#but yeah posting for every cool English speaker who wants to know what the hell he's saying (: | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

haljathefangirlcat · 1 year

Text

I don't want to add all of this under the post I took this pic from, because I'm going to get nitpicky and long-winded and it would probably get really annoying for OP... and also because this is the "are you saying we piss on the poor" website, so someone would inevitably think I'm hating on either OP or Mary Reufle. Which I'm not, btw. I think the passage above says something really beautiful and tragic about humanity, and I'm thankful to OP for posting it, otherwise I might have never read it.

But it does remind me of a stupid pet peeve I've been trying to ignore since people on Tumblr started debating whether asexual sailors would be safe from the lure of sirens and other people started replying that, hey! Sirens in Greek mythology, especially the Odyssey, don't lure sailors by offering sex! They lure them by offering them what they desire! Which might be sex for some, but might be just some really great pasta for others!

... again, to avoid another obvious "we piss on the poor" moment: no, I don't actually have anything serious against jokes, thought exercises, and stories in that vein. Ace people belong in fun fantasy and/or mythology-inspired stories and story ideas as much as everyone else. And I'm well-aware you don't need my permission to write about a sailor saving their entire crew by being totally indifferent to sex or almost dooming them because some weird lady on a rock in the middle of the sea was loudly singing about being desperate to share cool frog facts with someone. Hell, I'd probably read both.

But anyway, the pet peeve I was talking about before going on that tangent is that the sirens do sing Odysseus' story to Odysseus, and it just annoys me so much, seeing people ignoring the fact that that's actually a thing that happens. Like, this is from Book XII:

"[...] the Sirens failed not to note the swift ship as it drew near, and they raised their clear-toned song: “‘Come hither, as thou farest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; [185] stay thy ship that thou mayest listen to the voice of us two. For never yet has any man rowed past this isle in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips. Nay, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man. For we know all the toils that in wide Troy [190] the Argives and Trojans endured through the will of the gods, and we know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth.’"

... yes, this translation is taken from Perseus and is, unfortunately, in prose. Give me a break, it's not easy to find good poetic translations of the Odyssey posted for free online when I'm not even a native English speaker and to me "Odyssey translation" means "Rosa Calzecchi Onesti's translation from the '60s." The point is, the sirens try to lure Odysseus (and would definitely succeed, if not for the ropes-and-wax trick) by telling him that they know everything, including all that has happened to Odysseus himself and everyone else who suffered through the war of Troy.

And yeah, you could argue that the main draw for Odysseus (his greatest desire, to tie it all back to mythological shitposting) is knowledge itself, because he is that kind of guy. But the sirens don't give any details on their knowledge of all that is presently happening "upon the fruitful earth." They do, however, give details on their knowledge of the past -- specifically stating they know Odysseus' past. The same man who, if you remember, can't take Demodocus singing about a couple of episodes from the war of Troy without needing to hide his face due to being completely overcome by tears, yet has a piece of meat from his own plate brought to Demodocus as a show of respect and gratitude for his singing. Unlike his own wife, Penelope, who when hearing the aoidos Phemius singing about the same war back in Ithaca, asks him to change the subject to something less painful...

It's just. It's so painful and complex and wonderful and it makes me want to tear my hair out every time I think about it. And nobody ever remembers it when someone brings up the sirens and specifically the ones from the Odyssey! *screams*

Btw, now that I've had my nice little rant, please do me a favor and listen to the song Le Sirene by Vinicio Capossela. Because this Italian singer and composer? He gets it.

Here's a rough translation of the lyrics:

The sirens

Tell you about yourself

What you were

As if it were forever

The sirens

Have no tail nor feathers

They only sing about you

The man of yesterday

The man you were, two steps from the sky

All your life before you

All your life as a whole

They say, stop here

The sirens

Assault you at night

Created by the night

They kept all the faces you loved and now

The sirens have them

They sing them to you in a chorus

And you're not alone anymore

They know everything about you

And the best of you

It's a song of sirens

And you hear it in the regret

Of what you lacked

What you glimpsed and won't have

They give it to you

Only in song

They sing to you of how you came from nothing

And nothing you will be

The sirens are a night of beer

And the dawn won't come anymore

They're street ghosts coming in in gusts

They have the voices of sirens

Fill your ears with wax

To not hear them when it's evening

To stay firm

Tied to your routine

But if you listen to the sirens

You won't come home

Because home is

Where they sing about you

Listen to the sirens

They won't stop their singing

In the endless wake, they sing

All your life

Who you were, who you were, who you were

Who you were, who you were, who you are

Mnemosyne

Why go on until old age

Until you feel ill?

It's all already here

Stop here

You don't have anywhere to go anymore

The sirens

Don't sing the future

They give you what has been

But time isn't kind

And if you stop and listen to them

You'll let yourself die

Because the singing is neverending

And it's full of deceit

And takes your life from you

As it sings it

youtube

... also, if you know Italian or you don't mind running lyrics through an online translator (not Google Translate, pls, they don't deserve to be butchered like that) or you're just looking for new music to listen to, do yourself a favor and go listen to Capossela's other Odyssey-inspired songs from the album Marinai, Profeti e Balene. They are:

La lancia del Pelide (The spear of Pelides, and yeah, this one is actually about the Iliad)

Le Pleiadi (The Pleiades, from the POVs of Odysseus and Penelope, and a much deeper and more fascinating take on their relationship than either "Odysseus is a jerk who doesn't care about her because he has sex with other women" or "he's cool, she's cool, they're a cool power couple" could ever hope to be -- even though I do love the latter a lot, admittedly)

Aedo (Aoidos, set in the aftermath of Odysseus' killing of the suitors)

Calipso (Calypso)

Dimmi Tiresia (Tell me, Tiresias, set in Book XI, when Odysseus summons the spirit of the dead seer and receives a prophecy from him)

Nostos (Actually about the tale of Ulysses' final "mad flight" and death in the Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXVI -- yes, you need to listen to this one, too)

... okay, yes, this post did turn into Vinicio Capossela shilling. I swear it wasn't the initial intention, it just happened. But you know what? I don't even care because most of the songs that make Tumblr users go "OMG THIS MAKES ME FEEL SOO UNHINGED 😭 TOTALLY FERAL 😭😭 WHY DOES IT GO SO HARD 😭😭😭" don't go even half as unnecessarily hard as the lyrics to Aedo and Nostos. So, yeah. You can thank me after lying on the floor like "head full. way too many thoughts" for an hour or two.

#long post #greek mythology #the odyssey #odysseus #sirens

2 notes · View notes

hellofeanor · 3 years

Text

Fëanorian Quenya

Hey friends! Do you like elves? Do you like the Silmarillion? Do you like Fëanor and co? And most of all, do you like spending hours thinking about minor details pertaining to made-up languages??? If so, boy do I have a treat for you! Let’s delve into the weird world of Fëanorian Quenya and explore some history and mechanics of why they talk Like That.

I’ve seen a lot of posts joking about the Fëanorian lisp, which is about as funny as a joke about a speech impediment can be. 👍 It’s important to understand, though, that this IS a joke. No, they didn’t really speak with a lisp. Yes, they did pronounce some S sounds as TH. That’s the critical disclaimer here: SOME. It’s not a blanket pronunciation. There’s a lot of background research that goes into determining which words would be pronounced with S and which would be TH, and that’s what we’re going to look at.

So if this is something you’ve come across in fandom and you’re not totally sure on the details, or if you ARE sure and just want some more in-depth info, read on.

The stuff probably everybody knows already

For anyone who’s been hanging around the Fëanorian corner of the Silm fandom for more than three minutes, there’s about a 100% chance you’ve heard of Fëanor’s penchant for retaining an archaic TH pronunciation after the majority of the Noldor went ahead and started pronouncing this sound as S instead. You may also know that this sound is represented by the letter thorn (Þ) in HoME, but since thorn doesn’t exist in modern English orthography and it’s a pain to keep typing the ALT code, I’m sticking to TH here. Anyway, all this was due to the fact that Fëanor was a huge mama’s boy, and his mom Míriel Therindë (later called Serindë, which made Fëanor want to punch walls and possibly also fellow elves) was an outlier who retained the TH after it fell out of use. Her son Fëanor, in turn, kept this up to honor her. Now, whether or not he would have bothered if this sound hadn’t literally been a critical part of her name is debatable, but that debate is outside the scope of this essay.

Fëanor continued to use the TH pronunciation until his death, and required his sons to use it as well. Finwë, however, switched over to S after the death of Míriel and before his marriage to Indis. Fëanor, reasonable and level-headed as he was, took this as a personal insult and decided that anybody who rejected TH likewise rejected him. So presumably, his loyal followers would have obeyed his totally reasonable demands not to give in to the seductive S-shift.

Why tho

Why did the Noldor decide to alter their pronunciation from TH to S? Great question. Nobody really knows. For the hell of it? IDK. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But the important thing to understand is that elves, and especially Noldor, were really committed to making sure their language sounds cool. This is why it changed so much and so comparatively quickly for an immortal population: they were actively invested in changing it. They liked inventing new words and exploring new sounds and messing around with grammar.

So at some point some influential Noldo might have been like, hey y’all, let’s stop saying TH and say S instead! And everyone (except Míriel I guess, who was known for her elegant manner of speech and didn’t want to muck that up by changing pronunciation of a whole letter) was like, whoa, capital idea my good egg. And they went with it. Previous ideas along these lines included ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying KH and say H instead’ and ‘hey y’all, let’s stop saying Z and say R instead’, and those went over swimmingly. Nobody could have foreseen the problem this TH to S business would cause.

Now here’s a fun fact. There was another change to Noldorin pronunciation that happened AFTER Fëanor’s birth, that he himself was involved in. This one was all about bilabial to labiodental F. And those sure are some words, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about (I don’t blame you), BILABIAL is a more whispery sound that happens when you say F using only air passing through your pursed lips, and LABIODENTAL is when you say F with your top teeth touching your bottom lip. Going forward I’m going to use PH to represent the bilabial sound, and F for the labiodental.

So F got on the radar of the Noldor via the Teleri, who used this sound in their language. And ol’ Fëanor figured it would be awesome to incorporate it into Quenya because he thought the PH sounded too close to HW, and the two were getting confused by lazy speakers. Why did he care? Because of his dad’s name and his own, of course. If people started to get lazy in their pronunciation, we’d end up with Hwinwë and Hwëanáro, which would be terrible and stupid and unacceptable. He accused the Vanyar of leaning down that road, and he wanted to stop that kind of shift before it happened to the Noldor. How to do that? Why, by instigating a different shift from traditional Noldorin PH to Telerin F!

“Hey y’all, let’s stop saying PH and say F instead!”

“Whoa, capital idea my good egg.”

Moral of the story: Fëanor is only concerned with Quenya pronunciation insofar as it affects his own name and the names of family members he likes. He does not care whether it’s staying the same or moving to a new sound so long as it personally makes him feel good and his name sound cool. Therefore the true way to piss him off would be to call him Curuhwinwë Hwëanáro, son of Serindë.

Okay so here’s how it works

Now that history is out of the way, let’s get back to how TH was used by the Fëanorians. As I mentioned earlier, TH wasn’t a blanket pronunciation. It all depended on the original form of the word, and whether the root had a TH or an S. And some very similar-sounding words come from different roots, so this can get tricky. A great resource that’ll give you this information is Eldamo: Quenya words where the S was originally TH are marked out with the Þ (thorn) symbol in the wordlist.

Some examples:

Súlë (spirit, breath) comes from the root THŪ, which means it would be pronounced with a TH. Silma (white crystal) comes from the root SIL, so it and related words like Silmaril would be pronounced with an S. No Fëanorian would say Thilmaril. Isil (moon), however, is a similar-sounding word that comes from a different root: THIL. Olos (mass of flowers) comes from the word LOTH, but: Olos (dream) comes from the root LOS. Fëanorian pronunciation would immediately differentiate between these two words.

While Fëanorians may have retained the distinct pronunciation of TH vs S, other Noldor can still differentiate between original S and S-that-used-to-be-TH in their writing. There are specific tengwar to use depending on the word’s original form. Silmë (the one that looks like a 6) is used for original S, while súlë (or thúlë, the one that looks like an h) is used for original TH.

Which other elves used this sound in their speech?

Fandom has really latched on to this TH as a Fëanorian thing, but it wasn’t that exclusively. The TH sound was actually ubiquitous in other elven languages, and in Valinor, only the Noldor dropped it. It was still used in Telerin and in Vanyarin Quendya. The Vanyar retained the TH not because of anything to do with Míriel, but just because they were a little more conservative and their language didn’t pick up on all the changes that the Noldor made. They also noped out of the Z to R shift the Noldor initiated, opting to keep the Z around.

When Indis married Finwë, she stopped using the normal Vanyarin TH and switched over to S as a gesture of loyalty to him and his people. Finarfin, however, out of love for the Vanyar and Teleri, switched BACK to TH. I like to think about how much it would have annoyed Fëanor that his snot-nosed kid brother was speaking correctly, but for the wrong reason. Go down one more generation, and Galadriel very specifically did not use TH. But this time it was absolutely a choice made as a glaring middle finger to Fëanor.

What this means for your fanfic or whatever

The big takeaway here: you can’t just have Fëanorians replace every S with TH and call it a day.

If you’re inventing names for your Fëanorian OCs or coming up with phrases for them to say, it’s important to look into the history of all Quenya S-words you end up using to determine if they should be S or TH. If Fëanor got mad about somebody saying Serindë instead of Therindë, he’d get equally mad about somebody saying Thilmaril instead of Silmaril and assume they were mocking him. Remember: this is a dude with no chill. (On the other hand, if you WANT somebody to be mocking Fëanor, Galadriel would 100% do this because she has an equally negligible amount of chill.)

It’s also important to note that the TH isn’t a true shibboleth, since pretty much all elves EXCEPT the non-Fëanorian Noldor use it. And even the S-preferring Noldor would still be able to pronounce the TH. Those who went into exile would go on to use it commonly in Sindarin, and those who remained in Valinor would still encounter it among the Vanyar and Teleri. So if you’re writing a scene where somebody has to pronounce a TH word to prove their loyalty… yeah, everyone can pass this test. And in the opposite direction, you can’t use TH to prove somebody’s an evil Fëanorian, either. They might just be Vanyarin or something. Or, like. Really Old.

Would the sons (and followers) of Fëanor keep using TH after his death? Oh hell yeah. This is an entire family unfamiliar with the concept of not dying on hills. They will keep using it unto the ending of the world. Actually, with Sindarin becoming the common language of Middle-earth from the First Age, probably not a lot of change happened in exilic Quenya. It became a lore language: a piece of living history. It would have been preserved as it was when the original speakers left Valinor.

(And then, thousands of years later, Galadriel finally returns home to Tirion like, Long have mine eyes awaited this most blissful of sights, and ne’er hath my sprit soared with such grace, for I am returned! And all the Amanyar Noldor stare at her like, whatchu bangin on bout, eh? Because they had nothing better to do in the peace of Valinor than push Quenya to brave and frankly questionable new horizons.)

