acerbictomes

 Okay, before my computer crashes yet again, let's see if I can't finish my Yuletide letter. Sorry it's so late! And short D: . I will make this fancier and more eloquent once I've posted it, promise!

First: If you like the fandoms I like, you have excellent taste already. A++! Optional details are optional, especially because this letter is so late, and if you don't need any prompting, feel free to write whatever!

General likes and dislikes: I really like AUs and worldbuilding and character development, but I'd prefer not to read explicit torture, noncon, scat, vore or watersports... mostly because I'm a wimp, haha.

( Archer )( Cucumber Quest )
( Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant )Anyway, that's about it! Thanks for being here, and have a great Yuletide!

  Just started playing Dragon Age: Origins. My commoner warrior dwarf, Serranorn Brosca, is currently on that one quest with the werewolves, and, wow, I really hope she gets paid for this.
   My party currently consists of Morrigan, Sten, and Leilana, with Alistair staying behind at camp because, next to Sten, he's kind of useless. Even when he was in the party, he was always the first one to run out of health. Eventually, I just... stopped giving him health potions and let him die. Sorry, Alistair. 
   He and Morrigan remind me of Dave and Rose from Homestuck, especially every time she shuts him down. Leilana just joined my party, and I thought her skillset going to be a standard healer/cleric. BOY, WAS I WRONG. My brother (he's ten) was really smug about that. Sten has also just joined my party, but I've already been spoiled for much of his character due to that one phase in eighth grade I had for reading video game plot summaries.
  Anyway. I love this game already. It's probably going to eat into my free time all summer...

Man, okay, Steven Moffat? I AM NOT IMPRESSED.
( spoilers below )

  So, yesterday in my AP English class, we had a substitute teacher and had to go through the whole role call rigmarole for the first time since September.

  The interesting thing about this is that halfway through roll call, when we got to the Ms, just about, Sean C (he's chill, worked super high-up for a city council campaign, someday I will write a thing about SUPER HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL POLITICAL VOLUNTEERS and he will be in it) put his hand up and said:
  
  "Sorry, did you say--" (and here there was a little pause) "Seung Jwan?"

  "Yeah," said the teacher.

  "Oh, okay," said Sean C, "That's me. That's my name."

   And there was this huge laugh, because AP Lit is like, 70% Asian, and we've been there, you know? Maybe not us specifically, but every year at the start of school, the teacher reads out a long list of names, mispronounces the Asian ones, and half the kids with names like Haotian and Ji Hoon and Ge raise their hands sheepishly and inform the teacher that they go by Harold or John or Grace. My legal name's in English, and even my grandparents use it, but I'm still better off than the people in my Chinese class who had to go home and ask their parents to remind them what their Chinese names are when we did the unit on letters

  Maybe it's just me, but I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. If I approached this from a social justice angle, I could probably talk about how problematic the cultural erasure is, but, viscerally and emotionally, I feel this sort of vindication in the death throes of the myth of the perpetual immigrant. Your name is what you are, and what we are is American. Long Duk Dong is dead, and, by the way, he goes by Dave. Etc., etc. And I know intellectually that Yinglun and Seung Jwan are just as American as Aaron and Sean, and yet.

  I might change my mind as I get older, but I don't think that, if I ever have a kid, I'll make my sprog go through the whole I-go-by dance, but I'll still give the kid a Chinese name and use it when I am EXTRA MAD or need chores done, because that's just the way things go. My little brother's Aaron at school and Tan Yinglun at home, TAN YING LUUUUN when he's being annoying, and I think that works just fine.

Over the course of a super long time (& somewhat prompted by one of my friends asking me to edit his semi-social emails, and the bit in "Why You Never Truly Leave High School" that talks about how teenagers aren't good at gauging social relationships), I've realized that I really don't do longform well.

I'm not used to semi-formalized discourse, with proper paragraphs and everything. I'm not used to phrasing things in a way that doesn't rely on gifsets or capslock or lazy pop-culture jokes, and you know what? Tumblr isn't helping with that. Actually, the sort of high-octane reblogging I do on Tumblr isn't helping me at all! I love Tumblr, but I want to actually talk to people about things. Case in point: I met a girl at a Gay-Straight Alliance mixer and we follow each other, but all we do is reblog.

So! I'm going to try out Dreamwidth as a platform. Wish me luck!