"The Measure of a Year," a
#meijiang
post-canon fic series (comm art by @/aryx6644)
🦚 Hurt/comfort, injury recovery, mistaken identity
🦊 E-rated
🦚 3-arc structure with possible future extras
🦊 Jiang Xi and Mei Hanxue are deeply lonely people finding each other at last
A little PSA regarding names:
Unlike in western cultures in which giving a child the name of an older family member (parent, grandparent, etc.) is considered paying tribute to the older person, in Chinese and other Asian cultures, it is actually a grave insult.
Fandom isn’t a place where you try to gain recognition for your “content.” It’s where you write some silly stories to lure people in and then you kidnap these unsuspecting souls into a private space and force them to listen to you complain about taxes and health issues
In general I would really like it if non-Asian people, especially white people, refrain from deciding what's racist and orientalist on behalf of the real Orientals (irony intended), especially when your primary contact with Asianness is through fandom.
Taking even one character from the older person’s name to give to the child is already a taboo; giving the older person’s full personal name to the child is absolutely anathema. It means you elevate the child to the status of the older generation, which cannot be done.
Interesting tidbit, but if you’re making an OC in a historical setting with an emperor, that emperor’s name cannot be used by anyone. Not one character from it. There were historical records of entire months names being changed to avoid accidentally saying the emperors name aloud
Names are very different across cultures. What’s considered an honor in some cultures can be massively taboo in others. I hope this was helpful for those in danmei fandom, as misunderstanding can be rampant.
Fun fact my parents were cancelled by my relatives for a while because one of the syllables from my name is the same as one from my great aunt's name 😁 which led to them calling me something Entirely different at home to prevent future ~drama~
In honor of the announcement of OFFICIAL ENGLISH 2HA, the Niangao Army and Mantou Laoshi present:
So You Want To Write An Erha Fic: Canonverse Version
A ppt with illustrations to serve as a quick guide to the peculiarities of the 2haverse!
⬇️Thread!
#2ha
#二哈和他的白猫师尊
Speaking as both a danmei fan and a mental health professional, I think fandom tends to pathologize kinks way too much. Perhaps it's because a majority of fandom is so young, perhaps it has to do with the tendency for self-diagnosis in recent years due to factors I won't get into
Imagine spending 10 whole years practicing the sword every day just for the chance to duel with your archenemy once more and when you find him he has zero martial arts left and has spent the last 10 years having a good time cooking and making merry and tending to a dog :)))
In summary, my points and a question:
1. Do not speak for Asian people
2. Do not conflate Eastern beauty standards with feminization
3. What's wrong with feminization unless you somehow look down on femininity?
One of the most interesting messages 2ha delivers is an answer to a very old question: is it nature or nurture? Meatbun seems to be quite firmly on the side of the latter. What does it take, then, for a person to be good? What does it take for them to choose to be better?
When the author says she ships two of her characters together and some weirdos go “NO BUT THATS OOC” 😬😬😬 let me tell you something about what authors do
Disseminating factual information about a candidate’s very public identity is not harassment, and if you think it is, then that says more about that candidate’s public identity and activities than it does anything spread on socmed. Stand behind your users, not your censors.
Since meijiangists are starving for food
Thank you Ruthie
@kkcoocool
for bringing my delulu Flower!Mei Hanxue and captive Jiang Xi AU to life in spectacular fashion 🫶
#meijiang
#梅梅姜 #姜曦 #梅含雪
Actually I have more to say.
If you think being "pale" and "hairless" in addition to having a small waist are all feminine characteristics, that's because you are looking through a Western lens.
These are not exclusively feminine traits in East and Southeast Asia.
When Asian authors write about these traits in a positive way in describing their male characters, they are not feminizing them--these are longstanding beauty standards that apply to men and women, and whether or not you agree with these standards is a different issue.
one time i accidentally saw a bad take about how meatbun only writes her characters having "overemotional sex" and weeks later i'm still like, are they supposed to lie back and think of england or what
🎉🥟 ANNOUNCING "KITCHEN TAILS: AN 2HA FOOD ZINE" 🥟🎉
A free digital zine focusing on the theme of food in
#2ha
, including a selection of art, fanfics, illustrated recipes, and comics!
