Writing feedback thread, writing techniques, and other "Certain Topics" in Outlaws of the Inland Sea

[Rivvy Elf]

Welcome! Thank you @Ercassie for inspiring me to make this thread. After writing more than 100k words in my Outlaws of the Inland Sea fanfiction, I have decided to use this thread (rather than my Ramblings on Writing thread) to discuss certain writing techniques and other "Certain Topics" in this grand work. This is done in case I pass away suddenly and am unable to answer any questions regarding this work.

I take many risks in this fanfiction, some that may appear confusing or even unseemly. But there are often storytelling and cultural reasons for these decisions in the writing process.

This is also the thread when you could ask questions, give your comments and critique my work.

Here is the link to the plaza version of the fic (the version I don't edit/polish much. Think rough draft). The main difference between the plaza version and the FF.net and AO3 version, is that in this raw version, Luan Tingyu is not mentioned until the later chapters... which is a plot hole: https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum ... php?t=1003

Fanfiction.net link (polished): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14122835/1 ... Inland-Sea

AO3 link (polished): https://archiveofourown.org/works/41763 ... /104777022

Topics:

Topic 1: The Lack of Pronouns (He/She/They/It) in Verbal Chinese https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum ... 075#p60075
Topic 1a: The Lack of Pronouns (He/She/They/It) in Written Chinese Prior to the 19th century, Its Implications, and Why there are Pronouns in the Non-Dialogue Portions of the Fanfic https://www.lotrfanaticsplaza.com/forum ... 099#p60099

Topic 2: If Tolkien had the "Chinese" existing in the earliest drafts of the Hobbit, why do you call the Empire to the East the "Eastern Empire" instead of "China" in this fic? viewtopic.php?p=60132#p60132


So yes, feel free to respond to this thread however you see fit, like commenting on the fic, commenting on the topics this fic gleans on, etc.

[Rivvy Elf]

Topic 1: The Lack of Pronouns (He/She/They/It) in Verbal Chinese

This is inferred in Chapter 5, but in Mandarin Chinese (verbal), there is no differentiation between he, she, they (singular), and it (in terms of identification). What complicates matters is that in written Chinese, there is differentiation. That's why in non-dialogue, the common gendered pronouns are used because in writing, those pronouns existed, but not verbally. This... was difficult for me to implement in the beginning (as you can see in the plaza version of this fanfiction), since I was taught both written Chinese and verbal Chinese at the same time. These are essentially two different languages, by the way.

So to show this, the pronoun "they (singular)" is used for all instances where the mandarin word "ta" is uttered. Identity is determined through context and also by saying stuff like "that person (with this feature)," or "that man" certainly exists. It's just that the common identifier pronouns don't exist in Mandarin Chinese.

Why don't I use (gendered) pronouns in the dialogue then to make my life easier?

Because it's inaccurate, disrespectful to a culture of billions of people, and does a disservice towards the complexity and issues stemming from the difficulties of the Chinese language in regards to both literacy and oration. A supermajority of people who ever lived in any of the Chinese dynasties were illiterate. I will not whitewash this for obvious reasons, as language itself is a key theme in the fic.

Water Margin also was a landmark fic in Chinese history for using vernacular Chinese, rather than sophisticated, literary Chinese. It has its basis off of oral storytelling. Oral storytelling that probably didn't use more than one pronoun. And since this is crossovering with Tolkien's work... it kinda would be disrespectful to a linguist like Tolkien if I ignore such a big difference between written and verbal communication.

I realize that this could be something that causes people to get upset or angry. That's fine. But do not get angry at the billions of Chinese in history who never were literate and didn't use more than 1 pronoun in their vocabulary. I would redirect that anger elsewhere.

But yeah, just pointing this out to clarify this topic. Feel free to put your comments on this.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: Thanks for this elaboration on the Mandarin language. I never knew about it, with he or she or we that it used in the written context, but not the spoken context. I heard a diversity of Chinese series and movies online, either in Kantonese or in Mandarin. But the difference I can never tell, other than the sounds of Mandarin seem softer than Kantonese, that I can take a guess what is spoken. I really have to do it with English subtitles otherwise I go no clue what they say. What I do know, is that there are many difference dialects in Chinese and since the immense space that China is also got different language branches. One form is more or less the state language, just as we got in Holland, Standard Dutch, kind of polished language. But it is not what I speak. It is up to you to explain more about the Mandarin. It is just as unfamiliar as native Australian, native American, native Russian, or the many tongues of Africa. Chinese was not in the curriculum back in my schoolyears of almost thirty years ago.

