Stars Of Chaos 杀破狼

Still trying to figure out why I like this look so much…

Would you be willing to talk about how standards of masculinity and femininity in Asia differ from those in Europe/North America? I know, it's a ridiculously broad question but I think you mentioned it in passing previously and I would be really interested in your answer especially in the context of the music industry and idols. I (European) sometimes see male Asian idols as quite feminine (in appearance, maybe?) even if they publicly talk about typically masculine hobbies of theirs.

Hi Anon,

Sorry that it took me over a month to get to this question, but the sheer volume of research that is necessary to actually answer this is significant, as there is an enormous body of work in gender studies. There are academics who have staked their entire careers in this field of research, much of which isn’t actually transnational, being that regional gender studies alone is already an incredibly enormous field.

As such, in no way can I say that I’ve been able to delve into even 1% of all the research that is out there to properly address this question. While I can talk about gender issues in the United States, and gender issues that deal with Asian American identity, I am not an expert in transnational gender studies between Asia and Europe. That being said, I’ll do my best to answer what I can. 

When we consider the concept of “masculinity” and “femininity,” we must first begin with the fundamental understanding that gender is both a construct and a performance. The myth of gender essentialism and of gender as a binary is a product of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in each culture where it emerges.

What you must remember when you talk about gendered concepts such as “masculinity” and “femininity” is that there is no universal idea of “masculinity” or “femininity” that speaks across time and nation and culture. Even within specific regions, such as Asia, not only does each country have its own understanding of gender and national signifiers and norms that defines “femininity” or “masculinity,” but even within the borders of the nation-state itself, we can find significantly different discourses on femininity and masculinity that sometimes are in direct opposition with one another. 

If we talk about the United States, for example, can we really say that there is a universal American idea of “masculinity” or “femininity”? How do we define a man, if what we understand to be a man is just a body that performs gender? What kind of signifiers are needed for such a performance? Is it Chris Evan’s Captain America? Or is it Chris Hemsworth’s Thor? What about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark? Do these characters form a single, cohesive idea of masculinity? 

What about Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen? Miller is nonbinary - does their superhero status make them more masculine? Or are they less “masculine” because they are nonbinary? 

Judith Butler tells us in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) that what we call gender is inherently a discursive performance of specific signifiers and behaviors that were assigned to the gender binary and enforced by compulsory heterosexuality. She writes:

Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximate ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of “man” and “woman.” These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate. (1993: 237)

Because gender norms vary regionally, there are no stable norms that coalesce into the idea of a single, universal American “masculinity.” What I mean by this is that your idea of what reads as “masculine” might not be what I personally consider to be “masculine,” as someone who grew up in a very left-leaning liberal cosmopolitan area of the United States. 

What I am saying is this: Anon, I think you should consider challenging your idea of gender, because it sounds to me like you have a very regionally locked conception of the gender binary that informs your understanding of “masculinity” and femininity” - an understanding that simply does not exist in Asia, where there is not one,  but many different forms of masculinity. 

China, Japan, and South Korea all have significant cultural differences and understandings of gender, which has a direct relationship with one’s national and cultural identity. 

Japan, for example, might consider an idol who has long, layered hair and a thin body to be the ideal for idol masculinity, but would not consider an idol to be representative of “real” Japanese masculinity, which is epitomized by the Japanese salaryman. 

South Korea, however, has a very specific idea of what idol masculinity must look like -  simultaneously hypermasculine (i.e. extremely muscular, chiseled body) and “feminine” (i.e. makeup and dyed hair, extravagant clothing with a soft, beautiful face.) But South Korea also presents us with a more “standardized” idea of masculinity that offers an alternative to the “flowerboy” masculinity performed by idols, when we consider actors such as Hyun Bin and Lee Min-ho. 

China is a little more complex. In order to understand Chinese masculinity, we must first understand that prior to the Hallyu wave, the idea of the perfect Chinese man was defined by three qualities: 高富帅 (gaofushuai) tall, moneyed, and handsome - largely due to the emergence of the Chinese metrosexual. 