PDF download link in thread! ⬇️ 🐶🐱
#二哈和他的白猫师尊
#kitchentails
#2hazine
Thinking about precision of language gets me to think about how non-cn speaking danmei fans praise translated works as, “This was a great translation,” but if you can’t read the original work, then isn’t it just “I really like this translator’s prose in the language I speak”?
so is it ok for me as an asian person to talk about danmei men's thin waists or is that still "orientalism" and if so do i have to show my DNA test results or what
if danmei beauty standards make you uncomfortable, you really don't have to engage in the content. at all.
Remember when Harry Potter fics had to be "Brit-picked" to make sure terminologies and phrasings weren't too Americanized. Remember when we respected the origin of the source material. I'm looking directly at danmei fics that really could take place in downtown Portland.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think a publisher should have to prove its passion for a certain genre to be considered legitimate. That’s the realm of fans and fanworks. A publisher needs to prove its professionalism and deliver a quality product. That is what consumers pay for.
but there is an alarming amount of accusations of mental illness and perversity thrown out from people with absolutely no mental health training simply because they see others enjoying content that they otherwise find repugnant.
The DSM-5 clearly states that paraphilias of any
Ever think about the cinematic parallel of Mo Ran scooping Chu Wanning out from the depths of Hell and Chu Wanning risking everything to protect Mo Ran from the wrath of Heaven
kind are not considered mental disorders until there is clear harm to self or others or will affect one's ability to have satisfying sexual encounters with consenting adults. That's it. So whatever gets people off in fictional context is up to their own discretion and business.
2ha is like a root canal but they give you anesthesia and a goodies bag at the end and Yuwu is like you have a toothache but the dentist just looks you up and down and goes "you can't afford my services" and so you just suffer. continuously. intractably. the dentist is jiang fuli
safety. If you don't like certain content, mute the words, block the people who post it. That's all. Don't pathologize others, and they will likely return the same courtesy.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I don't tend to write serious posts because I'd rather just shitpost and have fun on danmei twitter, but it absolutely raises my hackles to see teenagers being uninformed and spreading misinformation and hate that actually does affect people's mental health and even physical
One of the reasons I was looking forward to official English translations of my favorite danmei is the implicit promise of an uncensored publication. That’s not going to happen if the publication is controlled by JJWXC under Chinese censorship laws.
I love this scene from 2ha book 1 so very much. Mo Ran explicitly saying what his type is: Tall, coldly handsome, broad shoulders, narrow waist, toned body--all Chu Wanning, who is definitely not the pretty twink type.
i do think most young ppl on danmei twitter would not have survived the anne rice's ban on fanfiction
like bc the author said "don't write fics of my work i'll fcking sue you" you just... don't? that's not what happened, says my geocities browsing history.
Meatbun says couple shirts or jewelry aren't enough, her couples are going to be Permanently Marked for each other. Ranwan's matching chest scars, Ximang's matching lotus neck sigils, and Hexie's matching wrist tattoos... we love the codependency
Shifu and shizun are gender-neutral titles, so even if your shizun suddenly changed to female, you would still call her shizun, and definitely not shijie that's something entirely different please 🥲
It’s no accident that Meatbun gave us a character who’s shorter than all the other males and is also a canon crybaby and also has a young mistress’ pouty face with plump lips and dark fringed apricot eyes like fine pools of liquor
As beautiful as the art is, I believe that consumers should have full information about the content creators they are supporting.
Dugong, the cover illustrator for both the Korean and Viet versions of 2ha, is openly involved in NFTs.