Anyway, there you go: a somewhat brief history of Fëanorian Quenya. I hope you found this informative and useful, or at the very least not boring. Obvs this is super condensed and, uh, not particularly scholarly, but I promise I know what I’m talking about. I have a university degree! (Not in anything even remotely related to what’s written above, but I hardly see how that’s relevant. It’s still a DEGREE.)

Questions? Need clarification or want more info? My asks are always open!

#feanor #silmarillion #quenya #tolkien #middle earth

431 notes · View notes

preciouspeterbparker · 3 years

Text

i wish i were

inspired by conan gray’s “heather”

warnings: stepsibling incest (not yet but that’s the whole premise), underage masturbation, underage sex, angst. peter’s like 16 and a half, Tony’s almost 18

word count: 2.2k

summary: peter’s in love with his big brother. no biggie. (spoiler alert: it’s a big deal)

(A/N: okay this has been living in my head rent free for over a month. i've written more, but it's not fully fleshed out yet.

i figured i would post this and see if anyone is interested in reading it before i put a bunch more effort in lmao. this is filth. most of the angst comes later lololol (and more filth).

i hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think / if you'd like to read more!

- bloo)

PART ONE

Peter stands at his locker, desperately trying to blend in and remain unseen as he switches out his English textbook for Physics. The school year is basically over, given that it’s the last week of May but he’s still not comfortable in the junior-senior hallway. He’s always been the youngest (and therefore smallest) kid in most of his classes, given that he’s been in the ‘gifted & talented’ track since middle school. (He’s on track to graduate next year, taking his last few mandatory classes and completing an internship for additional credit.) This year, Peter feels even smaller than usual; maybe because most of the seniors are already eighteen, while as a sophomore, he isn’t even seventeen. He doesn’t have many friends this year, because of it. Ned moved away last summer because his dad got a new job, and, well, he’d never really needed more than Ned before.

“Hey Pete-squeak,” comes a voice from behind, making him jump. Rolling his eyes, Peter pivots slightly to face the newcomer. The infestation of butterflies that he's been harboring for the past few months begins to flutter immediately, tickling the walls of his stomach as his cheeks flush lightly.

The voice belongs to a tall (or, well, taller than Peter, anyway), ridiculously handsome boy with dark hair and dark eyes, walking towards Peter with his hands in his pockets. The cheeky smirk on his face is all but permanent, but the small, genuine smile it slips into is something that Peter holds close to his chest, something that is typically reserved for him.

Tony, his older brother, is pretty much Peter's favorite person in the world. Technically, he’s Peter’s step brother. Maria, his mom, and Peter’s dad Richard got married when Peter was a year old and Tony was almost three. They’d essentially spent their whole lives together; neither of them could really remember anything before. They’ve always been close, but that’s changed a little bit this year.

“Hey Tony,” Peter chirps, reaching back into his locker to grab his physics binder. He tries to act natural, even though he feels anything but. His heart’s going a mile a minute inside his rib cage. He feels a little ridiculous, he has for the past few months. Swallowing, he manages to sound relatively calm. “You read the last 2 chapters of Beowulf, right? Mrs. Herrera gave us a pop quiz last period.”

The older teen groans. Closing his eyes, he throws his head back, a metallic thunk sounding as it collides with the locker he’s leaning back on. “Fucking hell. The final paper is due in like four fucking days! Is that not enough?” It’s quiet for a moment as Tony pauses before he opens one eye, cutting it to look at Peter. “What were the answers?”

Peter snorts in response, shutting his locker. “Not happening, T.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket to check the time and lets the left side of his body rest against the cool metal. Three minutes til the bell rings, and Mr. Riley’s class is right across the hall. So he’s essentially got three minutes to indulge himself and the fuzzy warmth that’s running through his veins. He loves any time he gets to spend with Tony. “You’re lucky I told you at all, be grateful.”

Tony wrinkles his nose at him. “Rude,” he scoffs in mock offense. “I know you can remember them,” comes his teasing accusation. (And he’s right. Peter can recall the entirety of the quiz, but he’s still not going to enable Tony.) Then he pauses and raises an eyebrow at his younger brother. “Is that my sweatshirt?” The garment in question is a worn and slightly faded black Led Zeppelin USA 1977 crewneck sweatshirt. Peter’s wearing it over a charcoal and white check button-up. The sweatshirt is one of Tony’s favorite pieces of clothing, he wears it all the time (hence why Peter...borrowed it...without asking).

Having mentally prepared himself to be questioned at some point, Peter’s reply is already on the tip of his tongue. “Yeah, it ended up in my laundry and once I put it on it was too cozy to take off. And it looks good with these jeans and the button-up. And my boots. Trying out a new look,” he finishes, smiling as he pushes his glasses further up his nose. Tony often teased him about the thick, clear-but-slightly-pink frames, but Peter hadn’t wanted glasses at all (he doesn’t need any more reasons to be teased, thank you), but he likes these. They make him look cute, more feminine. More like someone Tony could want.

“You’re right,” Tony smiles. One of his hands comes up to playfully ruffle at Peter’s russet hair. “Looks great on you, kid.” There’s warm affection in his voice.

Peter feels his cheeks go hot again, and he wills the flush to go away. He can’t take compliments from Tony, now- they make him ache and preen simultaneously. He knows that Tony doesn’t mean it the way he wants. Peter knows that Tony would never speak to him again if he knew what was really going on inside his little brother’s head. The thought makes him sick to his stomach.

Speaking of stomachs. “Hey,” he starts as he fingers through the papers in his physics binder, attempting to find the problem set that’s due today. “Did you ever catch up on Hell’s Kitchen? I’ve been rewatching episodes trying to wait for you, but you’re taking too long. You saw the episode where Gordon-” Peter’s heart falls to his stomach and he abruptly stops speaking when he looks up to notice that Tony isn’t looking at him anymore, barely seems to be listening.

It falls completely out of his ass when he sees just what, just who, has stolen his attention.

“Sorry, Pete, gotta go,” Tony mutters once he realizes that Peter’s stopped talking, shooting him a hasty smile and shoving off the navy metal. He skirts past Peter, a slight skip in his step as he makes his way down the hallway.

Peter's swallows and clenches his jaw as he watches his brother walk straight to her, the bane of his existence. The reason he and Tony don’t spend as much time together anymore. The object of Tony’s affections. Pepper. She's...everything Peter wishes he could be, honestly. Tall, somehow a perfect mix of skinny & curvy, bright blue eyes, long strawberry-blonde hair. She's perfect. And not only in looks; she's also ridiculously smart. If Tony wasn’t valedictorian, she surely would be. She even volunteers at the local soup kitchen every weekend, and Peter’s pretty sure she reads to dogs at the animal shelter once a month. He hates that Pepper is so nice; he hates that he can't hate her without hating himself for it.

As if he didn't have enough self-loathing already.

***

Peter exits the bathroom that connects his bedroom with Tony’s after gently flicking the lock on his brother’s door to disengage it, the soft ‘snick’ ridiculously loud in the quiet of the house. He’s the only one home; Mom and Dad are at some sort of event for Dad’s law firm, and Tony went to a party at Rhodey’s house. (Tony had insisted that Peter was invited, but he had to know that the younger would never go- why would he want to be surrounded by drunk, horny, belligerent teenagers? The last thing he wanted to see was Tony and- )

There’s a dark gray towel loosely wrapped around his waist, so loose he has to clutch it in his hand to keep it from falling. He closes his own bathroom door behind him and drops the towel, digging through his underwear drawer to pull out a random pair of plaid boxers.

After sliding them on, the brunette takes a deep breath and lays back against the pillows, arms behind his head. He tries to consciously relax his muscles, the tension of the day not having melted away during his shower like he had hoped. Time for Plan B. It’s never let him down before. Peter reaches for his phone and unlocks it before swiping through his apps to open Spotify. The sound of “Dazed and Confused” fills the air through his speakers, and he sets it to repeat on a loop. It’s a little fucked up, the way he’s conditioned himself to respond to this song, but- Peter knows the whole thing is fucked up; he’s fucked up.

Closing his eyes, he does the only thing he’s been capable of for months: he thinks of his older brother.

He’s growing fond of the new facial hair Tony’s trying out; he wonders how it would feel against his skin. Which areas would be the most sensitive to its touch? His thighs? His neck? Peter’s head tilts back and to the side as he imagines wet, warm lips and the scratch of stubble. Just the thought, the phantom sensation, makes a soft mewl leave his mouth. It’s a little ridiculous how easy he can get himself going, when he thinks of Tony’s touch, of his body. Of his love. In his boxers, his cock shifts against his thigh as it begins to fill out.

The sensual, plucky bassline and wailing guitars of the song drag along, and so does Peter’s breathing as he brings a hand up to pinch at one of his nipples. He imagines the way Tony would tease him until he was whining, begging for release. He supposes it wouldn’t be dissimilar to his older brother’s typical manner of playfully taunting him. Maybe Tony would pin him down like he did when they were younger, climb on top of him and hold him there with the muscles he’s gained from boxing in the garage. The opportunities he’s had to see the older teen breathing heavy, shirtless and glistening with sweat, would be forever ingrained in his mind. The mental image sends more blood rushing south and his dick throbs as it quickly reaches full hardness, drawing a gasp from his mouth.

Peter takes himself in hand, studying the details of his cock. He knows he’s not huge, but he’s at least on the larger side of average. It’s flushed a deep, mauve-y pink, and he traces the line of a vein on the side with the tip of his pinkie. A shiver shoots down his spine. He wonders how similar it is to Tony’s. Is he circumcised like Peter is? Is he bigger? Longer, thicker even? Sure, he’s seen him naked before, when they were younger changing or in the bath, but that stopped around the time Tony was seven or eight.

(Tony and Peter had come home from school one day, and Peter’s head had been reeling over what he heard some older girls saying on the bus. He’d decided to ask Tony about it. His big brother knew everything. ...Mom & Dad caught them kissing in their bedroom. That was the end of bathing together, and Tony got his own room, too. Peter never forgot about the way his big brother’s lips felt against his own.)

A bead of precum oozes out of his tip and Peter rubs his thumb over it, smearing the liquid over his cockhead. Robert Plant’s voice moans over the speaker and Peter echoes the sound as he slowly strokes himself with a loose grip, his hole tightening around nothing. Biting his lip, he hesitates before slipping his left pointer finger into his mouth, rolling his tongue around it sloppily. Once it’s wet, he reaches down and gently presses the pad of his finger against the tightly furled muscle between his cheeks. His breath hitches as the sensation; he’s only touched himself down here a couple of times before.

The tip of his finger begins to breach his opening and a whine leaves Peter’s mouth. It stings a bit so he tries to relax, muscles fluttering, making a mental note to grab some lube next time he goes to the drugstore. He wants to be able to stretch himself out more, to imagine Tony’s fingers, Tony’s cock, splitting him open and stuffing him full. Fuck-

Tightening his grip on the base of his cock, Peter grits his teeth and grunts softly as he pulls his finger from his ass. He can’t cum yet- he’s not done. He reaches under his pillow, pulling out the balled-up t-shirt that’s taken up residence there. The black fabric has faded in some spots, and the Black Sabbath logo is cracked and worn; it’s one of Tony’s favorite shirts. Peter brings the soft cloth up to his nose, fumbling with it to find the area with the strongest smell. There are hints of Tony’s Old Spice deodorant mixed with a scent that’s distinctly Tony, a warm, masculine musk that has saliva pooling in Peter’s mouth. Delirious, fucking his hand to the beat, he wishes he had dug a little further in the hamper, pulled out a pair of Tony’s briefs.

That’s the thought that does him in. Peter cums into his fist, gasping his brother’s name, the sound getting muddled in the maelstrom of guitar and drums. Thick ropes of jizz splatter on his stomach and chest, entire abdomen heaving with his breaths.

He wipes the mess up with Tony’s t-shirt before tucking the fabric back under his pillow for safe keeping.

to be continued???

#starker #starkercest #peter parker x tony stark #peter x tony #bloo writes bad things (tm)

114 notes · View notes

annetteblog · 3 years

Text

Intro & My take on KM

Hi!

I’m new around here so it’s supposed to be (not so short) introduction, since I don’t know how to start a blog heh. I hope to sprinkle my 0.5 cents into the KM conversation and maybe to bring a new perspective from someone, who is not a part of the typical English-speaking West.

Who /the hell/ Am I?

(please, consider it to be said with NJ’s voice from Intro: Persona :D)

I was born in Siberia (it’s in the Asian part of Russia), currently live in the European part of the country while studying at a Uni (European in terms of geography, not in terms of everything else i’m definitely not shading rn lolllll). English is not my first language, I’ve just kind of learnt it to some extent. Due to this it takes me more time to write a post; and I may (and will) make some grammatical & other mistakes. Plus I’m lazy AND busy with Uni, so I won’t even promise to be consistent in posting smth lol. But I thought I need more practice in terms of writing in English, so here I am, actually scribbling something. This feels weird, because I’ve been around stan Tumblr since 2015, but never ever interacted, just read.

How I ended up around Jikook/Kookmin (and BTS) & My (long&messy) take on this matter

Although I had heard of BTS before, I became an Army only in October 2018. I had kinda avoided them, because you know... boybands.... sing songs about romantic love and how they love girls.......... (+I had been around Twitter when 1D been at their peak and I remember a quite toxic community of fans, whom always had scared me). Shortly, hello stereotypes. Obviously, after I got engaged I felt terribly sorry that I had been sleeping on them, but what is done cannot be undone.

Someone I knew back then reposted one of their MVs and I, during my sad hours of procrastination, decided to watch it. Then I saw their live performance with the same song. And I thought “wow these guys can sing and dance and the music is kinda cool, i need to check this out maybe??”

Then a funny thing happened. One of the next videos I watched (the same person had it added to their page) was a 2016 BangtanBomb where JM and JK practiced their Coming of Age dance.

Do you know this moment with Gina from the 1st episode of Brooklyn 9-9:

Well, that was precisely me after I watched it. I don’t even know how to explain this, it was kind of a gut feeling? Whatever you call it, I started to get suspicious and couldn’t even explain to myself why. /actually now a do have questions to this vid and the main one - why does everyone cringe that much? if it’s a girly choreo than they had done some “girly” moves before. why is there such strong reaction??/

I started to get deeper and went to some ru-shipper communities. Shipping culture among Russian speaking fans is... well, weird to some extent, but I maybe address this topic some time later. You need to consider that (as far as you probably know) Russia is quite homophonic country and sadly is not the greatest place for LGBTQ+ community at the moment. The non-frienly influential attitudes hanging in the society + the general shippers’ weirdness = the result is not that nice honestly.

I struggled for some time in order to find more mature people (not just in terms of age but in general sanity), failed, ended up with some EXTREMELY toxic ru-fans of TK, which was/is the most popular pairing here, spent among them like 15 minutes and ran away horrified. After that I didn’t even try to engage with shippers or believers or whatever of any pair and just decided to enjoy the music and the content (which is a great idea, highly recommend!)

After a couple of days I discovered that JK makes videos. I love video, films and visual art so I immediately found them on YT, saw the titles with names of different cities from all over the world and was like “Oh that must be so cool, he’s visited so many outstanding places I’ve never been to, so I really need to watch it! I shall enjoy some beautyyy”. Then I clicked on GCFt.