According to Kam Louie:

[The] Chinese metrosexual, though urbanized, is quite different from his Western counterpart. There are several translations of the term in Chinese, two of the most common and standard being “bailing li'nan” 白领丽男 and “dushili'nan” 都市丽男，literally “white-collar beautiful man” and “city beautiful man.” The notion of “beautiful man” (li-nan) refers to one who looks after his appearance and has healthy habits and all of the qualities usually attributed to the metrosexual; these are also the attributes of the reconstituted “cool” salaryman in Japan, men who have abandoned the “salaryman warrior” image and imbibed recent transnational corporate ideologies and practices. 

[...]

In fact, the concept of the metrosexual by its very nature defines a masculinity ideal that can only be attained by the moneyed classes. While it can be said to be a “softer” image than the macho male, it nevertheless encompasses a very “hard” and competitive core, one that is more aligned with the traditional “wen” part of the wen-wu dyad that I put forward as a conventional Chinese ideal and the “salaryman warrior” icon in Japan. Unsurprisingly, both metrosexuality and wen-wu masculinity are created and embraced by men who are “winners” in the patriarchal framework. 

The wen-wu 文武 (cultural attainment – martial valor) dyad that Louie refers to is the idea that Chinese masculinity was traditionally shaped by “a dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments” and is not only an ideal that has defined Chinese masculinity throughout history, but is also a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

When the Hallyu wave swept through China, in an effort to capture and maximize success in the Chinese market, South Korean idol companies recruited Chinese idols and mixed them into their groups. Idols such as Kris Wu, Han Geng, Jackson Wang, and Wang Yibo are just a few such idols whose masculinities were redefined by the Kpop idol ideal. 

Once that crossover occurred, China’s idol image shifted towards the example South Korea set, with one caveat: such an example can only exist on stage, in music videos, and other “idol” products. Indeed, if we look at any brand campaigns featuring Wang Yibo, his image is decisively more metrosexual than idol; he is usually shot bare-faced and clean-cut, without the “idol” aesthetics that dominate his identity as Idol Wang Yibo. But, this meterosexual image, despite being the epitome of Chinese idealized masculinity, would still be viewed as more “feminine” when viewed by a North American gaze. (It is important to note that this gaze is uniquely North American, because meterosexual masculinity is actually also a European ideal!)

The North American gaze has been trained to view alternate forms of masculinity as non-masculine. We are inundated by countless images of hypermasculinity and hypersexual femininity in the media, which shapes our cultural consciousness and understanding of gender and sexuality and unattainable ideals. 

It is important to be aware that these ideals are culturally and regionally codified and are not universal. It is also important to challenge these ideals, as you must ask yourself: why is it an ideal? Why must masculinity be defined in such a way in North America? Why does the North American gaze view an Asian male idol and immediately read femininity in his bodily performance? What does that say about your North American cultural consciousness and understanding of gender? 

I encourage you to challenge these ideas, Anon.  

“Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of imaginary construction.” - Judith Butler 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY, Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, NY, Routledge, 1993. Flowerboys and the appeal of 'soft masculinity' in South Korea. BBC, 2018,  Louie, Kam. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2012 , pp. 929 - 943 Louie, Kam. Chinese, Japanese, and Global Masculine Identities. New York, NY, Routledge, 2003. 

I spent a fair potion of my formative years idolizing Frank Frazetta / his artwork. He gave hope to all those who didn’t look like modern-day wraith-thin models. Though you have to do a Lot of working out to look like His models. Time to go do some push-ups!

older lotr illustrations sometimes depict éowyn wearing ridiculously small armour. apart from the problem general sexualisation of the only female character (who really does anything), there’s another hilarious thought:

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 3

Here is Part 3 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 2, pages 163 - 198.

WangXian Kisses! 💖

by  도세 @DOSAE_ANIMATION (YT / IG / TWITTER / WEIBO) ※Permission to post this was given by the artist (©). Please do not repost, edit or remove credits. 