It’s another beautiful day to be reminded that the Mei Hanxue twins are blond Kazakhs with green eyes 🥰🥰🥰 and not white 🥰🥰🥰 and definitely not from Norway 🥰🥰🥰
Vol 1 of the Viet and the Eng versions side by side; the Eng version is so thick even as a softcover! There's a lot packed into this slightly-larger-than-absolute-unit volume! 🤭
“Two lifetimes, I belong to you” and “hell is too cold, I’ll accompany you to the grave” except that’s the Mei Hanxue twins and Xue Meng from 0.5 to 2.0 actual canon
I hate how Twitter fandoms have morphed the usage of words so much that they’ve completely minimized words that used to mean something significant. “This person is Problematic™️” but you don’t know if this is because someone is shipping age gap or if they’re a full out TERF.
Ever think about how while “hell is too cold; I’ll follow you to the grave” belongs to ranwan, it’s actually 0.5 shuangmeimeng who followed through with this vow right into the murky depths of it all.
Saw something that made me go mmm but any noncon in 2ha is far from gratuitous. You may be uncomfortable with it, you absolutely do not have to read it, but the noncon is integral to 2Ha’s storyline and ranwan’s two lifetimes of love and betrayal and forgiveness.
Fun Mandela effect in 2ha:
- Taxian-Jun climbing into the red lotus pond to hold cwn’s body (this was never actually described or mentioned)
- Rufeng sect’s uniform being red (it’s blue)
- Jiang Xi smoking in the main storyline (extras only)
- Xue Meng being happy and carefree
In Can Ci Pin I really appreciate how Priest handled the reunion between her couple. I think a lot of the time, reunions are painted as rosy after a long separation. But people grow, and people change, and sometimes the person you come back to is no longer the person you fell in
When you think about how Meatbun wrote 2Ha as a story of choices and vengeance and redemption and she chose to add in Mei Hanxue as your resident blond-haired green-eyed borscht-eating stargazy-pie-making flower petals-dropping Legolas
I love Xue Meng for so many reasons but chief among them is the purity of his goodness and conviction. Even with all the things he went through, he never grew jaded. Never bitter. He mourned, he grieved, he suffered, but never did he blame the world.
It’s an explicit message. It takes support. It takes love. Kindness is not an inherent condition; it is a learned practice. 2ha is not a story about a lotus growing out from the mud, but about a sickly plant finally allowed to thrive in sunshine with proper soil.
I think fans are passionate about what we love and in general support what we believe are genuine attempts to elevate what we love. See the response to 7Seas' publications of the MXTX trio and 2ha. It makes me sad to think that some companies will make a quick money grab when +
Something I see often is “the flower made Mo Ran lose his pure inner goodness” which is a common take but one I find inaccurate. The flower took away his ability to /choose/ to be good. It has always been about agency and its absence—for all the major characters of 2ha.
alternatively, you can create fanon content to reflect any representation you want.
i just think it's extremely odd and inappropriate for a white person to come into danmei fandom to white knight for fictional chinese men and accuse fans, many of whom are asians, of orientalism.
Meatbun novels are like drinking kuding tea. It’s so incredibly potent in its bitterness, but once you actually swallow that first initial sip, you’re rewarded with the lingering taste of honeyed sweetness. That’s how her novels make me feel.
Imagine you and your pals working at a bakery and demanding fair rights and then a random mob outside the door goes “yeah!! Good for you!! We will never buy anything from this bakery again!” even though you actively said “hey keep buying our bread so we can get what we asked for”
You cannot ask someone to choose to be better in a static, cruel, uncaring world.
You have to change the world around them, in even the smallest way, to make it worth trying.
I really dislike protagonists who are excessively naive, "nice," and optimistic. Which is why Shen Qiao is such a wonderful protagonist for Thousand Autumns--he feels it all: the rage, the bitterness, the resentment, and still chooses to do the hardest thing of all. Be kind.
Jun and Claire and Rui and Jordan and I literally squinted All Morning to figure out what the characters say and then we found the caption on weibo after I already made this BUT ANYWAY