Well, what can I say. I did enjoy some beauty, but not the type I had initially anticipated. The biggest clickbait in my entire life. JK should be proud of himself.

/as I said - the beauty/

I had already known Troy back then and I known the song’s lyrics so it would not be an underestimation to say - the video just blew my mind. I was like - hold on is this real? seriously?? no really really????? he manage to get away with something THAT obvious?????? dude how

As a person who edited videos AND is not a native English speaker, I don’t buy the explanation “oh he mustve didnt get the lyrics lmao”. You just don’t do that. You don’t. DON’T. You google and translate every shit you don’t understand, every word and idiom you’ve never encountered, because otherwise the possibility of an epic failure is very likely. You wouldn’t want to give your mum a video as a birthday present and then discover that you used a song with WAP-ish lyrics, right? (well maybe that would be okay in your family, I don’t judge, but that’s not the case for people I know). So don’t you dare to degrade JK’s intellectual capacities; such assumption is really offensive. He is a smart boii, he knows exactly what he’s doing in terms of his art.

So I was shocked, but decided to look for the context - maybe I missed some previous events regarding this Tokyo thing (another great idea - always check the context). Well, apparently I didn’t, because the whole narrative with the trip for two, lovely selfies etc. made my poor brain lowkey explode. (I still don’t buy the rings theory thing though)

But I didn’t give up lol! I’m a bit stubborn and it’s very hard to convince me in anything, so I decided to search for more context, more of their interactions, moreeee. Remember, the late October 2018, there were no swan lakes, RB, and even MMA18 hadn’t happened yet.

This time I ended up watching content in more or less consistent way, and when I saw all of these scenes with affectionate JM and a cool badass i-don’t-care-about-anyone-i’m-a-manly-man-with-no-feelings-whatsoever JK, I just hysterically laughed.

Homophobic Russia, remember? I recognized this. Growing up here being LGBT myself, taught me the same type behaviour during my high school days. When a girl I kinda liked but didn’t what to admit it to myself was nice to me or (oh god) flirted with me, I did something similar. It’s like a huge panic mode. Being an introvert doesn’t help either. The funniest thing is that you may not entirely realise what exactly is going on in terms of your own feelings, especially at that age (16-18ish). In my personal case, I thought I liked her but as a friend, only later to realise that well not as a friend oops :DDD The second thing (already not so funny) is that you actually consciously or unconsciously try to avoid the subject as much as possible, as long as possible and pretend that nothing is going on. We’re just bros. Stop doing this stupid gayish thing and don’t look at me like that, you’re annoying. If you ever do this again I (gently) kick you. I’m straighter than a straight line in my math textbook. IDK, but probably that’s your brain is somehow trying to protect you. Again, in my case&position I knew that the consequences for any non-straight person being outed would be bad (TW not to the point of being killed bad, but to the point of being excluded from a big part of society). So for me it was a mixture of the internalized homophobia + lack of self reflection + just being a bit emotionally slow + very! straight community around. Shit happens, I was a teenager and made my share of mistakes, but that experience helps me to recognize the same pattern of behaviour up to this day.

So coming back to KM, because the post is already waaay too long and I just ramble. It’s been 2+ years for me being a part of this fandom, and what can I say... Things become more intense and eventful with every year passing by ;) Funny how I felt that vibe from the 2016 dance practice video. Seeing the Black Swan performance a week ago almost had me choked, no joking. They are amazing.

Pure Art

However, and I would like to emphasize that, I do not incline that KM are 100% romantically involved and/or gay or whatever. I tend to treat people with respect and not to make too much assumptions about their private life. That’s not my business. However, I’m also not a fan of heteronormativity, so I’m just sitting here and observe everything that’s going on putting some distance and not forgetting being generally polite and critical thinking. But if they are just straightest besties please give them an Oscar before Grammy

Anyways, I hope this blog won’t kick the bucket from the very start and I will post something every now and then. You can always ask me questions about some BTS/Jikook related stuff or something about Russia and a Russian view on mass culture topics, since I’m pretty sure some of you have very stereotypical view of what is going on here :) However, do note that I’ve never been to America or Europe, therefore I may not be aware of something verrrry obvious to you or just have a completely different experience.

P.S. And yeah, I’m used to say Jikook, since it’s the name which is used much more frequently in Russian. i like it better and what will u do haha

#jikook #kookmin #what am i even doing here #i'm gonna regret this #long post

90 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

Ungodly Hour, Chapter One (Jaida x Nicky) - Scarlet Bloo

a/n: Hi! I started this fic back when the fic challenge was announced and here it finally is, (2?) months later, 3 days from the deadline. It’s been a ride, but I’ve finally gotten it to a place where I’m happy with it, and while not every chapter will posted during the challenge I’ve at least managed to get one in!

summary: Nicky is crushing hard on a bubbly soccer playing sorority sister. It’s unusual for her to ever be into anyone like this, and all she wants is to be on her radar. Popular girl Jaida is captain of the basketball team, and while she’s usually smart, French just isn’t her forte. Lucky for her, Nicky is a native speaker, so she makes it her mission to get her as her tutor.

Challenge notes:

A large amount of the story is told from Jaida’s point of view.

Close friends of the main characters: Widow, Heidi and Akeria (who will become more prominent characters in future chapters.)

The title is a song by Chloe and Halle Bailey.

Nicky snuck a look in Jan Sport’s direction, her heart tingling as she absorbed her beauty. She sighed, knowing the preppy, popular sorority girl had absolutely no idea she even existed. It was laughable that she ever entertained the idea of a relationship with her, even if it was only in the late hours of the night, a fantasy to procrastinate her studies with. But with her long blonde hair, muscular arms and smiling eyes, how couldn’t Nicky be so intrigued by her? This was a new feeling. Nicky hardly ever found herself interested in anyone, let alone a woman. It was surreal to her, but it somehow felt right.

She cast her eyes away from Jan and tried to focus on the Professor at the front of the lecture hall. Unsurprisingly, it was nothing of value to Nicky. Miss Coulee was voicing her disappointment with the class after 70% of the class had gotten less than a C in the last exam. Nicky rolled her eyes, looking down at the big red “A!” circled on her own paper. Despite this achievement, she was regretting her decision to take French. Sure, it being her first language definitely made the classes easier, but left her so unsatisfied with how little she had to push herself to pass.

“Of course you got an A”, Gigi whispered to Nicky.

She had a defeated look on her face and Nicky felt a pang of sympathy for the girl. Gigi and Nicky weren’t close, but seeing as they’d been sitting next to each other every French lecture since September, they’d gotten to know a fair bit about each other. Like Nicky, Gigi was a fashion major but was taking French so she could “make it big in Paris one day” and Nicky knew academics wasn’t her strong suit.

“Yeah well,” Nicky smiled sweetly, “French is my language, fashion is yours.”

Gigi seemed content with that answer and nodded satisfactorily as Coulee dismissed the class and all that could be heard was the snapping shut of laptops and notebooks and friendly chatter.

Jan lingered by the door giggling with her friends and Nicky’s gaze locked in on her like a missile. She was beautiful, and she could help but trace each curve of her body with her eyes. She felt her hands go clammy as she found herself lost in her animated expressions. Jan was different to Nicky’s image of a popular girl, she didn’t strut around campus like she owned the place or go through millions of relationships. She radiated positive energy and it just made Nicky all the more eager to get to know her. She wasn’t usually this into people, but Jan Sport had turned her into a pile of mush.

“You’re staring again.” Gigi’s teasing voice brought a blush to Nicky’s cheeks. She had caught her staring at Jan in awe on multiple occasions and was one of the very few people she’d actually admitted the crush to. The only other person who she’d told was her roommate and best friend, Widow. But her other friends? Definitely not. They were all art majors, and while Jan was taking music, it wasn’t really the same thing. Nicky guessed it made them the artsy crowd, and therefore substantially less popular. With the exception of Gigi and Widow, who had been in an on and off relationship with a soccer player since freshman year, Nicky’s friends spent lunch breaks talking as much shit as they could about Charles College��s elite. And it was somewhat justified. Most of the popular kids were complete pieces of shit.

Case in point - Jaida Essence Hall, Charles College’s star athlete. The girl walked around like she owned the place, and Nicky guessed she kind of did. At the snap of a finger someone would appear at her side, eager to grant any and every wish. Or jump into her lap. Or stick their tongue down her throat. She didn’t look as confident as usual right then though, sitting fists curled around the edge of her paper in the lecture hall. Everyone else, including Coulee, had left, but Jaida remained in her seat. She must have failed the test too, but Nicky didn’t feel much sympathy for the girl. Charles college was best known for its Basketball, with its best players usually ending up in the pros, and during their years at Charles, they’d get handed everything on a silver platter. Maybe it was unfair, and a tiny bit vindictive, but Nicky got a sense of triumph from knowing that Coulee was failing the captain of the women’s basketball team along with everyone else.

“Wanna grab something to eat?” Gigi asked as she gathered her books.

“Can’t, I have to finish up all of last week’s design work.” Nicky got up, but didn’t follow her to the door, “Go on ahead. I need to check the schedule before I go, I can’t remember when my next tutorial is.”

“Okay,” Gigi said, “I’ll see you later!”

“Later!” Nicky called after her.

At the sound of her voice, Jan paused in the doorway and turned her head. It was impossible to stop the flush that rose in Nicky’s cheeks. This was the first time they’d ever made eye contact, and she didn’t know how to respond. In the end, she settled for a small nod of greeting. There. Cool, casual yet wouldn’t come off as rude. Her heart skipped a beat when the corner of Jan’s mouth lifted into a faint grin. She waved in response, and then she was gone. Nicky stared at the empty doorway. Her pulse exploded in a gallop. After six weeks of breathing in the same air in the stuffy lecture hall, Jan Sport had finally noticed her. She wished she was brave enough to go after her. Maybe ask her to grab a coffee. Or dinner. Or brunch - hell, is brunch even a big thing in America? But her feet stayed glued in place because she was a total coward. She was terrified she’d say no, but even more terrified she’d say yes.

Nicky was in a good place when she started college. Her issues solidly behind her, her guard lowered. She was ready to date again, and she did. She dated several guys, but other than her ex, Kayla, none of them had been female, and none of them had made her body tingle the way Jan Sport did, and that freaked her out.

Baby steps. That was her therapist’s favourite piece of advice, and she couldn’t deny that the strategy had helped her a lot. Focus on the small victories, Sasha had always advised. So, today’s victory, she nodded at Jan and she waved at her. Next class, maybe she’d wave back. And the one after that, maybe she’d bring up the coffee, dinner or brunch idea. She took a breath as she headed down the aisle, clinging to that feeling of victory, however miniscule it may be.

Jaida had failed. She’d fucking failed. For the last 15 years before she’d joined Charles College, they had handed out A’s like tic tacs. But the year she decided to take a French class? She had gotten stuck with Shea Coulee. It was official. This woman was her archenemy. Just the sight of her flowery handwriting—which filled up every inch of available space in the margins of Jaida’s midterm—made her want to scream, rip up the page, and leave education indefinitely. Jaida had been passing all her other classes, but this (almost ironic) F in French was completely bringing her average down. Normally, she had no problem keeping her G.P.A up. Despite what she knew a lot of Charle’s population believed, she wasn’t dumb. And the worst thing about Charles? Their dean demanded excellence—academically and athletically. While other schools were lenient toward athletes, Charles has a zero-tolerance policy. When she spoke to Coulee before class, she’d bluntly told her that unless she was going to find her own private tutor, she’d have no choice but to turn up to extra tutorials which overlapped with basketball practice. It really was a lose-lose situation.

Jaida’s frustration manifested itself in the form of an audible groan, and from the corner of her eye, she saw someone jerk in surprise. Jaida jumped too, because here she thought she was wallowing in her misery alone. However, the girl from the back row had stuck around and was headed towards Coulee’s desk. Staci? Selena? Jaida couldn’t remember her name, probably because she’d never thought to ask for it before. She was pretty, though. A lot prettier than Jaida had ever realised. Perfect features, dark hair, a petite hourglass figure. How had she never noticed her before now? Her skinny jeans clung to a round, perky ass and her round breasts peaked slightly out of her v neck.

“Everything okay?” the girl asked with a pointed look. Jaida murmured a reply under her breath. She really wasn’t in the mood to talk right then.

The girl raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow in Jaida’s direction, “Sorry, was that english?”

Jaida balled up her paper and scraped her chair back, “I said everythings fine.”

“Okay, then,” The girl shrugged and continued down the steps. As she picked up the clipboard that contained the tutorial schedule, Jaida flung on her jacked, then shoved her pathetic midterm into her backpack and zipped it up. The dark-haired girl headed back to the aisle. Sophie? Sabrina? The S sounded right, but the rest was a mystery. She had her midterm in hand, but Jaida didn’t sneak a peek because she assumed she failed just like everyone else.

Jaida let her pass before she stepped into the aisle. She followed her up to the exit, suddenly realizing how tiny she was compared to herself—she was one step below her yet could see the top of her head. Just as they reached the door, the girl stumbled on absolutely nothing and the books in her hand clattered to the floor.

“Shit. I’m such a klutz.”

She dropped to her knees and so did Jaida, because contrary popular belief, she wasn’t heartless, and the polite thing to do was help her gather her books.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’m fine,” she insisted.

But Jaida’s hand had already connected with her midterm, and her jaw dropped when she saw her grade.

“Fucking hell. You aced it?” Jaida demanded.

The girl gave a sweet smile. “Well, I am French. I thought you’d have been able to tell from the accent.”

“Holy shit.” Jaida felt like she’d just bumped into Coco fuckin’ Chanel and she was dangling the secrets to her universe under her nose. “Can I read your answers?”

Her brows quirked up again. “That’s rather forward of you, don’t you think? We don’t even know each other.”

Jaida rolled her eyes. “I’m not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.”

“Baby? Goodbye forward, hello presumptuous.”

“Would you prefer miss? Ma’am maybe? I’d use your name but I don’t know it.”

“Of course you don’t.” She sighed. “It’s Nicolette. Nicky for short.” Then she paused meaningfully. “Jaida.”

Okay, she was way off on the S thing. And Jaida didn’t miss the way she emphasized her name as if to say, Ha! I know yours, bitch! Nicky collected the rest of her books and stood up, but Jaida didn’t hand over her midterm. Instead, she hopped to her feet and started flipping through it. As she skimmed her answers, her spirits plummeted even lower, because if this is what Coulee was looking for, she was screwed. There was a reason she was a geography major, for gods sake—she dealt in facts. Black and white. This happened at this time to this person and here was the result. Nicky’s answers focused on detailed analysis on texts Jaida couldn’t even translate in the first place.

“Thanks.” Jaida gave her the booklet, then cracked her knuckles. “Hey, listen. Do you…would you consider…” she shrugged. “You know…”

Nicky’s lips twitched as if she was trying not to laugh. “Actually, I don’t know.”

Jaida let out a breath. “Will you tutor me?”