Sha Po Lang 杀破狼 (Stars of Chaos) ch 12,

in which poor Shen Yi expresses how he really feels about working with Gu Yun:

他心道：“打从我上了姓顾的贼船那天开始，就没摊上过好事。”

He said in his heart / he thought: “Ever since the day I got on board that Gu’s pirate ship, nothing good has happened to me.”

(No, Gu Yun is not a pirate. He’s commander in chief of all the military forces in the nation. But Shen Yi consistently considers him to be a stinky pirate.)

I love how in Chinese there’s this construction, 姓顾的 “surnamed Gu,” which is wonderfully specific and concise and terribly derogatory. “That person is so terrible that it’s not even worth it to say his full name, much less any honorifics.”

I was just alerted to another review by my new favorite reviewer, Kali Wallace!

Apparently, she reviewed SVSSS as well as MDZS. It’s such a great review that it makes me want to maybe reread SVSS someday. Hmmmm.

Give them a read. It’s worth your while 💕

Tor.com

Unreliable Narrators, Unrealized Stories, and the Unexpected Perils of Hate-Reading

I’m not much of a hate-reader. Life is short, time is precious, and I am lazy. But there are exceptions. There are times when I get caught u

Tor.com

From Now on I’m Taking All of My Storytelling Lessons From This Wild Epic About Love, Loyalty, and Necromancy

It’s a bit strange, I think, how little writing advice is about feelings. There is abundant writing advice about everything else—from saving

posting on twitter feels like throwing something you worked on for hours, days, weeks into a river, hoping it'll get swept out to sea for many people to experience, only for it to immediately crash into some rocks and explode. its gone now. if no one sees it in the 0.00003 seconds it exists on their timelines, no one ever will

posting on tumblr is like carefully placing your work in the middle of a dark abandoned factory, and slowly a bunch of weird little goblins manifest from the shadows and touch your work all over with their little raccoon hands and share it with each other. sometimes they find your thing again many years later and excitedly share it again

the weird goblins are much more enjoyable

hey there!! hoping to get your input on this: ive seen plenty of fics where characters across the cql board will say just very openly "i love you." i don't know if this is a common way of expressing romantic love in ancient china? i could be wrong, but the FEELING i get is that it's more common to use gestures, or allude metaphorically to some poem/story instead of being so direct? i think theres an old-fashioned jpn phrase like "i'll make soup for u every day" to confess, anything similar here?

oof, so I’m going to go ahead and start by saying that I don’t know nearly enough to be make generalized statements about how romantic love is expressed in ancient/dynastic China or even in modern-day, because I’m just not widely-read/steeped in the culture enough. And even if I were, I still don’t know if I could make definitive statements on what can be considered a “common way of expressing love” because there are as many ways to express love as there are people and permutations of relationships on this planet. 

The renditions of love that tend to linger in our minds, however, tend to be defined by action: 梁山伯与祝英台 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the butterfly lovers inseparable by death; 牛郎织女 Niu Lang and Zhi Nv, a mortal man and celestial maiden, crossing to each other over a bridge over the Milky Way made of magpies; 孟姜女 Meng Qiangnv breaking open the Great Wall with the force of her tears. Just gonna... put that out there.

I did include a brief discussion of the character 爱 ai in this post, which is the character that’s pretty much translates to ‘love’ (and many of its complicated English valences) in modern Mandarin. Given an earlier reading of 爱 not as ‘love,’ but as ‘begrudging, cherishing’ makes the possibility of saying 我爱你 woaini rather...unlikely in ancient China (especially when you consider that 我 wo and 你 ni were different pronouns back then, too... what I’m trying to say is that a simple ctext search hasn’t been helping me here).

I am, however, willing to bet that writing/reciting poetry for your lover was a Thing, and it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t seize every possible opportunity to add gratuitous poetry to a post:

《上邪》/ Shangye

上邪！/ High Heaven!

我欲与君相知，/ I want for us both to know each other

长命无绝衰。/ as long as life, with no decline or end

山无陵，江水为竭，/ When mountains lose their peaks, when river waters dry up,

冬雷震震，夏雨雪 ，/ when thunder rumbles in winter; when rain and snow fall in summer

天地合，乃敢与君绝！/ when sky and earth seal back together, only then will I dare end things with you!