[Rivvy Elf]

@Aikári Salmarinian You're welcome! There are indeed many dialects. The difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is that Mandarin is an inflected language. There are 5 inflections in Mandarin. It was relatively recently that the standard verbal language, Mandarin, became the "common tongue." Hence why it is also known as "putonghua (normal speech)." Back in the day, it was otherwise known as the Beijing dialect. There are atonal dialects in China too, such as Cantonese and Sichuanese (where my family is from).

Written Chinese has a well-written backstory. According to legend, it was Cang Jie who invented writing during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor way back in the BCEs. As time went on, though, there were many written languages as the land known as China was ruled by multiple entities. Once the Unification of China under the Qin Dynasty occurred, Chancellor Li Si ordered the standardization of writing into one language, now known as Written Chinese, or Hanzi (words of the Han, the main Chinese ethnic group). So while there are many dialects, there is only one written language in China that has been in place since 221 BCE.

The People's Republic of China simplified a lot of the complex written Chinese characters in 1956. Even back then, illiteracy was rampant to such a state that there were calls to switch to Esperanto as the official language! Traditional Chinese is still used in other places like Taiwan.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: Thanks! Illiteracy has been a long time a problem in the world and still is even today. Considering Esperanto? Wow, aye I recall it still quote popular in the early eighties. I had to look up what an inflected language was. I know the Hanzi script is in use so very long, which make it also easier to read ancient texts once you know it. That it has been made simplified, is a good thing to fight illiteracy. I am aware that each character is written in a particular way.

Cool you come from more the southeastern (?) parts. Sichuanese I never heard off as a language, but yes amazing to learn something new. I learnt once marginal about that region and then mostly from the colonial times, via journals of seamen or expeditors. China got one of the oldest ancient civilisations on the planet.

[Rivvy Elf]

@Aikári Salmarinian Perhaps you're thinking of Shanghainese, because the Sichuan region is in central westernish China. It's where there's a lot of spicy food, pretty mountains, and pandas. Maybe elves too since it's quite a serene, laid-back province.

I'll be posting an addendum to topic 1 soon.

[Rivvy Elf]

Topic 1a: The Lack of Pronouns (He/She/They/It) in Written Chinese Prior to the 19th century, Its Implications, and Why are there Pronouns in the Non-Dialogue Portions of the Fanfic.

Before the 19th century, written Chinese also didn't have distinguishing (gendered) pronouns. Like its verbal counterpart, it only had one pronoun: 他. The events in Water Margin, as well as the book, was created before the 19th century, so it had one pronoun. How the Chinese distinguished people was through phrases like "that person" or "that hero" or simply, through their name or nicknames. That's why somebody like Zhuge Liang was also known as Kongming, Wolong, Prime Minister, and an even more private nickname given by parents and close relatives (I have one of those too).

Interestingly enough, even with only 1 pronoun, China by the time of the Song Dynasty had the equivalent of established gender identities and gender schema roles (there's still scholarly debate on if Dynastic China had the philosophical equivalent of gender identities). This was reinforced by the Yin-Yang concept, in which Yin-Yang not only explained the duality of nature, but also was extended to humanity by the scholar Dong Zhongshu about 2000 years ago through identifying masculinity with Yang, and femininity with Yin (I have big issues with this, but that deserves another essay on its own). At the same time, there were well-known figures, most notably an immortal being, that were (what we would consider today) gender-fluid or genderless. Things like non-hetero relationships were fine for men, so long as men had a wife first. Then they could do whatever they wanted. If I recall correctly, women were... not given the same privilege unfortunately.

Then the Century of Humiliation happened in the 19th century when China became the chewtoy of Europe and Japan, and that's when multiple pronouns became a thing in Written Chinese.

This begs the question then... my crossover fic uses events that took place before the 19th century, has pronouns in the non-dialogue portions of the fanfic. What gives?

... It was an oversight. I completely forgot about the part where only one pronoun was used in both writing and verbal language before the 19th century. But, luckily enough, this can be reconciled through the crossover with Tolkien's Legendarium based on multiple factors:

1. Contact and influence from Dwarves. In my fic, the near genocide of the petty dwarves (requiring the murder of dwarf-women by elves) has a profound impact on dwarven culture and how dwarf men and women are treated in the eastern part of Middle-Earth. Pronouns separating dwarf-men and dwarf-women are created with the initial aim to protect their women... This'll be a thing that will be debated about in the fic eventually.