Her grey eyes—slightly green and surrounded by thick black eyelashes—went from surprised to skeptical in a matter of seconds.

“I’ll pay you,” Jaida added hastily.

“Oh. Um. Well, yeah, of course I’d expect you to pay me. But…” She shaked her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Jaida bit back her disappointment. “C’mon, do me a solid. If I fail this makeup, my GPA will implode. Please?” She flashed a smile, the one that made her dimples pop out and never failed to make people melt.

“Does that usually work?” she asked curiously.

“What?“

“The winning innocent pageant girl smile… Does it help you get your way?”

“Always,” the taller girl answered without hesitation.

“Almost always,” Nicky corrected. “Look, I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time. I’m already juggling school and work, and with the winter showcase coming up, I’ll have even less time.”

“Winter showcase?” Jaida said blankly.

“Right, I forgot. If it’s not about basketball or your big pageants, then it’s not on your radar.”

“Now who’s being presumptuous? You don’t even know me.”

There’s a beat, and then she sighed. “I’m a fashion major, okay? And the arts faculty puts on two major displays every year, the winter showcase and the spring one. The winner gets a five thousand dollar scholarship. It’s kind of a huge deal, actually. Important industry people fly in from all over the country to see it. Fashion houses, investors, big magazines…. So, as much as I’d love to help you—”

“You would not,” Jaida grumbled. “You look like you don’t even want to talk to me right now.”

Her little you-got-me shrug was grating. “I have to go finish up some designs. I’m sorry you’re failing this course, but if it makes you feel better, so is everyone else.”

Jaida narrowed her eyes. “Not you.”

“I can’t help that I was born into a french speaking household.”

“Well, I want your help.”

Jaida was two seconds from dropping to her knees and begging her, but she edged towards the door. “You know there’s a study group, right? I can give you the number for—”

“I’m already in it,” Jaida muttered, embarrassed.

“Oh. Well, then there’s not much else I can do for you. Good luck on the makeup test. Baby.”

She darted out the door, leaving Jaida staring after her in frustration. Unbelievable. Everyone at this college would have cut their leg off to help her out. But this girl? Ran away like she’d just asked her to give up her first born so they could give it to Rumplestiltskin. And now Jaida was right back to where she was before Nicky-not-with-an-S gave her that faintest flicker of hope. Completely fucking screwed.

#rpdr fanfiction #jaida essence hall #nicky doll #widow von du #jan sport #gigi goode #jaida x nicky #fic challenge #black girl magic fic #diversity fic #lesbian au #college au #s12 #ungodly hour #scarlet bloo #concrit welcome #submission

15 notes · View notes

toomanyfamdom · 5 years

Text

Many Shades of Green

I have to say some thank yous before I post this.

Thank you to @jane-fucking-seymour , @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts , @millie1536 and @bessie-bass-on-the-bass for being inspirations to me. Without them I wouldn’t have thought of starting to write. They never got mad if I sent them random messages and goodness knows what time for them and have kindly corrected me when necessary. So thank you.

But the person I owe the most to is @the-quiet-winds . I’ve talked most closely with them and they are an incredible writer and the first person to encourage me to basically get myself together and write something for goodness sake. They’ve been incredibly kind, never minding the annoying messages I send them and giving me her permission to write my own interpretations of her stories some co-written with @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts . So for this, I thank you.

This is my first publicized work and I’m open to constructive criticism. This is based on the personal head cannon I mentioned about Anne Boleyn so I decided I would just write about it instead. Please be patient with me. This may seem a little unrealistic but bear with please.

Also, does anyone want a tag list?

Tw: none that I can think of

Word count: 1318

***

All was calm in the queens household.

Which was weird, especially because the ladies-in-waiting were over for the evening for their monthly get together.

It wasn’t the only time the ladies were in the house, they only lived two doors down the road but it was the only scheduled, constant gathering.

They were all gathered in the living room, watching a movie, eating - or in some cases throwing - popcorn when one of the phones began to ring. Catherine, being the closest got to it first.

“Hello?” she answered, face brightening as the other person spoke, “Sasha! Give me one second, I’ll put you on speaker.” Sasha was their manager so if she phoned the house, it was something for everyone.

“Hello?” Sasha’s voice came through the speaker.

“Hiya love, you have all of us here,” Jane told the woman.

“Great, makes my life easier,” they all laughed, “I have some very exciting news for you all.”

“Don’t leave us hanging babes, tell us,” Anna laughed.

“You’ve been invited for a European tour.”

Silence. Then all hell broke loose.

“Are we really going on tour?”

“It would be so nice to go back home.”

“That I agree with, Bess.”

“I’d love to back to France.”

“Same but with Spain.”

“I’d love to go where you grew up Catherine.”

“How cool, we get to travel and still perform. Awesome!”

“Agreed, Kat.”

“That’s a lot of new rigs to learn.”

“You’ll be fine Joey.”

“Where are we going, Sasha?” Jane was the only person with something sensible to say.

“You’ll be starting in Portugal and working your way through Spain, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and ending in Sweden.”

“That’s so many places,” Kat was in awe.

“So many different languages,” Cathy noted.

“We’ll have to see about getting interpreters,” Sasha added.

“Well you have Anna, Catherine, Anne, Maggie and I who can speak German, Spanish and French respectively,” Cathy said, “And Bessie-”

“I can speak Italian,” the bassist confirmed.

“Right,” she nodded, “so it’s just Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish we’ll need help with.”

“I’ll look into interpreters but no promises,” Sasha’s voice was uncertain.

“I’ll learn them.”

Every head turned to the queen who had just spoken.

“Are you sure, Anne? That’s a lot of work,” Maria questioned her friend.

“Well I’m already learning other languages and from what I’ve heard Portugese and Spanish are kind of similar and German, Dutch and Swedish come from the same family of languages so I wouldn’t mind. If it gives us some piece of mind,” Anne scratched her neck and giggle slightly, “I’ve been looking for some new languages to learn anyway so this just made my search so much easier.”

Only if you’re sure sister,“ Maggie looked concerned.

"I’m sure,” the woman in question affirmed, pulling her sister into her arms, “I promise if it gets too much, I’ll stop. Is that okay with everyone?”

Various affirmations were made and Sasha said, “Thank you Anne, that’s one less thing to worry about. Just letting you know, your opening date is in six months. Bye.”

“Thank you Sasha, bye,” Catherine hung up the phone, “well then, let’s get back to our movie, shall we?

***

Four months later and the ladies-in-waiting were over again. Maria, Joan, Jane and Catherine were all in the kitchen making the dinner together, Anna, Kat and Bessie were playing an intense game of Mario Kart and Anne, Maggie and Cathy were in Anne’s room.

"This is incredible,” said Cathy from where she was sitting on the floor by Anne’s desk with the queens many notebooks sat surrounding her, all in different colours and languages ranging from English to German to Swedish, “How many languages did you say?”

“Nine,” Anne said, looking up from where she was lying upside down off the edge of her bed reading some Greek poetry, dangerously close to kicking Maggie in the face from where she was drawing in a random sketch book she found, “and I’m working on a tenth, although it’s a little harder, see that dark blue one behind you? I’m not fluent, that would be impossible in four months but I’ll be able to help in most situations.”

“That’s amazing,” Cathy smiled at her, “now, come help me put these away.”

Anne closed her book and set it gently on the floor putting her hands down and kicking herself off the bed and over onto her feet. She took the books from a laughing Cathy and went round the other side of the divider she had put in her room and came back around to the girls, flopping at Cathy and Maggie’s feet, back to her original position.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself one of these days,” Maggie didn’t even look up from her drawing.

“I know,” Anne winked at Cathy to have the pair laugh at her despairingly.

“You’ll have to teach me some of those languages when we get time,” Cathy said, “Its so nice to see this other side of you and I’m so happy you feel comfortable enough to show me this side.”

Anne sat up, “You two are my nearest and dearest, how could I not be comfortable around you?”

The trio smilled at each other and all of their phones buzzed.

“Did you two get this as well?” asked Maggie.

“From Sasha,” Cathy had already read the message and was looking at it with wide eyes.

“Is it bad or?” Anne’s phone was out of reach.

“The tour’s been cancelled,” Maggie told her.

Anne bolted up straight. “What?! What do you mean?” she asked increadiusly.

“Exactly what she said.”

“What on…” Anne trailed off then jumped off the bed and running downstairs, “Familly meeting in the kitchen!”

Anna jumped when she heard Anne’s shout. The German looked over at her two companions.

“If Anne’s calling a family meeting,” started Kat.

“Something is definitely wrong,” Bessie finished.

“Better not keep the hurricane waiting,” the three went to the kitchen, meeting Maggie and Cathy in the hall and were met with a pacing Anne Boleyn.

“Perfect, we’re all here now,” Anne said, “Have a seat.” She gestured towards the table.

“Anne, what’s wrong?” Jane asked as softly as she could.

“Nothing’s wrong per say, just changes, I don’t like sudden changes so yeah,” Anne muttered to her self. She stopped took a deep breath then said, “Check your phones.”

They all did - except for Maggie and Cathy who tried to calm Anne down a bit. “I have a message from Sasha,” said Kit a bit confused, “why is she messaging me?”

“I have one too,” said Maria

“I think we all do,” Jane said in a grim voice, reading the message.

“Is it bad?” Joan looked over to her former mistress, scared to read it.

Anne took a deep breath, “The tour’s been cancelled.”

“What?!” Katherine almost jumped out of her seat, “But why? All the prep was going so well and we were getting venues just fine.”

“Says here that our sponsor backed out,” Anna said, “If that’s true, there’s no way the tour could be funded babes.”

“You did all that learning for nothing,” Catherine realised the root of Anne’s distress.

Anne visibly deflated, leaning against the counter top, head in her hand. “Its not even that. Well, it is that a little but,” she sighed, “You may not know or remember this from our past lives but I thoroughly enjoy learning. Languages especially, they’re challenging. But I also love learning with a reason. I probably would’ve learnt the languages anyways but the tour gave me a reason. It gave me constancy. And that’s been torn from underneath my feet.”

Suddenly there was a Kitty sized person embracing Anne. “I think its really cool how much you’ve managed to learn Annie. Nine foreign languages? That’s incredible!”

“Well, now I have an excuse to keep learning yeah? Look on the bright side!” Anne returned her cousin’s hug, “Thanks sister.”

#im actually so nervous about this #hope you like it #six the musical fanfic #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #anna of cleves #jane seymour #katherine howard #catherine parr #maggie on the guitar #joan on the keys #bessie on the bass #maria on the drums

78 notes · View notes

chaoticeddie · 4 years

Text

tagged by: @sunnygaybitch (thank you for tagging me uwu!!!!)

tagging: @zombiesamurai23 @bovaque @thatsuperawkwardgirl @yourguyeli @bolognaa-a @trashgetti @austinendstheworld @pink-nasa @hostbusters if you don’t want to do this or you’ve already done it feel free to ignore this!!!! and if you do want to do it, consider yourself tagged!!!

nickname: Lena to pretty much everyone but my family and teachers and like. professional relationships lol. so basically Lena to my friends and on tumblr

real name: eh

zodiac sign: cancer

height: 5'4"

what time is it: 12:41 pm

favorite musician(s): oooh so BTS, Hozier, Infinite, Monsta X, Panic! at the Disco, Journey, Elton John, Queen, Twice, SHINee (including all their individual content), and Ateez. that’s the music that I most listen to lmao

favorite sports team: none probably lol I don’t follow sports

other blogs: technically? I have one url that I saved and I made a theme for it (as in I picked out two pictures for the header and profile pic) but I’ve never used it

do i get asks: occasionally??? usually just when I’ve just posted one of those ask games and I’ll get maybe one or two people ask me lol

how many blogs do i follow: 616 lmao it’s a lot but I have like certain blogs on notification so I don’t actually scroll through my dash that often

any tumblr crushes: sldkjsfkj no sorry

lucky number: 5 and 10 maybe? idk if I would count them as lucky they’re just my favorite numbers

what i’m wearing right now: shorts and a t-shirt lmao these are my pj’s I’m just chilling until I go to bed which will be soon cause I’m tired. my t-shirt is the one that my mom got for me last summer for my birthday which is a bristol va/tn shirt cause that’s where I grew up and I don’t live there anymore hnskfdnd I miss it

dream vacation: ooooh this is a good question uhhh is it a cop out to say that my dream vacation would be to travel around the world? I really really wanna see so many countries and have all those experiences so idk if I could pick just one place to go. wherever I chose though I would want to be able to experience new people and things and have fun and travel with people I love and also be able to relax and not feel guilty about tasks for once in my life PLEASE

dream car: oh god I don’t even know. I want like a smallish car so I can park easily (I currently drive a grand marquis and it is HELL trying to park it. I feel safe in it but like other than that…..i just want like a stylish car too although I don’t actually know what counts as a stylish car…..i would like to have enough money to deck it out with all the cool shit like the alarm that sounds when other cars get close and automatic parking for if I ever have to parallel park and bluetooth capabilities (yeah my car is old enough that it doesn’t have that lksdjflksj it doesn’t even have an aux port so I have to just listen to music through my phone speakers) also seat warmers hsnksdfl

favorite food: strawberry shortcake maybe? or pickles….I will eat a ton of strawberry shortcake if it is available but every time I think about pickles I crave them

drink of choice: alcohol or just regular drink? I’m still 20 so I can’t technically legally drink but I have wine coolers sometimes and those are good. does that count as alcohol? Idk lmao they just taste good. maybe I’ll have a different opinion once I turn 21 and to try more drinks. for regular, non-alcoholic drinks I really like soda. basic and sad ik but I love like pepsi and dr. pepper hskjdfljdkfs

languages: english and a little bit of ASL. I’m taking ASL 2 right now and I think I’m getting pretty good but I’m still very very slow omg. I also took Latin in high school but I really don’t remember much rip

instruments: I can play the very beginning of hedwig’s theme on piano and I know like the basics but other than that I can’t play anything. I own a guitar because I watched August Rush and was inspired but uh I haven’t learned yet whoops sorry @ my parents

celebrity crushes: maya hawke maybe???? idk like there are a ton of celebrities that I admire like bill hader and emma watson and brie larson and janelle monae and eugene lee yang but crushes? does that include like “I would date if they were interested, available, and my age” cause like idk lmao maybe???? they all just feel so far away and while I love them to pieces I honestly couldn’t see myself dating any of them so idk

random fact: ummmm well today I got assigned (sort of) a research project for my lab! it’s more of a literature review I think? I have to research this topic and then put together a poster for the human factors display that my college is doing later this semester and I’m really stressed about it cause it’s gonna be a lot of work and I’m already stressed about my own school work and then I’ll also have to present it probably and THAT’S stressful and I’m not good at getting things done so like. idk how good of an idea this is. but I’m also excited cause this is going to be really good experience and I’ll have the help of the grad student who I’ve been working with and the faculty member from my lab and then this will also distinguish me from my peers somewhat when I apply to grad schools in a couple years so. I’m definitely excited but also stressed hngfnksld

#my posts #sorry for the long post hkldsffsjdl #i continue to go way overboard when doing these things #tagged #sunnygaybitch