One of the shortest pieces in the Hanyuefu, which I mentioned briefly in this post, 《上邪》 is an incredibly powerful declaration of love, loyalty, and devotion without using any of the above words (it does, however, use 知 zhi / knowing). 

Oh! Both 《上邪》and《卜算子》use 君 jun, which you might recognize from ‘Hanguang-jun’ or ‘Zewu-jun.’ In addition to being an honorific, 君 also appears often in poetry as a respectful second-person pronoun. Again, it’s technically gender-neutral, though most of the time it’s assumed to refer to a man.

《卜算子》李之仪， Busuanzi by Li Zhiyi (Northern Song Dynasty)

我住长江头，君住长江尾。/ I live at the head of the Yangtze; you live at the tail of the Yangtze,

日日思君不见君，共饮长江水。/ Day after day, I think of you but do not see you; we drink from the same river’s waters

此水几时休，此恨何时已。/ When will these waters rest? When will these feelings stop?

只愿君心似我心，定不负相思意。/ I only hope that your heart is similar to mine; I would not let down the intent of our mutual love.*

*note: this entire last line is rough, but I spent more time than I’d like banging my head against 相思, which I translated as ‘mutual love.’ It’s glossed in Pleco as ‘pining, lovesickness’ but literally means ‘mutual thought.’ 

The language of thought, of mutual thought, of the sentiment behind the phrase thinking of you, is something that goes way, way back. It’s in 《饮马长城窟行》, from the poetry post I linked earlier; it’s also referenced in the last line of 《楚辞·山鬼》Mountain Ghost from the Songs of the South: 思公子兮徒离忧 / only in thinking of you can I depart from sorrows.

Oh! Here’s a classic declaration of love -- literally, from the 《诗经》 Shijing / Classic of Poetry: 

[...]

执子之手，与子偕老 / I’ll hold your hand, and with you grow old...

[...]

It’s the most famous line from 《国风·邶风·击鼓》which I think is actually a... war poem? So a poem that’s primarily all about that Mutual Loyalty and Manly Camaraderie, but one that has had its most iconic line co-opted for the sheer romance of it all.

I’m not going to translate《击鼓》 fully because trying to read the 《诗经》is one of my personal nightmares, but you can find it here on ctext with the James Legge translation, which, admittedly, takes some liberties with the text.

One last poem, because the last line is peak pining:

《越人歌》 Yuerenge

今夕何夕兮 搴洲中流，/ What evening is this evening? Drifting in the river current.*

今日何日兮 得与王子同舟。/ What day is today? That I can travel in the same boat as you, prince

蒙羞被好兮 不訾诟耻，/ I hide my shyness, cover my fondness; there will be no slander or gossip or shame*

心几烦而不绝兮 得知王子。/ My heart is troubled, unending -- to come to know you, prince

山有木兮木有枝，心说君兮君不知。/ On mountains, there are trees; on trees, there are branches -- my heart delights in you, and you do not know.

*leaning heavily on the baidu-baike glosses

The story I’ve always been told about 《越人歌》 is that a prince of Chu, fleeing political strife in his state, crosses a river in a boat poled by a young woman of the state of Yue. She recognizes the fleeing prince and sings this song to him as she poles across the river. The catch is that she sings it in the language of the state of Yue, so he has absolutely no idea that she’s confessing her admiration and love for him.

This story, according to my Google searches, is inaccurate, but OH WELL, the last line is still peak pining regardless.

Thank you, Butterfly!

all right so here's the schedule of when dracula daily will be updated, as gleaned from the archives

please share this, it was a pain in the ass

Behold, my Dictionary Collection.

(Not Including the dictionary that I actually normally use, or the online dictionaries that I live by.) (I gotta get myself a multi-volume Cantonese dictionary like my mom’s someday. And she has the coolest 成语词典 Idiom Dictionary, too!)