2. The First Emperor in this fiction (more on that person later) instituting a corvee labor policy for everyone in the empire. Most women in a certain age range undergo a certain event that occurs every month, thus they have a mini-break every month. Most men don't have that break. As a result, and upon consultation with the dwarves, multiple pronouns are created as a shorthand method for work-related accounting purposes.

3. I am making the assumption that Khuzdul is the standard written language for all dwarves. Thus, when the Eastern Empire was in the process of standardizing their writing, they consulted the dwarves for some advice.

Hopefully that erases that linguistic plot hole.

[Rivvy Elf]

Topic 2: If Tolkien had the "Chinese" existing in the earliest drafts of the Hobbit, why do you call the Empire to the East the "Eastern Empire" instead of "China" in this fic?

In The History of the Hobbit, Mr. Baggins, the earliest fragment of The Hobbit (the "Pryftan Fragment"), Bilbo states that he offered to walk to the "Great Desert of Gobi and fight the Wild Wire worm of the Chinese." This is fascinating as the Gobi Desert and the Chinese race/ethnicity/nationality/culture were in Tolkien's Legendarium in perhaps its earliest stages. Now, obviously, you don't see either of these terms in the published version of Bilbo's tale. I don't think Tolkien knew the language etymology of "Gobi," which is why he removed it in the next fragment. Gobi is Mongolian and we still don't quite know what classical Mongolian sounded like. I'm pretty sure Tolkien was also racist toward the Mongolians as well if I recall that he said the Mongolians were the ugliest people on earth (I strongly disagree). (EDIT: Turns out.. the quote I was thinking of was actually racist to Europeans on defining that Europeans did not like the visual characteristics of the Mongols who were ugly, which were akin to the orcs he was envisioning.)

In the "Bladorthin Typescript" fragment, he changed the sentence to "the last desert in the East and fight the Wild Wireworms of the Chinese." Notice how he kept the Chinese in here. They weren't on the chopping block yet. In my mind, a part of Tolkien still wanted to include the Chinese race in his legendarium. This is consistent with his later thoughts about Rhûn essentially having a similar culture to the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and other ethnicities/races in Asia. Tolkien couldn't find enough of a reason to justify including the Chinese in Middle-Earth, which is why eventually we got...

"Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert." - Bilbo Baggins, from The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party"

So the question for this Outlaws of the Inland Sea work is why didn't I just call the Eastern Empire "China" and have their race be called the "Chinese"?

Because those were modern linguistic inventions! Tolkien was right not to include them in his Legendarium. I always interpreted the word "China" to be referring to the Qin Dynasty, the first dynasty with a central Imperial system. But the Chinese do not refer to themselves as people of the Qin! For most of history, the Chinese referred to themselves as people of the dynasty they were under (Tang person, Qing person, Song person, Han person). Even more complex, most Chinese refer to themselves as their ethnicity. The dominant ethnicity of China is the Han people. This heavily influenced the name for written Chinese, Hanzi (汉字, Han characters). There are multiple ethnicities outside of the Han within China, by the way.

Even in the current day, the "Chinese" name for China is 中国, commonly referred to as the Middle Kingdom (but probably should be Middle Country now since there are no kings in China anymore). So, therefore, when people label themselves as Chinese, they're labeling themselves as "Middle Kingdom Person."

So... why do I call it the Eastern Empire then?

A lot of Chinese names for locations are largely based on geography and their significance to China. As in, Beijing is "Northern Capital," Nanjing is "Southern Capital," Dongjing is "Eastern Capital." So Eastern Empire (Dongdadi) would be entirely fitting for a name. At the time of its Unification in Middle-Earth, they were aware that they were in the east and that there were formidable entities in the West.

As for why I don't refer to it as its verbal Chinese name, Dadongdiguo, Da Dong, or the Dong Empire....

I mean just look at it for a second.

The Empire of Dongs.

There's already a lot of lowbrow humor in my fic, but a lot of that works in the context. The Dong Empire just distracts a lot of readers way too much!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: You, as writer of your story, you are a product of your time and you are using Chinese of today, you use it because of your (Chinese) readers can understand it (I think). I could write off course a story in Middle Dutch, but who of the native Dutch people would be able to read that? It was stuff spoken and written between 1150AD and 1500AD. It is not advisable for me to try. With some effort I can read the old Dutch, but speak? Women never had the same privileges since the days the agricultural society came to rise. In the hunter-gatherer society this is fairly different. I don't think it mattered then if you were a man or woman for the roles in the tribe. It were your skills that made life possible and safe against the deadly dangers in the wild.