5 notes · View notes

mojavemoproblems · 5 years

Text

so i’ve been away from america for about a month and a half now and i’m realizing i’m missing so many things i really did not expect to miss

like when i first got to Korea i was like man, i’m really gonna miss hot cheetos and burritos and stuff and like YEAH i do miss those at like a shallow level but it’s nothing i really think about too much

i’ve replaced american junk foods with korean junk foods lol (honey butter chips mmhmhmhmh....cheese toast......sweet potato corn dogs.....tteokbokki......ricecake skewers....)

but mostly i miss things like... being surrounded by other native english speakers and being able to communicate with service workers. it’s really really tiring being constantly suffocated by a language barrier, even with non-koreans. i’m the 24/7 thesaurus. i also had to completely revise my sense of humor because i didn’t realize how... american it is? like i can’t quote vines here and let it pass as humor lol

native english speakers speak a very different english than others who speak english WELL but it’s not their native tongue

also i came to korea thinking i had a good grasp on basic korean but HOO BOY it’s still so difficult and i wish i could just... talk and get across what i want to service workers, doctors, librarians, etc.

like, i’ve been sick for fucking 3 weeks now. i was finally diagnosed with pneumonia after i traveled an hour on the subway to find a hospital with english speaking specialists and npow i’m FINALLY getting better but dear god. even asking for tylenol at the pharmacy was a disaster.

some other shallow things i miss btw:

mcdonalds fries actually having salt on them

my FUCKIGN ps4

not living on a fucking top bunk :)

having a tv and not just a tiny laptop

HAVING AN ACTUAL BED NOT THE FUCKING TOP BUNK

not having to use a vpn to watch literally anything

DRIVING! don’t get me wrong the seoul transportation is one of the most efficient and best in the world but man i rlly miss just getting in my car and driving to the grocery store or mcdonalds lol i don’t want to walk to everything sometimes!!! being sick was especially hell!!!!

not being stared at everywhere i go. (everyone immediately knows i’m a foreigner so i already get a lot of stares but i also have tattoos so i know i’m CONSTANTLY being stared at lol. i miss just blending in with the crowd. i miss diversity and not being the only one with tattoos lol)

i’m going to make a whole other post about the things i love about korea tomorrow but i’ll make a quick list

THE CONVENIENCE OF LIVING IN A MEGA CITY!! everythings right here!!! and more!!!! i just walked to the alley behind my dorm and there was a cafe with beds and dogs??? like you can walk a block and find anything and everything

public transportaaaaaation

korean convenience stores. oh my god heaven

COFFEE SHOPS EVERY 10 FEET

everything is so cheap here!!!! i’m going to come back to america and have to pay over $1.80 for a large latte and kill myself. and over $5 for a MEAL?? no no. no. i won’t.

street. food.

there is free wifi in every single public space

i’ve been walking 50+ kilometers every week for the last month

anyway yeah sorry i can’t sleep seoul’s cool i miss america still though please mail me some hot cheetos even though i said i didn’t miss them that much

9 notes · View notes

meny-sempai · 6 years

Text

MO DAO ZU SHI IS A MASTERPIECE – part 01

OH MY GOD EP 15! That was so… UGH. I have so much to say, yet I’m speechless at the same time! Aaaaa! Ok, that’s it! It’s time!

The first season is over and I can finally talk about my experience with the piece of art that is Mo Dao Zu Shi. Yes, it is a piece of art and I will prove it to you in this short series of my thoughts about the show.

I just have to say – I’m not a native English speaker so bear with the mistakes I’m bound to make. I did read the novel, but only as far as the Exiled Rebels Scanlations translated it (thank you Rebels, you’re gods). I started reading the novel after the first airing of the third episode, so at the very beginning of MDZS mania – I went in blind and… it was FUNNY. I’ll talk more about that down below. And yes, I know a lot of spoilers, but I can’t say I know the whole story – If I start theorizing be aware that I’m just theorizing, I’m not actually telling the plot, but, just to be sure: SPOILERS ahead, I will use the facts I know for my analysis.

For the first two episodes I’m going to tell you my blind reactions and compare them with my impressions after finishing the season. My misinterpretations are hilarious and I admit I was really dumb. Enjoy my stupidity.

The rest of the episodes will have my impressions and analysis that I now have after finishing the show. There will be a few of these kind of posts on my profile because I can’t fit everything I have to say in just one. I don’t actually do analysis of shows here, because this is my personal art blog, but I sometimes make exceptions. As an animation student I just had to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi. I want more people to see it. I want people to know that it is much more than BL.

So… Here we go!

INTRODUCTION – or, who the hell even asked for my opinion?

I’ve been a fan of anime/manga since I was 13, which was 12 years ago (I’m old, I know). Sure, I’ve watched Digimon, Pokemon, Bayblade and all that jazz when I was even younger, but that doesn’t count, because I had no clue about the concept of anime.

I’ve seen a lot of shit, I’m quite open to a lot of shit and if I’m in the right mood I can take a lot of shit, but I still regard myself as someone who has a good taste. The older I get the less time I have to take a chance at something I wouldn’t normally watch. Even if there is something I’d watch I usually end up not having time for it. Since I started studying and doing animation myself, my criteria for the quality skyrocketed. I long gave up on the three episode rule. One episode is enough to see potential if there is potential (some shows can still trick me – I’m looking at you Sirius the Jaeger).

Ok, ok, I’m not bashing on Sirius the Jaeger. I’m just saying the show had a lot of potential and threw it out of the window. If there was no Mikhail and Yuliy dynamics… Scratch that – if there was no Mikhail in the show, the story would have been completely empty. At least for me.

Since we’re talking about other shows, I’ll use this opportunity to declare Mo Dao Zu Shi as the animation of the year. Sure, the year’s still not over, sure I only watched Cells at Work, Free! Dive in to the Future, Sirius the Jaeger and BANANA FISH, but I still believe in what I say.

Sorry Cells, you’re cute, you make me care more about my body, you make me have weird feelings about Cancer (WTF). I wish I can show you to all the school kids in my country, but you’re not the best this time. Please, give me another season, thank you. Love the manga. Guys, please watch this anime!

Sorry Free, you… Pfff… Ok, yeah, FREE, I love you dude, thank you for all the sexy muscles and almost BL drama (and some actual deep moments). Thank you for all the Rin, we can never have enough of Rin. And thank you for Kisumi and Asahi – didn’t know I needed that. Thank you, but… yeah, know your place (hint: it’s right here in my arms).

Sorry Sirius, I wish you had more episodes to explore the story and the characters. Liked the OP and the animation.

Sorry BANANA FISH, oh god, I really am. Before MDZS I lived for you BF, I lived for you! I was an old fan of the manga and I was so hyped. I can’t say I’m dissatisfied with the anime adaptation. I liked a lot of things they did, the way they adapted stuff, added and changed stuff, but it was just too much plot for 13 episodes and the effects of it became clearer and worse while the anime progressed. I have no idea how MAPPA will handle the second season. My fingers are crossed. Guys, watch this anime. Even with all the flaws it’s worth your time.

And yes, I watched Voltron and The Dragon Prince. This will be a really long post if I start on those, so I won’t.

So… YES. Mo Dao Zu Shi came out of nowhere for me and took the crown. Wow… where to start…?

How did I find this show…? Actually, how did this show find me? Well… It was my beta reader, I think. After 13 years of being a silent fan of Asian comics and animation, I decided to finally write a fanfiction. Surprisingly, it was for the small fandom of the Korean comic Noblesse (nobody cares, carry on). I don’t know why, but my beta told me about this new BL “anime”. When I realized it was Chinese I rolled my eyes. I’m an asshole, I know, but I just never liked anything I saw from the Chinese (I haven’t seen much, but what I saw was poorly animated/was in 3D and I’m not a huge fan of 3D). I also never liked the voice acting… Ok. OK, I admit! I never liked the language, ok? Shoot me!

Then… Everything changed when the Wen clan attacked.

Anyway… I was bored, I was lazy and didn’t want to do work for my university, so I said: “What the heck! Hit me with some Chinese BL.” I clicked on the first episode not even bothering to read the summary. Man… My expectations were the low of the lowest.

EPISODE 01 – or, what the fuck did I just watch and is there more of it?

Oh shit… I’m terrible at names, especially Chinese names! Am I supposed to remember all this, is this important? The clans, the wars, the titles? This is BL, right? Should I take out my note book? Fuck, pause it. Ok… Ok… I get it? Let’s just continue.

(When I look at it now it was pretty clear. I really am dumb. To be fair, you need time to get used to how they use names. And for someone who never watched Chinese animation seriously and doesn’t know anything about the culture it really was a lot of new information. But don’t let that stop you from watching it!)

Ughhhhh…. 3D… damn it. And it was going so well. Ugh, just look at those wings flapping! Are the wings broken? What the hell! Why do they do this?

(Lol, I was so triggered. XD The bird is actually fine. I like how the scene transitioned from the pupil of a scared man to the pupil of the crow. As if they were watching each other in the eye, only adding to the creepiness. The lighting is also great. Everything is dark and gloomy, fitting the “horror” atmosphere really well, yet at the same time the dark scenes are vivid and clear. It’s hard to make the misty night look clear and colorful. The flying is a bit iffy, but it doesn’t really matter because the effect of hundred birds covering the sky is strong and meaningful.)

Holly shit! This is amazing! Pause it! No, go back, I wanna see this again. Oh my god, that flute! The music is awesome, I’m having goosebumps. Ooohh, love the music, I never heard something like this. Oh, this dude is so cool. Red eyes and zombies and… What is this show about again? Zombie BL? Really? It’s not really zombies, right? Please don’t be about zombies, I hate zombies.

(Honestly, this scene is stunning. A really effective way to reveal a character. Especially a character that we are not sure whether he is good or bad. The most amazing thing for me about this is how they used music. It isn’t just the background music to accompany the atmosphere. It isn’t there just to tell something about the character and make him stand out (it’s not a character theme). The flute is not alone here, there are many themes working with it. Together they are not there to tell us “this is a scary action scene” so feel this, or “this is a sad scene”, or a “funny scene”. No. The music here is its own art piece. It’s actually there to tell us in its own language the story that we are seeing on screen. I don’t know how to explain it. For me, the way the music changed was perfectly synchronized with the way people were saying words, the way Wei Wuxian moved his head, the way the corpses stood up to attack. If I close my eyes I can see the scene by only listening to the music. This is something that regularly happens in this show. I don’t know how they do it, but I applaud to it. I can’t remember the last time the music left such an impact on me in the animation series. And this is just the first episode and the first scene. We have no idea who these people are. We are not expected to feel emotional for them. But I felt the connection. I felt like I was there and the corpses were about to get me.)

Ugh! 3D, you’re killing me! And it was such a cool intro! Ok, calm down, what are they saying? So… That’s the guy with the flute, right? No, it was Wei, but Wei Something else. No, wait, it has to be him. Go back. Yeah, it is him. What the hell is a courtesy name? Ok, never mind, try to remember.

Oh no…! More exposition, more names and clans! My brain is melting! Cool smoke/ink animation, though. Hmm, purple ring. Nice. That’s important, right? Oh! The amulet thing! Remember that. That’s gonna bite us in the ass later, ain’t it? Alright, so “Wei something” died. Killed by… shidi? So… the younger clan member? So…? This Wei also had his own clan? Am I getting this right? I’m probably not getting this right. Ugh, just watch the damn episode, quit pausing every goddamn second! It’ll explain itself.

I like the OP! The similar smoke/ink animation and… Wow, ok, there are too many handsome guys here. I’ll have to focus. The music is catchy. I like the singer’s voice. Cool!

(I’m now quite fond of the 3D in here. The tortoise and everything. XD Also, in my defense - they have three names, like, come on. I didn’t see that coming. I don’t even have a middle name. Although, I do think having three ways to be addressed is pretty interesting. You can tell and convey a lot by just picking a name the character uses in his speech.

Fun fact no1. – at the time I couldn’t even recognition the names when they would speak. All of the words sounded the same to me, which was so unusual. I can now recognize a lot of words and phrases. And, I think… Well, you’ll see what I now think about Chinese and VAs. I’m just gonna say this: I’d like to learn Chinese just so that I can write a love letter to Guo Haoran.

Fun fact no2. – It took me 6 episodes to actually pay attention to the lyrics of the OP and ED and to realize that they are representing Wei Wuxian and Lan WangJi. That’s a really beautiful touch, very smart. And it brings so much meaning to the table when the ED changes. I don’t think I ever saw OP and ED used in this particular way.)

Well, this is getting really dark and interesting. This Wei may be a refreshing MC. Probably a good guy at heart, but shady as fuck and ready to kill. I do have another name to worry about, but Mo is easy to remember (“Don’t close mountain” – if you know what I mean :P). I wonder if Mo is important to the plot. I see potential for some twists here.

2D animation is looking good so far. I like how they made us look from the protagonist’s POV. Really refreshing directing… hmm… Still not buying the Chinese, but Wei has a nice voice. The music is still great.

Bahahahaha! Scratch that, Wei is an idiot! Good to know that liquor is your priority, Wei! XD Omg the donkey, too, look at that face, look at the eyelashes!

The fuck is this shit? Are those people flying? While standing? Are they standing on something? What the hell? XD Man, that sky is nice. Oh! Oh, oh, wait, those guys! Those were the shadows I saw a scene earlier. Mmm… Attention to detail. Nice. Looks like I’ll have to pay close attention to every scene. Been a long time I had to focus so hard on an “anime”.

(10 minutes and I was already very intrigued. I didn’t know shit, but I was in. With all the pausing I probably spent 50 minutes on this episode, but it felt like barely 20 minutes had passed. At the beginning I paused a lot because I was too slow to read the subtitles (no, I don’t watch dubs, I’m just too used to Japanese and their culture references that reading subs is child’s play, but this was new territory for me). I also paused a lot because I felt I’ve missed something, or because I was surprised at how some scenes looked.

I don’t pause that often now. Mo Dao Zu Shi trained me to see and hunt for detail. As I said, it’s been a long time since I had the need to carefully look at the backgrounds and pay attention to all of the characters’ expressions. Mo Dao Zu Shi tells a lot in silence and in small details. It awards you if you take time to look at the scenery. When I find something that I’d usually miss, I don’t necessarily feel smarter, but I feel the show is treating me as someone smart. MDZS respects its audience. It makes them think and remember. Which makes this show 100% re-watchable. I watched all the episodes 3 times. Some I watched even more – like episode 11. And I always have a new experience. I love coming back to it. Even when I work I play the episodes and listen to them. It’s interesting. Try it. Try just to listen to the audio. It has rare quality to it. The sounds and music are used wisely and a piece of music always has a legit reason why it’s played.)

Ok, this run is too slow. I get that he’s fat, but still, the foot exchange doesn’t fit with the distance he’s making. Also, the flying guys are not flying anymore. I got more info. And MORE NAMES. Kill me now. The info is interesting, though. Cultivators are Chinese exorcist, right? I really should have read the summery.

