Beautifully Written - Blog Posts

The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States

To the many peoole who think Billy is a irredemable characther and completly beyond redepmtion or deserved to die. Cool. Have your opinion but I would suggest that those people never go into the field of child protection or working with abuse victims. The thing about abuse victims, especially child victims is that anger and lashing out are very normal behavioural reactions. They model what they see, they use toughness to protect themselves or to convince the world they don't care. It self protection and survial.

This is a kid who gets beaten by his dad, got left by his mother and never understood why she didnt take him too, left to the hell she was trying to escape from. Got a new family thrushed upon him where it felt like this new sister got treated better than him for no reason and at the time of his death was still living in that horrible situation. He was still a kid when he died. Now does that excuse his actions and they way he treated Max or any or the rest of themm No it doesn't. Is Max entitled to how she feels about him? Sure. She has her own trauma. But was he evil? Nah, he was a scared, lonely kid who never got to explore the world outside his abusive life. Who obviosuly has enough good in him to sacrifice himself at the end, who seemed like he never truly wanted to hurt anyone judging by how upset he was.

In my opinion the way many see Billy is sympathetic of how we treat kids going through these situations. It is easy to feel sympathetic and wanting to help the kid who is showing the signs we expect of trauma, the ones we feel just removing them from the environment and showing love will magically fix. Its easier to look at season 1 Eleven who hid and didnt speak, (also valid reactions to trauma) but the truth of it is that the Billy's are far more the norm in these situations than we think and I have worked with many and not a single one was irrredemable or beyond growing for the better and there is not a single kid who deserved what happneed to them. Billy is no differnt. I really think he could have grown as a characther and had the potential to be able to make up for his actions and forge a relationship with Max.

Anger and lashing out is one of the signs of abuse we we are taught to look for. So if you are someone who is abuse victim and sometimes the only way you can deal with it is to lash out and get angry just know you are not bad or beyond help, and I am proud of you for surviving the best way you onow how and for wanting to change. You are dealing with your situation the best you can and you can grow. Your are more than a sum of your worst moments. I ❤️

The characther of Billy deserved way better than Season 4. Why do that to him? Uhh!

“You can either let this journey crush you, or let it transform you into someone stronger.”

A scene from the newly-released, New-York-Times-bestselling (?!) book Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor, art by 最后的L and water effects by me! 🤗

Honestly, Zachary Ying is a book I didn’t think I’d have the strength to write. The concept is very wild and wacky, yes—the First Emperor of China possessing a young Chinese American boy’s AR gaming headset and compelling him on a journey across China to heist magical artifacts—but writing the story required me to dig deep into my complicated relationship with my heritage.

When I immigrated to Canada in 6th grade, I spent a year as the only Asian kid in the school of a small town. In that one year, I became self-conscious of all sorts of things that didn’t seem to matter before: the way I looked, the way I spoke, the clothes I wore, the media I liked. The white kids wouldn’t insult me outright, but they’d ask me questions that made me embarrassed of my differences from them. I felt backward, alien. The feelings of isolation and rejection I experienced took me many, many years to unpack. It’s been a long journey, learning to love myself again, and I drew much strength from stories in Chinese history to do so.

However, as the years passed, I’ve also watched in horror as the government of China became increasingly authoritarian, cracking down on dissent and committing genocidal atrocities against minority ethnic groups, of which I belong to one myself. Being Chinese has become so painfully political. Pride in Chinese culture is no longer as simple as that, but could accidentally play into the Chinese government’s use of traditional culture as propaganda. Yet on another hand, there’s the necessity of demystifying and defending Chinese culture to combat anti-Chinese racism. Many diaspora like myself are caught in the crosshairs, struggling to find the balance. But what I firmly believe is that traditional Chinese culture and history don’t belong to the Chinese government. It belongs to the Chinese people, both native and diaspora. If we distance ourselves from our heritage specifically because of the Chinese government, that’s letting them win, validating their claim to be the one true representative of Chinese culture when that is absolutely not the case.

Through Zack’s journey in this book, I wanted to engage with the complexities of Chinese identity, but I also want to have fun. This book remains a love letter to my 12-year-old self, taking inspiration from everything I love—anime, video games, sci-fi, and of course, Chinese history and myths. You’ll find appearances by real figures from said history and myths, wielding magic inspired by their legends, along with many famous Chinese artifacts.

If any of that sounds fun to you too, especially if you like Percy Jackson or Yugioh, I really think you’d like this book as well 😩✌🏼 You can find out where to get it at ZacharyYing.com!