Tolkien was a product of his time, but racist he was not. Otherwise he wouldn't have written on a friendship between two different kinds, Dwarves and Elves, via Gimli and Legolas for example. Or had the Fellowship come to existance. There were generalisations across the world from the European view and even within Europe itself, across the Renaissance, Romantic, Industrial and early twentieth century. It was the 'normal' back then, and great exhibitions were the big thing in those times, the meeting with cultural exotic items, habits and peoples (Queen Victory and Prince Albert had opened the Great Exibition in the Crystal Palace in London in 1851). I see this catalysed also the first resistances against such exhibitions and people grew aware that was exotic, was not that at all. But it took two great wars and another silent war until the 1980's before the voices of multicultural in 1990's stood up. I was a student back then. And getting to know more indepth other cultures than my own, was pretty exciting in those days.

It is easy to use a generalisation when someone wrote something that is today not acceptable. I don't like the cancel culture. But in the overal perspective I feel Tolkien was his time ahead what democracy was via the use of the Fellowship and use Little People as Hobbits to take a major role. All of the Fellowship are masculine, there are no women at all. But that is not an issue to me, even I am feminine. Not all tales and stories need to have brave women, because of it must be so. But perhaps I am biased myself, because I knew the time before 1980 and generalisations were accepted and common to use anywhere? Some things got stamps of the past, but they should have it, otherwise we forget truly how it was back in those days (1920's - 1970's), and what is the difference is with the 2020's.

And besides the Chinese and Japanese did/do have generalisations about Europeans, that aren't flattering us. I don't know them, but I know they have them. Do I mind? Nope.

NB: Being Chinese or Mongolian, is a national citizen of a country, a nationality is not a race. And I am sorry to say, but a lot of lowbrow humour I am missing out. And what is the Dong Empire? I never heard of that.

[Rivvy Elf]

@Aikári Salmarinian
I like this post, thanks for the reply Aiks!

Ehh it's in English, not Chinese. I'm using pinyin to cater towards people who speak English. If I were catering it to Chinese readers... the writing quality would be much worse because I'm much better writing in English, and it would be something like 草泥马, 我会杀了你你这个叛徒! 去你的! (translate at at your own discretion). I ain't using Middle English because Water Margin was unique in that it not used the language of its time period, like how the average person would speak (vernacular), it also used fancy language that were used by the literati, who spoke in a very different manner and style. I attempt to demonstrate that multiple ways through the characters' voice, and by having a very different speaking traditions depending on the context. The Imperial Court scenes, for instance, have the Emperor using "we" to refer to himself, while those speaking to him use the phrase "your servant" to show deference. Thus, I'm not going to use say... Middle or Old English, but modern English from a range of different styles.

The privileges vary depending on the context, culture, and time period. Generally yes, you are correct, but there have been notable exceptions. In the Shang Dynasty (1300s BC), consort Fu Hao was a celebrated general who won notable victories on the battlefield. In Chinese gender studies on the decline in power of woman, scholars have isolated three major philosophical turning points that led to women having less and less power. One of them I mentioned already, the tying of Yin-Yang to good/bad qualities, which were assigned to men and women, thereby establishing problems that would have long term impact. Chinese gender studies is a whole entire paper though, and I won't elaborate much on that unless asked of course.

I define racism as "the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities." There's a really wide spectrum for racism in that definition (it's really easy to be racist, a lot of us humans use schemas for a lot of things) and Tolkien was not on the parts of the spectrum that would be cancelled today. He would be on the "ignorance" and "self-criticism" part of the racism spectrum in which the "ignorance" part means he just simply didn't have the information, and all the information/culture he lived with was asserting something that wasn't the entire truth. The "self-criticism" part means that he generalizes characteristics, abilities, and qualities of a group that he was a part of. There's actually direct evidence of the latter.

I do have to apologize for saying that he was racist to the Mongolians if I recall from a previous post. That was ignorant of me. After doing some research, that reference shows him actually being racist to Europeans and not Mongols.

In his letter blasting away at an attempted movie attempt of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien commented on how the orcs should look like. He wrote,

"The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the ?human? form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flatnosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."

I'm going to assume that Tolkien identified as European and was criticizing his own culture while trying to distance himself as being one of those that believed in the Mongol race theory at the time. It looks from the surface he's being racist towards the Mongols, but really he's being racist to Europeans, by generalizing a European's preference of beauty. So if anything, Tolkien did his best to not be racist to cultures he was not a part of, but he does make racist remarks to cultures he is a part of or knows a lot about. Please let me know if Tolkien didn't consider himself "European," but in fact, "South African" or any other ethnicity/race.