(I still think the running was not convincing. There are moments such as these in the show, but honestly, MDZS has fascinating animation and it only gets better in the later episodes (I’m not even gonna start with ep 11 – ep 11 will get its own post). The animators know what they are doing and the director knows how to make a scene work at full capacity.

Fun Fact no3. – D.Gray-man destroyed me. I now only know how to say “exorcist” the Japanese way.

MDZS also has a way of making seemingly stupid stuff look and be cool. Surfing on swords sounds pretty dumb, but when you actually see it and have it explained to you, when it has plot significance it becomes a fresh idea. I want to have my own sword to surf on!)

Well, hello… Lan… Jingyi ~ (How do you read this? O.O) Mmm… I’m digging the art style. Cute boys~

Also, Wei, you’re a fucking genius! XD The Oscar goes to you, my dude.

(… I still think Wei Wuxian is a fucking genius. I’m not gonna talk a lot about him right now, but I just gotta say that he is such a classic MC, yet at the same time he is so original. He’s just one of the proofs how great the writing this series has.

Speaking of writing – this show has some of the best dialog I’ve ever seen. Not only because of what is being said, but also because of the VAs, directing, music and animation. Dialog often has more than one meaning and always serves to deepen the characters and their relationships. I love how they use animation to show how the characters are truly feeling while saying something and what they actually mean when they say it. Everything they say has a reason and it makes you pay attention to other’s reaction to what is being said. I love how the character can say the same thing in so many different ways and that this is used to show his development and growth. I’m also amazed at how simple “hmm-s” and “mmm-s” mean so much in this show.

I’m not saying character animation and rich expressiveness is something new, but it is rare and this show is really good at it. For example, quite a few characters laugh or cry but they all do it differently. They raise their eyebrows differently, they’re surprised and scared differently etc. This all sounds as a no-brainer, but it’s not so common. It’s difficult to pull off and I’m not saying MDZS is perfect, but it’s close.)

(Please… You think you can take down someone who spent his whole life perfecting the art of climbing up trees? Pff! You’re not Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan.)

(He looks so comfortable among corpses. It’s funny, yet so sad. These are all great hints for the mind-set of a character that you’ll miss at first watching, but you won’t forget about it. And when the memory clicks – it makes a loud click. Not a second is wasted in this show. Everything has a point. I’ll elaborate more on that with some examples in other posts.)

Bahahaha! I feel you bro! XD

But I feel you too. I mean, I don’t care about you, wench, don’t get me wrong, but it’s kinda sad. I’m liking these zombies. They’re my way of creepy and there’s potential for a deeper plot for them if it’s true that their personalities are still there somewhere. This just adds to the debate whether Wei is good or bad. The grey area… I love the grey the most. All 50 shades of it. And I’m enjoying the mystery vibe of this episode. Was there a mystery tag on this “anime”? Also, the fight scenes are not bad. And it’s cool how they all hate Wei but use his technics and knowledge. Realistic. Cool.

Oh my god! The colors! Whaaat? What the hell, look at that hair animation! And the music from that… string thingy- instrument – so cool. Ooohh, wait, this is the white dude, THE dude. Here comes the BL!

Ooohhh, I see what you did there. Kudos for you, director! Similarities and contrasts. Nice. And it’s over, I can’t believe it’s over! How can you cliff hang like that?! There’s a second episode, right? Mm, the ED is so pure. There IS a second episode! Well, while I’m here, don’t mind if I do!

EPISODE 2 – or, how I got everything wrong!

I bet he’s thinking: “The fuck is with this aim? The little shit almost killed me! I’m annoyed and amazed! Better play a fool and run for it.” But, seriously, that aim! Wei actually paused (love the little wobble effect on the arrow). And I have another name to remember! Ugh! And another color! Are they color coded? That could be helpful. Also, look at that tree. Wow… They’re blending the 3D backgrounds quite well with the 2D.

And Mo is important to the plot! Nice! So he has connections with the Yellow clan. The plot thickens.

I just gotta say – all of them have interesting designs. I wonder if every cultivator has his own sword. Bleach style or something. On the other hand, animators must be pulling out their hair because of all the details. XD

Cool little battle. Great camera work. They showed the difference between a student cultivator and an experienced one in an entertaining way. That soul summoning was nice too.

(This fight served as a nice show of power difference. It adds a lot to the future episodes where all of the main cast are students and have to face various trials. It gives us a hint at how powerful the clan leaders must be, it gives us a new perspective on the war and its casualties. We now get why many cultivators died so “easy”. It also hints at how talented students are different from the average which is an important detail in the plot. This little “unimportant” fight grounds it all and makes the levels in the clan system believable and palpable.)

This is really clever. Kudos for the reflection. Wei, haven’t you ever watched an anime? It’s clear the kid doesn’t have a mom. He probably doesn’t even have a dad.

(Ok… prepare for a full on fangirl attack.)

… My ears are tingling.

… This voice… Oh my ears, please calm down, something big is happening right now. Wait… Oh wow, he knows him! Look at the face he’s making, oh shit! And this new guy…! We haven’t even seen his face and he’s making threats! Hmm… Can’t say I don’t like that. Yeah, I like that… He’s gonna be the villain, isn’t he? I always like the villains and they always have the best voices. Well… if he’s a villain, let’s hope he’s hot-

Oh, wow, this is really good. The way the light appears, and that little shine of the… bell? Purple… Purple? The purple ring? Is this connected? Well, anyway, he has a pretty dramatic reveal and nice music – yep, he’s the bad guy. Let me see your face-

Wei… why are you so scared? They sure take their sweet time in revealing this guy. This may be more important than I thought. Don’t miss anything!

(Are you prepared?)

HOLLY MOTHER OF GOD WHAT THE FUCK OH MY GOD WHAAATT??? Was he this beautiful in the OP? Whaaaatt? AAAAHHHHHH!!!! SCREENSHOT! WALLPAPER! GO BACK, REPEAT THE SCENE! YOU! YOU, MY BOY, HAVE ENTERED MY HAREM. Oh what a day to be alive! Mmmm, ok, calm down, we’ll draw him later, let’s try to focus. Jiang Cheng. Ok, it’s a more common name, I’ll remember him. Heh. Like I could forget this boy. Oh, no, not a boy, a MAN. This is a man. Uhuhuhu~

(Aaaand my mind was a bit hazy for the rest of the episode – you will see the results.

Fun fact no4. – Immediately after this episode I looked up MDZS on Tumblr and realized that the fandom is calling Jiang Cheng JC. Still under the effects of what I just saw I thought calling him God was quite appropriate.)

NICE PROFILE!!! Is he going to be the other love interest for the MC? Are we gonna see the cliché love triangle? If it’s with this dude, maybe it won’t be so bad~ Ok, seriously, watch the show!

Ok, the magic light here is a nice touch. This Jiang Cheng is a bit cold even to his nephew. He doesn’t recognize Wei, but that’s expected. Wei is strongly reacting to him. What’s the connection? Judging by the music – it’s sad? I expected something more, I don’t know, menacing? Evil? But it’s just sad. Maybe he’s not a villain. That… that could open so many doors… TO MY KOKORO.

“Feed your dogs.” Ouch, that’s dark. Someone really hates the “demon” cultivators.

“Could this boy be…?” What? What is he? Want’s the connection? Should I know, did I miss something?

The white dude and my purple man clash! Holly, Jiang Chang sounds pissed (passive aggressive enough?), while White poster boy here doesn’t give a damn! XD Ahahaha! Could Jiang Cheng be the Chinese tsundere? No, no, no, let’s not call such a man a tsundere. It’s too early.

Oh, Uncle is the leader of the sect. Nice. How old is the Uncle? Is he married?

This obvious metaphor of concealing the light is distracting me from fangirling. It’s interesting how it connects with the Jiang Cheng reveal. I feel that… shit is about to go down.

I was right! He’s the ring! What does the ring represent? And he’s doing what I always do! I play with my ring like that all the time! Nice.

SCREENSHOT! Oh, but he’s pissed. Oh, but I love the way he looks at me~ I feel all mushy.

Ha! Interesting. He’s smart, he has some self-control. Refreshing. But don’t turn your anger at your nephew, please. Also, it seems like the white dude and the Uncle have some history. Hmm…

I thought so. The white dude was the one who killed Wei. The tragic love. I can already see it.

(Yep. I thought Lan WangJi was the Shidi who “killed” Wei Wuxian. You are allowed to face palm.)

Oh no… I know where this is going. And the music…

Oh man… It’s the second episode and I’m already having the feels. What happened, Wei?! I refuse to believe you’re a bad guy!

But, I get Wei’s reaction to Jiang Cheng now.

(I don’t know how it happened, but I was thinking… What if she was killed by Jin Zixuan’s sword? We know Wei Wuxian stopped using his. From this shot we know he wasn’t the one who stabbed her, so was it Wen Ning? It’s obvious he was involved in the tragedy. As far as I know SPOILERS Wen Ning killed Jin Zixuan. If the killer sword is the one we know – if it’s Jin Zixuan’s then Wei’s reflection in this episode has a deeper meaning.)

Bahahaha I feel you, honor student. I like the kids.

(Honestly, they balance the humor and the serious stuff masterfully.)

I died.

This is giving me Gantz PTSD. That shit gave me nightmares. Nephew is really bold.

(I believe Jin Ling has some of his Uncle Wei’s recklessness and hero complex, but he also wants to prove himself just like his other two Uncles. I’ll talk more about them in another post.)

Uuhh, Wei is playing the flute! Risky, I like it.

(Ok, people. Be prepared for the ultimate face palm.)

Oh my god! Don’t tell me he summoned his own body! This resembles the scene from the narration… and he’s wearing black!

I’m right! Nephew wants revenge! Great shot by the way. You can feel the rage in the movement.

(You face palmed yet?)

I really love the way they use the flute! It depicts the flow of the camera so well!

… Wen… Wen what? Wen Ning? Who’s Wen Ning? What? Wait, are they talking about the corpse? What’s going on??? O_O Who’s Wen Ning?! Did I miss something? What’s the full name of the MC again? Ugh… This is so tiring… Ok, never mind, enjoy the beautiful flute song.

Busted!

I swear to god, this guy is illegal!

Oh, boy he figured it out too and he’s… sadistically happy? Eh… But, I get it. If he believes that Wei killed his sister, I get it. And her husband? Did he “kill” the dad, too?

I can’t believe he has a whip AND a braid? And he’s purple??? Did someone look into my diary? Is it Christmas yet? XD Am I dead?

Did he just smile? Am I imagining things? XD I can’t figure him out!

Please! Don’t lie, white dude! “He’s path is uncommon”, yeah right, we all know what you want.

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I’VE SEEN AND HEARD IN MY LIFE.

(This would have annoyed anyone no matter who said it, but because it was Wei Wuxian, I think it was even more annoying in Jiang Cheng’s head. Wei Wuxian knows him too well. It’s even funnier when you know that JC is blacklisted. XD He’s no good even to the lunatic.)

And at this exact moment Wei knew he fucked up. XD This is golden.

... Please DON’T turn into rape BL.

(It so DID NOT.)

Oh Wei, you’re no match for this guy! :D

Hmm, looks like we’re going back in time. I love me some juicy flashbacks. Can’t wait to see more.

... I can’t believe I actually like this zombie BL. I just hope they don’t fuck up the animation later on.

(And the rest is history. As you can see - I’m obsessed.)

-----

That’s all for today! Next posts will have more character, story and art analysis. Hope you liked this and please forgive me for making this so long. See you!

#mo dao zu shi #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #wei wuxian #lan wangji #Jiang Cheng #jin ling #wen ning #jin zixuan #analysis #donghua #animation

74 notes · View notes

sleepymarmot · 6 years

Text

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

#friends at the table #blah blah blah

4 notes · View notes

liu-anhuaming · 7 years

Note

Do you have any tips for studying a large amount in a short period of time? Because I have been learning chinese for 2 1/2 years, but i really haven't gotten far and this August 29 (50 days!!) I'm leaving for a 10 month exchange to ZhengZhou!

i’m gonna start out by saying there’s really no fun way to cram a bunch of knowledge into your brain in a short amount of time (i know this really well bc i was a shit student in high school and i still a shit student now, even though i have improved slightly)

but here are my suggestions:

make some kind of schedule. if you do this you don’t need to have a super regimented study plan but just have an idea of what you need to study and make a basic timeline. you leave in 50 days, so that’s about 7 weeks. while you don’t necessarily need to know what you’re going to study every single day, maybe have a general idea about what you want to cover each week so that you can have a general idea of what your goal is

if scheduling isn’t your thing (cuz it sure as hell isn’t mine), form a list of what you want to accomplish in these 50 days. gather up the resources you’re gonna use (i’ll put some suggestions for that below) and figure out what you want to accomplish with them. this list can be as general or specific as you think it needs to be.

whether you make a schedule or a list is really up to you and how you prefer to study and stay motivated, but it’s important to remember to take a few days off (at least once a week). 50 days of straight studying is not an easy thing and if you don’t rest in between you’ll eventually burn out. so yeah, take some days off. but if you still want to get some mandarin practice in, listen to music in the background. here’s some links to music master posts, as well as my mandarin music tag (my personal suggestions for music are, naturally, 苏运莹，张震岳（AKA A－Yue，Waa Wei, Hello Nico, Haya 乐团, Frandé/法蘭黛, and 宇宙人). also take a look at the blogs @chinese-lyrics and @fyeahcindie. they have a bunch of great music that you can look through

so now that you know what you’re gonna be doing, here are some suggestions for how to drill vocab and grammar:

the first is memrise. there are a bunch of memrise courses for mandarin that cover useful vocab from every level of the HSK among other things. since it uses spaced repetition it’s a great resource to help beat vocab into your brain. it is, however, not the best for grammar (imo)

if you need to, take sticky notes and label everything in your house. and make it really visible. when i did this, i didn’t write the pinyin on the sticky notes, just the tone marks but if you feel that you need to write the pinyin, then go ahead and do it. when you do this, you are forced to see the vocab every day and will learn it after having seen it so many times

it is my opinion that the best way to learn vocab (and their corresponding characters) is to write. when i study mandarin i always try to write out my vocab lists and then use this method to practice the characters. depending on how long your vocab list is, this can be an incredibly time consuming method (i’ve had lists that have taken me an hour and a half to finish drilling using this method) but it really pays off

for grammar i’d use websites like this one or this one bc they give examples of the grammar in use. also, the first one (allset learning) has their grammar organized up to B2 (HSK 4) so it’s easy to find grammar by HSK levels. the second one is also organized by level, but they don’t have as many articles yet. if you want to practice by making your own sentences but are afraid of messing up, just hop on over to HiNative. you can ask native speakers of mandarin if something you wrote in mandarin sounds natural or correct, as well as ask for help with translating difficult words or sentences and more.

more than anything, i recommend you find some resources created by native speakers to help you learn

slow chinese 慢速中文 is a podcast series written by native speakers for people learning mandarin. they are a few minutes long each and are spoken at a slightly slower speed than normal, and they cover a variety of topics including chinese culture and food. you can download the podcasts on iTunes, but you can also find them online along with the transcripts. it’s an amazing resource

快乐汉语 (this playlist only goes to episode 75): this is a video series created by CCTV for mandarin learners. it’s basically about an american girl who runs away from home to stay with her family friends in beijing. the acting is super cheesy and the plots are downright weird at times, but it’s an excellent resource because the videos are subbed in both mandarin and english. since susan (the main character) is american, there are a bunch of episodes where the family explains chinese culture to her so it’s pretty cool. warning: a lot of the characters have thick beijing accents, so just watch out for that. they also have a couple of short breaks in each episode to explain certain grammar or vocab that was used in the episode

what i’d do with these and any other native resources you find (song lyrics, blog posts, books, etc.) is break them down sentence by sentence and study the vocab and grammar. once you get that vocab, drill it like you do with all of the other vocab. what my teacher would have us do with 快乐汉语 was listen once nonstop, then go scene by scene and write down what the characters were saying using what we could hear and the chinese subtitles. we’d then go over the scene and find any vocab and grammar patterns that were new to us and make notes on them. once we’d finish with that, we’d listen to the scene once more.

after we’d done that for every scene, we’d watch the whole video again and again to get the hang not only of the new vocab but also of the way the characters said each sentence. when learning a new language, a lot of what makes someone sound unnatural is not only accent, but also rhythm. so my teacher would have us listen to the video over and over and then make us perform certain scenes. she did this so we could practice listening not only for pronunciation but also for the rhythm of each sentence. so i highly recommend you try this (sans the performing). you can just pick a scene or two and listen a bunch and eventually try to repeat after each character until you feel you’ve got the rhythm down.

so that’s really all i can say for now. cramming requires a lot of work so what you’ve got to do is find a way to apply the methods that work best for you and keep plugging away at them until the very end. i hope this helps you in some way, and i hope you enjoy your time in china! 加油!!!