Words worth reading and repeating ♡

your work matters, and you're not a very good judge of it.

you can have the fancy degrees and the years of experience. you can have zero idea what you're doing and nothing but a song in your heart. the way you view what you write will never be how i view what you write. which is why you gotta write whatever feels real and good and honest to ya.

i forgot this. it's really lonely to be an author. the world you slice through to carve into a page - it can't ever be fully realized. sometimes the sun is butter yellow, and i can never spread it onto toast to serve to you. i can never describe fully the feeling of a new england october, only that a place that is often too-cold is suddenly full of a strange and visceral warmth. if you're not a writer or an artist, the experience is like this: take a flower and study it. without eating it, cook me a meal that tastes like this flower.

so i didn't know how good the book is, only that i hoped beyond a hope that anyone out there might get a kick out of it. maybe someone nice will review it every few days, i thought. i just want it to help any 1 person.

i did a reading recently where far too many people were kind and thoughtful and so gentle with me that i got into my car and burst into tears. i've had a very rough year, and this experience felt like a hug. so many people telling me they love what i read from the book. and in it, listening to the laughter as i read - at jokes i have long since stopped thinking are funny - it sent a bird straight through my heart. oh shit, i thought. i've been so unnecessarily cruel to myself.

you have no idea how many people read your work and don't respond because they are too shy or busy or unsure. i have webcomics i've never commented on that i've been checking on weekly for actual years. there are artists on spotify i will never be able to see in concert. there are paintings in galleries that i couldn't afford but wanted to kiss. i love what you have made, and i have no idea how to tell you. i love you, and it hurt me and helped me and also sent me back home. i wish there was more time and more ways to shine the light back to you.

be gentle. you have no way of knowing if you're good enough, so you might as well make something that feels good to make. someone will love it. and that love is never wasted.

delirium

link stays up most nights wondering what it’d be like. he feels needy, replaying the same scenes like they console the broken parts of his heart. he’s making it worse, dreaming up the missing pieces, but then rhett shows up with a girl, another blonde, and his imagination sharpens. link’s lovesick, jealous and obsessed. he’s spending tonight alone in his room, wishing they’d never moved into a house together, pining for the 25year-old he’s bound his life to. 

rhett’s out tonight, and link’s curled up in his blankets, deep in a fantasy of what it’d be like to date him. the girls he brings home always like him, starry-eyed and draping themselves on his tallness, fitting their hips between his big hands and leaning on their tip-toes for beardy kisses. and when rhett takes them out, link imagines what it’d be like to ride with rhett somewhere special. for rhett to put on all his best moves, reserve a date night in a restaurant above his means just to prove he’s more than handsome. more than smug, masculine, reaching a hand under the table for his date’s thigh, giving his best toothy grin, wiggling his eyebrows. he’d be too charming, magnificent, and link whines in the dark. 

he plays with the idea of rhett showing him off like he does what’s-her-name, parading link as his boyfriend, touching him in confidence like they’re both lucky to be pretty. link thinks about being with him in a group, tucked into his side at a bonfire, a park, a movie night. kissing him against the door of a car, worming a hand into his pocket. calling him beau and babe, being praised in return. being touched, hugged, kissed, claimed. link feels himself get hot as his brain defies him, leads him into territory he’s desperate to avoid, but never does.

link thinks about laughter in daylight and moans after nightfall. dating rhett means having him in that way, the one way link’s never had for himself, and he burns in his lonely bed, kicking off his blankets. link breathes hard through his nose and keeps his hands at his sides as the fantasy takes control of him - rhett pushing him through the house after a late-night date, mouth gnawing kisses into his neck as his hands rove under his t-shirt. those girls, they have rhett when he’s warm, aroused and pliant, when he’s snuffling into their chests and sucking them where they’re sensitive. when his bigness is horizontal, crushing the body beneath him and squirming like an animal impatient to mate.

he’s heard the moans, link has, and the noises of a squeaking bed and breathless grunts fill his head as his hand sneaks down the front of his boxers. memory and fantasy meet in imaginary sensation, and link can almost feel rhett’s body pressing him down. rhett’s hand on him, tongue in his ear, telling him you’re mine, and god says we’re allowed to make love… calling him honey, warming link up in perfect touches like a boyfriend familiar to the curves of his body, licking him where it feels good and fitting between his legs.

link throws his head back in a whine as the scenes flick, tightens his hand on himself and rolls through confused images of rhett in bed, rhett in his arms, rhett as his date. he’s panting, whimpering under his breath, so lost to what could be, should be, isn’t, squirming like he’s sure dating rhett would leave his partner in a state of delirium. link burns in swirling ecstasy as his whines grow ever-noisier, and he’s so worked up that he doesn’t hear rhett return from his date.

he doesn’t hear rhett tell a female friend to wait in the den, his footsteps as he approaches link’s bedroom door, nor his ragged breath, and he definitely doesn’t hear rhett clap a hand over his mouth and groan into it because he can hear link on the other side, whining and crying rhett’s name in delirious pleasure.