpy post on my motivation for APIAstuck.

APIA or part-APIA John is a lot of people’s headcanon, and it honestly makes me just a tiny bit uncomfortable because I am pretty sure the idea originated at least a little bit in his buck teeth and glasses at some point.

also, a lot—not all!—of humanstuck and APIA!John stuff tends to merge ‘Asian’ into one big vague identity. just like, y’know. the rest of society. (it’s okay guys I understand, keeping track is hard and schools don’t usually do their bit, I am not blaming anyone)

now I was somewhat active in the APIA community at my undergrad (my APIA studies hoodie is still my favorite item of clothing ever) and I was one of two people in my year who minored in APIA studies (and one of five people total, all of whom I was friends with—and my school was not small!). so I am somewhat familiar with APIA history and I have some small sense of the vast diversity implied by the descriptor ‘APIA.’

honestly I could probably have gone even more specific and done, like. a ChineseAmericanStuck, or a PacificIslanderAmericanStuck. but I wanted to show what ‘Asian American’ can mean when applied to the last century or so.

it’s a little weighted towards more recent decades, but that was more or less inevitable. it is also slightly weighted towards Chinese Americans because that is the culture and history I am the most familiar with (obviously). also China is freaking huge and has all kinds of different patterns of immigration.

as for where it is going—I have been thinking a bit about it, and I think I might try some bullshit overly-complicated shenanigans. at the moment, my basic idea is this:

each of the 11.5 settings I have written up are anchored around the particular trolls. however! the other trolls and maybe the kids are also there in versions native to the setting. and if I can work out some kind of consistent emotional/relational narrative that threads scene shifts together that would be pretty magical?

oh shit this sounds like a huge and complex project

I am honestly a little intimidated! especially because I don’t think it will be satisfactory to make it primarily art-driven. I am actually going to have to do some/a lot of writing. ::terrified::

but…I just snagged the name apiastuck.tumblr.com, so when/if ever I feel ready to launch it will be there. I don’t know when that will be, I am actually more busy than my derping around on tumblr might suggest. but I am a paranoid fucker and I am claiming that space now.

man, I just. I want to do this? but it is going to be a huge challenge for me and I am pretty sure the number of people who would actually be interested versus the number of people who would be irritated is…not big. and it’s kind of a big project for a person with like job hunting and school and stuff.

http://mimeticheresy.tumblr.com/post/4989283589

Sun, 29 May 2011 12:57:41 -0400

http://mimeticheresy.tumblr.com/post/4989283589:

mimeticheresy:

Karkat would be Punjabi I think. Second-gen, raised in a semi-traditional household around 1920. Thanks to the Alien Land Law, his parents had to give up their farm when he was about 6; they handed it over to a White friend who let them co-manage the place. It’s not ideal, but they know they’re luckier than a lot of folks. Karkat thinks it’s all incredibly shitty.

Aradia would be Malay, trying to get a MD in an East Coast school somewhere on one of the most prestigious scholarships they award. She wants to be there more than anything, but sometimes when she closes her eyes she can smell the sizzle of otak-otak fresh from the pasar.

Tavros would be Pinoy, born and raised somewhere in the semi-rural midwest in the 80s. Technically second-gen, but his parents moved to the States when they were about 20 and 22, and they’re fairly assimilated.

Sollux would be originally from Beijing, but he moved to CA when he was about three, in 1991. His parents are both engineers, and he grew up pretty well-off. He was smart, too, but didn’t have a lot of extracurriculars other than things that looked ‘too Asian’ on his transcript such as piano and robotics club, so he didn’t get into Yale like his parents had hoped; he ended up at UCLA, officially ‘undecided.’

Nepeta’s family would be from Hong Kong; her father is a wealthy businessman who was transferred to Austin, TX in 1999, shortly before Nepeta was born. She speaks some basic Cantonese, but she can’t read it at all.

Kanaya would be an Issei Japanese American woman during the internment era, all determined to make the best of the barbed wire and dust, carefully applying her makeup every single day even if she knows there’s no point. She talks about her tiny corner store in Sacramento like it’s still there, like it’ll still be there when ‘this unpleasantness’ is behind them.

Terezi would be Hmong, going to high school in the heart of Detroit, cutting class and getting stupidly good grades anyway. She goes by TZ and is secretly terrified of 1992, when she’ll have to graduate, because her parents want her to go to college but she doesn’t know if she’s smart enough to get a scholarship. Hell, she doesn’t even know how to apply for a scholarship, and she doesn’t trust any of the teachers who have clearly given up on their classes. There’s no way she can afford to take on student loans. She writes ‘1992’ over and over into her desk and her classmates think she’s counting down the days to freedom.

Vriska would be Thai, second-gen, a young ER doctor in Minneapolis. Her coworkers call her ‘Dragon Lady’ behind her back, and sometimes to her face, because she is the baddest motherfucker on the floor. Her blue scrubs look like a leather catsuit just by virtue of being near her god complex.

Equius would be Korean or something? I don’t care enough about Equius to make him a proper backstory.

Gamzee would be hapa, Argentinian-Vietnamese; he moved to Chicago when he was 16 from Argentina in 1973. Most of his connection to his Vietnamese heritage is through the food his mother cooks—he has always felt more in touch with his Argentinian side, but there’s a bit of a disconnect there that he’s beginning to explore while he works his way through school at a casino.

Eridan would be Singaporean Chinese; he moved to Connecticut when he was 12, in 2004, and never stopped complaining about the weather. He kept the Singlish accent, too, mostly out of obstinacy.

Feferi would be hapa, White-Japanese, born and raised in Oahu. She’s third-generation, but she is pretty close to her grandparents on the Japanese side; they lived with her and her parents for about six years when she was very young, then moved to another house in the same neighborhood in 1977, so she grew up speaking fluent Japanese.