140 notes · View notes

wintryethereal · 7 years

Text

Forgiveness, Thankfulness and Remembrance: Chapter 3 - Homeroom Thoughts

From my Quotev.

-❄❄❄ September 6, 2017. 9:01 AM ❄❄❄-

I look up from my phone as a cute, somewhat short male student with silky, light brown hair and beautiful brown eyes passes me. Oh, isn't he the second guy who passed us in the hallway? He gives me a brief, small smile as we make eye contact. He quickly reaches the fifth and final row to sit in the desk near the window. Ah, so this is our main protagonist.

"Uh, good morning, Baekhyun." Mrs. Mok says, making a slight face as she turns on the SMARTboard behind her. Is this not his usual morning behavior?

He turns to her from looking outside for a moment. "Hi, Mrs. Mok."

"Are you feeling OK today? You usually sit in the front, right beside where Eunju is sitting."

Baekhyun catches my eyes that paced between him and Mrs. Mok. "Your name is Eunju?"

"Yes, I transferred here from Canada for my last year. It's nice to meet you, Baekhyun."

Baekhyun's chest slowly sinks as he exhales. "It's nice to meet you, too." He gives another little smile, but his expression reflects anguish. Should I... ask?

As I open my mouth, Mrs. Mok takes my place. "Baekhyun, are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine." His tone doesn't make it seem that way. Just as Baekhyun finishes his sentence, more students file in, filling the seats. I guess it's not my business to ask what's wrong, but I still can't help but wonder if his mood has something to do with the student he was walking with, this morning. The bell chimes again, then shuffling comes from the speaker on the ceiling's corner to the left of the door.

"Good morning, SGHS." Oh, this is the secretary's morning announcement. "Welcome back from summer vacation, we hope you all had fun. Today's block rotation is 1-2-2-3-4 after homeroom. As a reminder, you only have to be in homeroom before the first block for the first week for attendance."

"The first dance of the year is on the last Friday of this month, the 29th. The theme is Fall Fair, so dress in denim and plaid if you want to. As always, there is a small prize draw, and admission is ₩8200." That equals about $10 CAD. "You can preorder your copy of the yearbook starting October 1st by the office."

"They are ₩45, 600 until December 1st, then they will then be ₩53, 900." That equals around $55 and $65 CAD. Ugh, my other high school had overpriced yearbooks, too. "That is all for today's announcements. This has been Seo Jeonghae, your secretary in the office. Have a wonderful day."

There's a bit more shuffling as Jeonghae ends the announcement, then Mrs. Mok rises from her seat. "Alright, good morning class, I'm Mrs. Mok." She begins to write her name in Hangul on the SMARTboard with the black pen. "As Jeonghae said, welcome to the 2017 school year." Mrs. Mok adds her name in Hànzì underneath.

"Mr. Jeup and I teach Korean, Japanese, English and Mandarin, so we collaborate our classes." She writes her name in Hiragana and English, then sets down the pen and puts her hands at her sides. "Our students often share one language and wish to learn another that a peer knows. It's a trade that has shown to be enjoyable and educational for everyone. Language has helped people communicate for generations, and it's my job to help you communicate wherever you go."

"How many people here are looking to learn English?" A good half of the class raises their hands, and everyone looks around like curious puppies to see each other. I notice that Baekhyun is one of these people. "Ah, a big number, like always." Mrs. Mok smiles.

"Good, very good. Who is here to learn Korean?" A small portion of the class raises their hands. "Mm, good. How about Japanese?" Another small portion raises their hands. "And, Mandarin?" I raise my left hand with a third small portion of the class.

"Excellent, everyone here is looking to learn something different. Mr. Jeup and I enjoy posting videos of students talking to each other in their newly learned languages on our school's YouTube page. We have a collection of playlists that has been growing since 2012. We will teach you through various games, exercises, and activities. At the end of every week, you will be tested by talking with me using what you learned that week. If everyone does well, you all get ice cream. Does that sound good?"

We cheer and applaud collectively, laughing at ourselves. "Now, may our new student come to the front and introduce herself, please?" I rise from my seat and walk to Mrs. Mok's left side. She gives me little nod and smile. "When you're ready."

I huff, nodding firmly, then turn to the class. "Hello, my name is Young Eunju, I'm in this class to learn Mandarin. I am in twelfth grade. I am a transfer from Canada on two scholarships. I enjoy writing and can make friends easily because of my personality. I look forward to knowing you all; please treat me well." I bow to finish my speech, and the class gives me a warm applause, Baekhyun included, who looks a little interested and a little relieved of stress.

"Thank you, Eunju. You may return to your seat, now." Mrs. Mok says, and I nod in response, doing so. "Now, let's go over the course assignments and begin the first assignment." Mrs. Mok picks up the keyboard on her desk and closes the application, Word 2017 beneath it.

She puts down her keyboard and hands a stack of booklets to the leftmost student in the front row. "Please take one and pass it on." After everyone had taken one, Mrs. Mok proceeds to go over the assignments for the course. Our first assignment was to create a poster in our chosen language, with help from Mrs. Mok, of a small self-introduction. We would present them to the class on Thursday, then they would be posted to the bulletin board outside for a week.

We began to work on our projects, making rough drafts on lined paper about what we wanted to put down. I met Hyejae, who's in twelfth grade, during the class's Q&A time featuring me. She was adorable and idol-image-material with big, dark eyes and short, black hair. We clicked right after I mentioned we were both lactose intolerant, knowing the struggles of not being able to find vegan ice cream so easily. She turned out to be vegan as I am, and she cosplays as Kagamine Rin, so we got excited about Vocaloid, too.

I received many questions from students about my home country and town, which is Vanderhoof, located in the geographical heart of British Columbia, scholarships, dwarfism, and the way I walk. Of course, this lead to a brief explanation of my knees for the upteenth time. I discussed my other interests, starting with Pokemon and my preference of Water and Fairy types and favoritism of Mudkip and Sylveon, and Project Diva, and that I like music and can sing but wouldn't sing then and there. I talked about Minecraft and why I don't play online or Story Mode, cosplaying, and that I don't own a maid outfit and sew the costumes myself, and how I play Magic: The Gathering casually and attend Friday Night Magic.

Everyone who asked me questions and listened seemed thrilled to meet someone as unique as me. It didn't surprise me because I knew my appearance alone would raise questions. I noticed that Baekhyun was among the intent listeners, quietly working and smiling a little when I talked about how I adore Miku and all of her possibilities, and why I'm not a great Magic player: unlucky decisions. After everyone had asked their burning questions, I thought about Baekhyun and the student I saw him with. Baekhyun's face was red, and the way the other person was holding his wrist was a clue that something was happening.

Maybe someone did something to anger the other person, like try to... take... Baekhyun away. Oh my God, I think they might be a couple. Pretty fucking sure that guys don't hold each other like that unless they're gay. The latter being totally fine to me, I mean, hell, gay and lesbian etc. people can be just as wonderful as straight people. They probably went somewhere more private than a bathroom, they missed two of them by the time I stopped looking their way and missed if they turned the right corner or went down the stairs at the end of the hall.

I think the former option is most likely because Haeun told me that the door to the fenced school rooftop is always unlocked. The door follows the Information Technology and Law classrooms, on the right, and the third set of stairs, on the left, at the end of the hallway after the turn. The History, Social Studies, and Planning classrooms are on the left wall as well. They might have went there and had a talk. Oh geezums, now I'm curious and worried, when it's none of my business.

I quietly sigh, looking to Baekhyun from the protection of my hair over my desk. I hope everything's OK, he seems to . Also pretty sure that if I asked someone about the two, I'd get some raised eyebrows. Or, maybe I wouldn't. Hm, I'll observe people in the school a little more, see if I can spot Baekhyun with anyone. Or, maybe I'll meet someone who knows Baekhyun and what's going on, and they'll tell me. I... I fucking hate being an author, I overthink things way too easily. Eh, at least I've got a plan.

I feel like a fucking cool-ass teen detective too, like Nancy Drew, but with brown hair and green eyes. Even though I'm naturally a dark blonde, so there's that, too. After everyone was working for fifteen minutes, the bell rang. "Alright, I'll see you tomorrow for the double block." Mrs. Mok says, standing from a helping a student at their desk while everyone hastily packs up.

I wait for everyone to file out so I don't get run-over, insisting to Hyejae and a few other students that I was sure of my choice. Yeah, I'd say this is going pretty well. Mom's gonna be glad to hear about this. I look over my left shoulder as I watch Baekhyun approach me. "Hi, Eunju."

"Hi, Baekhyun. Did you need something?"

"No, I was just wondering what your next class is."

"Oh!" Not a question I expected from him. "After ASWM, I have Visual Arts."

"Really?" Baekhyun gives a light huff. "I have those courses, too. Do you wanna go to math, together?"

"Sure, I wouldn't mind." Baekhyun nods, then we take a right to the staircase that way.

"So, ASWM, huh? You're not good with math, either?" I chuckle.

"No, I'm not very bright in math or science." He lowers his shoulders. Oh, something's telling me his parents may have high expectations for him.

"Are you good at art?"

"I'm not bad at scenery painting." Baekhyun answers as we descend the staircase. "I'm good with people and gardening, too. I might go into social work, or my parent's business at the greenhouse." I give an 'mm' in reply. "What are you going into, Eunju?"

"Something with writing, if I'm lucky. I have a business certificate, and I've worked at a bank before, so I could work in an office, too. Something where I'm not up on my feet all day." Baekhyun nods a little in understanding. "By the way, what grade are you in, Baekhyun?"

"I'm in twelfth grade, too." He answers, waiting for me at the bottom of the first set of stairs. "So, your knee incident actually happened?"

"Yeah," I answer, starting the final set. "I'm wearing black pantihose to help hide my scar. I mean, I shave, but I had a habit of scratching at mosquito bites as a kid, so I have circular scars all over my arms and legs. That's why I chose to wear the long sleeved uniform." Baekhyun gives a low 'mm' in understanding.

When I was a little more than halfway down the stairs, the student that Baekhyun was with this morning halts in front of the opening into the hallway from the right. I never realized how tall he was until now, and his face is kind of baby-like, his eyes are very dark, piercing brown. "There you are, Baek. Are you coming?" Whoa, that’s a deep voice, if I ever heard one.

"Chanyeol, you still have to go to class, after homeroom." Baekhyun replies, reaching the bottom. "We have to wait until break to..." He pauses, then shakes his head a little as I finish descending. "...To talk on the roof."

"Just for a minute, come on..." Chanyeol whines.

"Nope, we're going to class." Baekhyun replies, taking Chanyeol's left hand and pulling him along as we go to the math classrooms down the hallway. Chanyeol's face holds this bewildered, judging and pleading expression, telling me that they're a couple, and that Chanyeol is the masculine figure who is currently confused at his partner's actions. He's also judging me because he may think I have something to do with it, and pleading to be released from Baekhyun's hand so he can recapture it and away with Baekhyun. Just... just fuck my analyzing brain; I'm thinking too much, and I have math, next.

-Forgiveness, Thankfulness and Remembrance-

WE: 2260 words, yes, very good. To clarify, if an idol is born before '95, they are in tenth grade. '95 liners are in eleventh grade, and '94-'90 liners are in twelfth grade. There are many exceptions for the sake of ship-relevancy for idols who are in twelfth grade. Yep, you heard that right. Ship-relevancy. Thanks for reading!

#exo fanfiction #bts fanfic #twice fanfic

1 note · View note

neikneik · 7 years

Text

Problems with 13 reasons why

Okay so I’m sorry this post will be a mess and I know a lot of people talked about it already, but I really, really need to explain how I felt about 13 reasons why and how it is not ok at all. And I’m not a native English speaker so don’t mind my mistakes pleaseee. And there are spoilers but this is some kind of a huge trigger warning btw tw: rape, suicid, scarification.

Firstly let’s talk about what everyone pointed out : the triggering scenes. Yes they were triggering I mean hey I read and saw about rapes and suicide and really the violence was unnecessary. When the hell did you tell yourself LET’S SHOW A GIRL WHO CUTS HER VEINS AND LET’S SHOW EVERY SINGLE PART OF THE PROCESS - I can’t stand gore in cinema or series but really besides my aversion to it it was awful , really awful. I’m not even like concerned by it but I felt so damn bad, so sick, do you realize I couldn’t sleep because of it - I couldn’t stop playing the scenes again and again in my head and I had nightmares about the show - and I’m not even concerned ? Their intention was, as I remember, reminding to be nice because things have consequences and hopefully help people going through this hell. Oh yeah you’re definitely helping I’m sure everyone will stop killing themselves after seeing such an amazing scene which will really makes them want to stay alive. About the rape scenes… Okay I’m going to talk about how rape and harassment and slut shaming were so bad dealt with in that show. When I saw the first two episodes, I told my friend who liked the show that I wasn’t sure about how they pictured slut shaming. He told me that I would see later. Still waiting because really now I really hated how they dealt with it. So yep Hannah is seen as a slut in the school and bullied because of it. Slut shaming. But in what way is it fighting against slut shaming if she didn’t do that thing and that the problem itself is that it is all just a rumor ? Did anybody said “she does whatever the hell she wants with her body with everyone she wants ?” Oh yeah. Being a “slut” is still a shame. Fuck you. They did well with victim shaming though. Victim shaming. Not slut shaming. Get it right before you make a goddamn show about it.

