Mo Dao Zu Shi: Astray

Forest of Webs, Part Three

Double chapter update! So there's another chapter after this one!

This chapter contains potentially upsetting content involving real-world issues so please, please read the chapter's content warnings! If you want to skip reading this content, you'll be safe in the final section of this chapter, right above the glossary and author's notes.

Don't worry readers, I'm actually okay! I'm just writing out some details of Pan Wukun's backstory based on some of my personal experiences to flesh out her character more!

Chapter warning:
Asian Diaspora feels, self-hatred, biphobia, butchphobia, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, racism, and ableism
This is a heavy chapter about Pan Wukun's life as a GNC/Butch woman in our world with plenty of ugly negative emotions.
Obviously, supportive cishet Vietnamese people exist. But uh...you can't expect me to keep quiet about the bigotry that I experienced back then and now. I'm allowed to express my personal experiences through fiction.
Please proceed with caution.

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"Why do you wave your hands around so much when you talk? That's not normal, Thanh."

"Why are you always so much slower than other people, Thanh? Sometimes, we wonder how you're your parents' daughter."

Thanh did not understand how to uphold an invisible social contract.

Damn. Did her father want her to stay still and be stiff when she talked? Even public speakers waved their hands and arms when they talked.

Her parents always lamented how their daughter wasn't blessed with a silver tongue.

Some of her relatives wondered if she might be autistic since there was already one autistic member in the family.

Not every Vietnamese person was a loud extrovert who liked to party and go out with friends every night. Thanh wished her parents, aunts, and uncles understood that social life in the 2000s United States was not like 1960s Vietnam.

Thanh was Vietnamese American, not just Vietnamese. Thanh and Tara, her two birth names in Vietnamese and English made her status as the daughter of foreign refugees pretty clear.

Maybe that was why she had trouble following social cues. She was juggling two different sets of cultures and expectations. An entire lifelong circus act...

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Tara grew up in the early 2000s, when "gay" was an insult.

When Quyên put Tara in Vietnamese tutoring groups and Girl Scouts, most of the other Vietnamese girls tended to avoid her. Especially since she was the only tomboy present. She was too weird. Too quiet. Too tomboyish. Too much of a future potential gay for their comfort.

Tara thought she would have solidarity with other Vietnamese girls and women since they went through girl troubles together. But she was a "boy" and "man-lite" in their eyes. Straight Asian women were not free from enacting homophobia and transphobia, even against other women. Sometimes they ignorantly outed their sapphic peers to Asian elders without consent. Were they taught to treat sapphic women that way by their parents growing up? They could read đam mỹ[1] without blinking an eye yet they stumbled and got uncomfortable when they realized they were in the presence of a queer woman.

Unfortunately, it was the same at school. It wasn't just the Vietnamese girls, but almost every girl.

The boys thought Tara was gross since she was a girl. They also made fun of her for not wearing dresses and makeup. Sadly, the girls were guilty of that too.