Again, that goes against what I was arguing about earlier, just to clarify. This also could go in line with your definition of "generalization," @Aikári Salmarinian.

In the U.S, no matter what any of our representatives or heads of state, one can argue that the Chinese were treated as race separate from the people in East Asia for the longest time. They were specifically banned for immigrating into the United States through the Chinese Exclusionary Act ("they were takin' our jobs!") that was only lifted during WWII. Much of the Chinese (including myself) see themselves as a race, and we have our own mythology that actually has events that try to prove this, like the Huaxia vs. Miao conflict before written history. We see the Japanese, Koreans, and Indians, as very different people. Quite frankly, a lot of us don't like to be grouped with them. We never asked to be grouped up as "Asians," that was a term made by others who never understood the cultures of what they were defining. We see "Chinese" as analagous to the Huaxia. A lot of Mongolians also would prefer not to be grouped as "Asians" as well. A lot of Chinese also do not want to be put in the same group as "Mongolians." There's thousands of years of conflicts between the two groups.

The Mongolians have their own mythology as well in terms of things like the first ancestors of Genghis Khan. In the cases for a lot of East Asian countries, nationality and race are bound together.

Furthermore, it linguistically is a lot easier to understand Chinese culture if one sees as it as a race composed of the Han, the Hui, the Manchu, etc. This is absolutely critical because certain non-Chinese ethnicities like the Uyghurs are being persecuted right now as they are in the midst of being assimilated within as a potential ethnicity of the Chinese race.

I'm trying to think of generalizations made in regards to Europeans... but its hard because many of the Chinese I know see Europe composed of many different races and nations and there are different generalizations for each country. I was raised on generalizing based on past actions to 20th century China. Won't say anything further in regards to that here.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: Thanks! I am not asking to elaborate over matters you don't want. Up to you what you like to share and what not. The same is for me. I will not try to translate lol. Water Margin like so much Chinese series about the past, are in spoken in Modern Mandarin. I don't think the Chinese of today will understand what they spoke a thousand years ago, or even further back. Languages evolve over time. I got it wrong in that regard, but thanks for correcting me there. I was looking for the pinyin word, but could not come up with it. I know no other alphabets than the Latin one. I can't even read the runes of Scandinavia.

Racism as a word I don't use anymore, unlike you do. I place it under the umbrella term of ethnicity, a word that came up somewhere in the 1980's as far my memory can go back to the point to the origins of human peoples in the long run of the many millennia gone by. I respect you by how you feel and voice your thoughts on Tolkien, but I am not certain myself I would agree with you on that. I have no idea how Tolkien considered himself from his own thoughts, but what I do surmise, he saw himself as an Englishman. The Shire stands for his ideas of the idyllic England, cup of tea, cows in the field and chirping birds in the hedges. No industry around, but horse and wagon. South-Africa I never found back in the idea of the Shire, or anywhere in Gondor, Rohan or the other realms.

The European immigrants took a lot of baggage (not what they carried with them) to the new Americas and saw themselves as the owners of the continent, disregarding those who lived already there. Northwest Europe placed a large stamp there. but also Southwest Europe did it, via Spain, Italy and Portugal. Anyone from Mexico to the south speaks either Spanish or Portugese, as main, second or third language. I got plenty of videos who tell neatly about the history of North America.

Asia is a continent to me, just as South and North America, Africa, Europe and Australia. There are no negative cognates to it for me. All continents are spectrums of different ethicities, cultures and language groups. An Asian is not one type human, just as an African is not, or an European. But I can see what the Chinese would view over Europe as you are voicing it. Anyone is raised in particular ways you might or might not question later on in life. That is a normal thing to do. I have done it as well.

Assimilation into a culture is basically not a bad thing to happen, but I agree, it should not be forced. But it is here done to, to new immigrants at least. They got to learn Dutch, and it is not the language only but also a course in Dutch culture and customs, if you want to go for a permanent visa to stay. After five years you can apply for the Dutch nationality, if you want and have no criminal record. You're not a foreigner anymore then. However the past looked much the same as today what happens to the many minorities with the Muslim faith in lesser democratic countries across the world. I am aware they hold on to other thougths and values than ones I know, or indentify myself with. I feel it is important to know them also, even I cannot or would agree with them. I search often for my own information than rely what is delivered to me by the general news channels,(television, newspaper or magazine).

Thanks still about your explanation how continental Asian ethnitic groups like to see themselves in accordance to other peoples in the region. It is a sense refreshing, very refreshing and an element not to forget at all.