Rape now. I had most nightmares about it : I remember about me doing a listing of rapists : they were all around me. Always. Untouchable. That’s it : they tell you a sad, very sad truth and they affect you. It’s good to tell that truth especially in a show which wants to wear such a message but. What are we doing now ? Oh yep. Let’s show a rapist who is kinda nice except that he rapes people. Let’s show how the evil guy was Justin who was absolutely not nice and guilty too but not the fuckin rapist. Let’s stop the season before we could eventually see the raped girls have justice. I mean. I don’t have the words. What solution do you offer to girls enduring slut shaming and rape ? Suicid ? And ? We don’t know. Girl you got raped well maybe you should tell it to someone oh yeah they might insinuate you’re responsible and you can then kill yourself or you can tell your boyfriend/crush (because yeah btw you depend on him right) that you were and they will punch the rapist in the face and never talk to them again - maybe not because they think that rape is one of the most terrible thing you can do on Earth but because they lost you (awww so romantic). Yep I think you got the point. Again, unnecessary graphic scenes, again, the message is very bad even tho the intention was… Nice I guess. Also, some points I haven’t seen being said : can we just take a minute to notice how the main protagonists - Hannah, Clay - are white and cis and het and NT and that even tho there were poc I still had this impression of nice white people and poc not that nice ? And let’s not talk about Courtney - again the intention was cute but really I don’t think that it was really that good because..Yep. What are we doing now. Oh yeah. Nothing. Again. And also - Skye’s scars. I felt uncomfortable seeing them. And I know about self scarification and… Really. And I don’t think I was the only one. Was it necessary ?

ALSO really as somebody already pointed out : they do not talk about problems. But this hella important to talk. It is. How do you show it ? Oh, yeah, tape 13. Or 11. When people should just assume how the other feel - when I watched the show I found Hannah annoying at first with Clay because she almost asks him to have superpowers and read her mind even tho he’s having troubles with socializing etc. You should have shown just a time, just a single time someone talking successfully : show us the talk. Show us how you proceed to take things off your chest. How you can not be alone to carry such a weigh on your shoulder.

(And mental illness : I know they talked about it in the special episode but not everyone watched it and you should have shown them at least being treated good with Clay who is obviously suffering from some disorders which seem to suddenly disappear at the end like… Okay ?)

My point is - really they wanted to do something good but they failed. And I don’t care if this is like the book, I didn’t even read it, but when you want your series to be such a buzz (you know they wanted it) and to carry such messages you cannot just do it that bad. You can’t. You just can’t. Netflix is known to change things from the original after all (Riverdale and hetero/whitewashing we saw you). So yep. I hope noone watched it hoping to find a very safe series which would fight slut shaming and rape and everything… Well at least they got some things right : victim shaming as I said and I think everybody understood that bullying people or raping people is not cool even tho I don’t think people who do such things will suddenly realize they’re acting like pieces of shit but yep.

#13 reasons why #anti 13rw #anti 13 reasons why #13rw #13rw spoilers #important

7 notes · View notes

altertonative · 5 years

Text

How to communicate with Polish people?

As I am writing this post to my Polish audience, I try to help them with opening up to foreign language and finally starting to use it without any shame! It seems that only Polish people get somehow intimidated when they have to speak English (and in many cases other languages too), although they do know how to do it and they can understand a lot. This time I'd like to reverse the roles and teach you how to talk to Polish people in English (or any other foreign language).

1. Be patient.

2. speak clearly

Polish people are scared to speak with native speakers becuase the laters usually speak very fast and sometimes carelessly. If you speak slowly and clearly you are more likely to be understood. It may seem unnatural or even funny to you, but it can really make a difference in a conversation. I remember my mum, who was absolutely paralized by talking to English-speaking person, even though she could understand fairly a bit. However, when that person spoke slowly and clearly, my mum started to speak as well, because she knew she wouldn't be judged. If such a small thing can help somebody to open up, why not to try it?

3. don’t use too much slang.

Everybody loves slang, in their own language, or sometimes in different language too, when they are very advanced. Nevertheless, be aware that slang is not something you will ever hear at Polish school, nor during private language lessons. Everything that is taught there focuses mostly on grammar and fancy vocabulary to make sure all the neccessary tests are passed in the future. Bearing that in mind, the best way to communicate is to use simple words and not care about sentences' structure. It is common that when Polish people hear native speakers for the first time, they are very surprised and confused by how many mistakes natives do! They can spot them right away!

4. Take a piece of paper and a pen with you.

5. Download Polish dictionary.

Nowadays, it's no problem, because you can have a free dictionary on your phone. Did you know that you can download and use Google Translator offline? It also has the function of reading, even in slow motion, and although it is not ideal, it will certainly help you communicate. You can also ask Polish person to write what they want to say in Polish, so you will be able to easily translate it.

6. Learn 3 simple words in Polish.

spoko - no worries, it's cool

luz - chill out

siemano - hi there

zajebiście - hell yeah

chyba cię pogięło - you can't be serious

na zdrowie - cheers

7. be careful.

There are some people who would like to use the language barrier against you, so they are going to try to charge you more or offer you something of a worse quality, so be careful and don't be scared to say no. These situations usually occur in bigger cities, where foreign tourists are considered rich. In case you are not sure, you can always ask for help a different person.

Remember also that not every website has English translation, nor the owners speak English, especially if they are from the older generation. In the suburbs and smaller towns there might be no menus, train or bus schedules in English and not every travel guide can speak English, although it improved a lot within the past few years. Go and explore Poland anyway, because the best to offer is outside popular cities like Cracow, Warsaw or Gdansk (though they are beautiful and worth visiting too). But if you are up for a different kind of adventure, luxury village life at the private lake or visiting places that none of your friends ever heard of, please go to my Alternatively through Poland series for inspiration and if you have any questions or need help with organizing any trip to Poland, you can contact me anytime HERE or via e-mail: [email protected]

I will be more than happy to help!

And at last, if you've ever been to Poland before, please share your experiences and thoughts about communication with Polish people in the comments below, because I'm so curious to find out!

BACK

0 notes

rooseelyy-blog · 7 years

Text

From the first page . . .

What’s the fun fact of being a human? What’s the only thing in this world that money can buy? Love? No . . . these days, I think one can buy love, but what can’t we buy in a world in need of a money? Okay, think about it.

Think . . .

Still can’t figure it out?

Okay, okay, I’ll tell you: People are free to dream, no one will ever ask you for money just to think of a dream you have, whether it’s short-term or long-term, a dream is a dream, subdued with goals, dreams are what humans are made of, the one freedom that can never be taken away from us. Whatever the possibilities maybe, or whatever the situation is, no one has ever spent a nickel just for a dream.

A childhood maybe is the foundation of a dream, it may alter in the future, but as a child who’s wealthy with great imaginations like believing that toys are alive when we’re not looking and imagining ourselves as some sort of fantasy character using a stick to pretend that it’s a sword to simply fight with the air when in the eyes of daydreaming, there’s an enemy we’re facing. Okay, those dreams are bogus, let’s get into the real thing here. Remember when we’re in grade school, and the teacher would ask what we want to be when we grow up? Then someone from the class will raise his/her hand, and state some stereotyped careers like yearning to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police, or an ASTRONAUT (LAUGH PLS T_T), whatever thing that pops out from a child’s mind that can be a role model to someone. But some of us has a foundation, an established monument of ourselves that still is running on a higher post up until this day, like me--and I’m writing this to inspire others who’ve yet to confirm a dream career for themselves or people who’re in the same page as me.

Dreams . . . oh, how fun is to dream. Something that’ll make you float on the clouds imagining things like bearing success in life and a never ending playback of me swimming in a pool of money. Of course I’ve dreamt of that too, up until this day, who doesn’t want a pool of money? But what else? Being rich does not mean being happier than others, so there comes the love of your life. Yeah, I’m shouting today that it’s fun to be single, but obviously, I’ll need someone to be there for me, to protect me, to love me, and a woman who’ll build my world. We’ll bear children and live in this fancy mansion inside an expensive subdivision of nature. What else? There’s so many dreams of mien that I could identify right now, short-term and long-term it is, I can list a hundred in here, but I’ll be too tired and too senseless if I put it in that way, so let’s turn into the main event of the text.

Dream career?

Those 2 simple words one could ask you out of the blue.

As far as I could remember, the first career I ever imagined myself seeing in the future is in computer engineering. I think I was about in pre-elementary schooling in kinder and heard that my father graduated chemical engineering, and all that mattered to me was to change the concept into the word “computer” because I was a child who learned to use a desktop computer at the age of 3, and I was breaking things.

That dream suddenly vanished when I learned the beauty of food, when I appreciated the taste of the everyday need of one individual, and for that, I yearned to become a chef, and told it to my parents. I was in 2nd grade I believe when I learned to cook nothing. My parents meanwhile encouraged me that it was a pretty nice dream, but I never was like my older brother who dreamed of becoming a doctor from the start of his early mind, and now he’s starting to pursue it.

I discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid series when I was in 4th grade, and that’s when I found my liking in books, children series that are way too easy to read than a thousand-word novel, but you thought that I’m going to dream about writing! JINX! NOPE, I wanted to draw, sketch, and paint, cause you know, the novel has drawings. Again, my brother is a pretty good artist, I’m serious. I couldn’t believe the talent that guy has, he’s good in science, and his good at art? What the heck? Why did I never receive such gift when the person relatively close to me acquired it? But I tried, bought a few pad and pencils, and erasers, then started trying to sketch anime characters that I’m so addicted to, but then again, for not being a prodigal worker of a graphic art, and so did my maturing mind gave up, and somehow resorted to something like figuring out in the later part of my adolescence.

Eventually, I continued collecting the series of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but never got the hit of something that might occur to the future, and then on my 6th grade in elementary school, it was a rainy October afternoon, just any random thingies happening between kids who’re looking something interesting to do rather than playing toys that were starting to bore us, two of my close friends came to me with a plan of writing a book. WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WAITWAITWAIT, you’re asking me to write a book with you? Why was I so surprised? Of course I was not overly melodramatic at those types, I kept my cool, but why was I so surprised? He said that we should write in English--since he was a transfer student from Saudi Arabia and he speaks English very fluently--but I was probably the worst English speaker in class, I always fail when it comes to spelling examinations, and I couldn’t compose any sentences with the right grammar, and now he’s asking me to write something in English, not just simple writing like an answer to a question or an essay, but it’s a book! A BOOK I SAY! I have no idea how to write one, and I’m pretty much sure on those times that it’s hard as hell to even try to write one. From all the traffic jams trying to stuck inside my head, I was amused, excited, and agreed upon the terms. The three of us will write one novel that composes of a story every kid needs: FANTASY. Yes, we want fighting, we want war, and we want blood, that’s what it is. I could still remember, Aftermath was the title of the plan, and we decided to use our pocket money to buy this brown notebook to write into. I have no idea what aftermath means, so I just went with the flow, not until the time that my friend who started the plan started getting selfish and wouldn’t let us two write our opinions in there, and all he did was to write up whatever flashes down his head. I never thought it was hard, but it was harder when someone starts a debut novel with co-writers. It’s hard to cooperate with one another’s plan, and 12-year-old beginners who haven’t done any research about writing would be something as messy as your closet.

Months later, the two of them started to give up, we never touched that notebook again and never planned to try and grasp a story inside our heads, simply, we gave up, or THEY gave up, while I was there, lying on my bed trying to think of things from my maturing mind, nostalgic of things, like what was I doing with my toys when I was younger, creating a city of Legos and stamp a story behind every person, or a crossover story of toys of Snoopy, Patrick, Jollibee, and Minnie Mouse, I’ve actually created a story out of it, and mind you, I was so young when I played those toys. I’ve learned so many things of being a video game addict. My vocabulary improved because of the knowledge I gained from it. That one nostalgic day of a 12-year-old boy finally realized what might be his true intention, his passion, and his purpose in life, that is to become a writer.

So I started, started all over again with the basics like buying tons of books from the money that was mugged out of my piggy bank, and my mother started complaining, and my older brother started laughing at me when I was trying to read his Michael Scott collection when he said that can never read a book without any pictures in it, but I showed them, I showed them what I’m really capable of when my mind’s suddenly became maturer because of an establishing dream. I read . . .

and read . . .

until I couldn’t anymore.

I’ve taught myself how to write novels of different genres by checking out the internet, any articles, anything that could help me, then I started when I was 14, I think it was on about late August and I was bored, and tried to stick with the founding dream of mine. I bought a Corona notebook out of the bookstore with a Maped pencil, and started trying, trying, trying. I got something out days later, it was entitled the Oblivion Well and I went overly assuming when I tried thinking of it as a kind of a Harry Potter book that would rise up to the word as a series, but mines a six series book of a fantasy novel that came from different references of books, anime, cartoons, movies, and etc, but they all came from pure mediation of mind. I still remember the name of Kairi Harrison, a woman that has sharpened eyes, long curly hair, fair skin, and slim that has an ability to cast lightning out of her fingertips, but the story never got an ending, never got a solid foundation, or a character profiling, or an outlining to guide me, I just wrote carelessly, until an unfortunate time came when I encountered a writer’s block and I couldn’t do anything anymore but to start all over again.

I started with the learning progress again, I taught myself about outlining, character sketching, and everything that could improve in order to build something anew, and then I got it, when my brother got himself a new laptop, I secretly sneak in to use it and try to write on Microsoft Word. And I was underway, I was able to create an outline on my late 14-year-old view of life, and I wrote my possibly debut novel of We’re in Heaven (which title soon altered as White Flowers from Heaven).

I never realized that I was investing so much time on something that possible couldn’t give me something as an output, but it could also go the other way around. I never realized that it’s a passion, that writing for me is like eating and drinking, I need it everyday, it has become an everyday habit of mine that sometimes I ignore some school works just to create time for writing my novel. That’s the time I finally grabbed it, that the real me must deserve to be a novelist.

White Flowers from Heaven is a story of Skyth Labrith’s quest to find friendship’s way into his vocabulary, but it went deeper into that when the love of his life appeared before his very eyes. I stayed working on the progress from 15 years old up until now that I’m almost 18. It’s almost three years when I planned the scene, and I successfully wrote 438 pages without the knowledge that I did so. It’s in its fifth draft-fourth revision, and I still need critiques to read and improvements to gain before officially presenting it to the public--and I still don’t have the money to publish a book, but eventually, time will come from all I’ve done.

I may not have said everything that could be running in my mind from the start of dreaming, the process of my everyday life when it comes to writing never changed from the past 3 years. I’m a workaholic boy who’s willing to cancel all his plans just to give time for writing, that’s how I am today, but of course, I still prioritize going to school because it’s a way for the improvement I still need. I know I’m still way beyond the stages of J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin, I’m nowhere near them, but I still thing optimistically that time will come and I can be like them, a renowned author/novelist is what I want in life, and nobody, and I mean NOBODY is going to stop me.

The first story the build my novelist foundation which is the The Oblivion Well is now going into the depths of a real fantasy story. The protagonist is now named Autumn Farleigh, and the information and characters within the story are now being polished.

These things are something I could never have done if it weren’t for other people’s motivation. They told me I couldn’t . . . that’s why I did.

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

0 notes