alilybit

[alilybit]

YCH, 5/5 OPEN, pay via p/y/p/al or z/lle!

Contact me here through DMs if you're interested :3c

FurAffinity / Weasyl / Bluesky / Check out my comms!

[alilybit]

PLEASE REBLOG

Hey im broke as shit after paying bills and I’d like to get groceries for me, my husband and my kitties. If you like my deer art, consider helping out or sharing

donate here on my kofi!

[alilybit]

does anybody else’s brain do that cool thing where ur panic level goes from 0 to scorched earth instantaneously

also look at. my background panel. I spent way too much time on it just for it to get covered by speech bubbles and beefs obscenely wide hair. but that's what my brain looks like to me

ALSO we have a patreon now in case anyone wants to support our silly endeavors!

pretend you are feeding a pigeon some corn but instead of a pigeon it’s me beef and instead of corn it’s a dollar

[alilybit]

urgent help!

as you guys know my grandparents got scammed almost a month ago, some man told them he was going to send them medical equipment they needed for $500 dollars, we were desperate, not only they lost all the money they had, my grandpa has gotten significantly worse, he's starting to lose vision in his good eye and my grandma is losing mobility as well (evidence), I know I sound annoying always coming here and begging for money for my grandparents and for my college, I don't know how to anticipate the grief, losing my grandpa everyday to his illness, losing my college education cause I can't afford it, in México the situation it's just getting worse and even though I feel lonely I have found a community here and I'm forever grateful for that, even a dollar goes a long way and all the money will go to their medical needs since I'm very sure I won't be able to cover college expenses, please share and donate if you can, you can help via p*ypal or any way you want through ko-fi, here's the link! 💕 thank you sm

[alilybit]

every time things are finally looking up for me financially something stupid (in this case 2 stupid things in the course of a week) happens to take it all away 🥲

Consider checking out my ko-fi, I have a few commission slots open that I'll be working on on stream today

[alilybit]

HEY YOU ‼️

Reference Sheet Commissions are open. (along with the standard work i do)

if you'd like to get a ref and support my work, please submit a form and i'll get back to you asap!

holipop.art/commissions

[alilybit]

Emergency commissions

[alilybit]

Car disintegrated last week, so I'm doing small doodles for any generosity towards a new one for about a week since it's necessary

Any amount can request a small doodle if they like, it all helps! 💗

Reblogs greatly appreciated🙏 thank you!!! ko-fi.com/blushily

[alilybit]

he's always got something to say, even if he shouldn't

(ko-fi)

[alilybit]

thoughts about language-learning

i'm going to tell you something that you may find kind of cringe, especially coming from the mouth of a native english speaker. however, it's true. the trueness of this statement will become clear to you shortly. for now, you're just going to have to lay eyes upon it and accept it.

here it is:

"I like manga and anime" is actually a pretty good reason to learn Japanese.

okay. alright? are we good? let's talk about it.

maybe you read that sentence and your immediate thought was something like, "that seems like a shallow reason to learn a language." maybe you feel that learning a language for the fulfillment of mundane desires is in some way disrespectful. you might think of it as akin to becoming catholic just because you can't get enough of those little biscuits.

well: maybe it is? like, sure. it might be like that. i think that's a discussion you can have. language is, after all, culture.

but here's the thing:

the only way to acquire a language is through thousands of hours of exposure. and the only reason anyone commits to that sort of thing is if it gets them something that they really really want.

if you want to know what i mean, please follow me to my chambers.

listen:

nobody acquires a language out of pure academic curiosity.

did you know most linguists are monolingual? a linguist might know the grammar, history and even vocabulary of a half-dozen languages like the back of their hand, yet not necessarily be able to speak any of them in a way that's useful on a day-to-day basis. this is because there is a fundamental difference between having an academic understanding of a language and being fluent in a language.

some linguists distinguish between these two kinds of knowledge. they say that the former is the result of "learning" a language, and the latter is the result of "acquiring" a language.

language acquisition is the reason you can read this post and understand it without each sentence feeling like a mental sudoku puzzle. for most of the people reading this, including many of the ones for whom english is a second language, i'm willing to bet that you're not translating what i'm saying word-by-word as you read it. you simply read the words, and the meaning appears in your head, unbidden.

you just get it.

that's what fluency is. that's what it means to acquire a language.

but here's the thing, and it cannot be stressed enough: language acquisition only happens through long-term exposure.

and we're not talking about a little bit of exposure. we're talking about, like, a lot. how many words does a baby have to hear before they figure out how to say their first grammatically-correct sentence? how many before they can understand a whole bedtime story?

of course, your prospects as an adult aren't quite that grim. i mean, a baby also has to learn every single other thing about the world in addition to their first language. a baby has to learn what the hell a dog is before they can truly appreciate the majesty of a Big Red One Named Clifford. in this respect you already have a foot in the door of every language on earth.

still: you don't acquire a language without exposure. and the amount of exposure required is so huge that within a rounding error of zero people will ever get off their ass and do it—unless they have external motivation.

consider two guys:

guy A wants to learn Japanese because it's an interesting language with a rich history and it'll look great on his résumé.

guy B wants to learn Japanese so he can read untranslated yaoi.

maybe this will come as a surprise to you, but it's simply a fact: guy B is about 10,000× more likely to actually acquire Japanese.

if he does, guy B will definitely come to understand that japanese is an interesting language with a rich history, and it will look great on his résumé. but he'll get there because he's going to read millions of words' worth of raw japanese input, as much as he can possibly stuff his head with, and he's going to do so happily because it's what he wanted to do anyway.

nobody gets good at anything without a good reason. and if acquiring a language is your goal, then what counts for a "good reason" is just whatever gets you to use the language, as much as possible, as often as possible.

∗ ∗ ∗

one more analogy, just to really hammer it in:

i could stand to exercise more. i know that exercise is good for me, and i already own a bike and everything. but the fact of the matter is that abstract rewards like "it's healthy" aren't enough to motivate me to get on my bike.

you know what does get me on it?

the fact that i don't own a car!!

if i want to go somewhere, i gotta get on that freaking bike! the bike is the means by which i am able to fulfill my base desires, such as "food" and "beverages" and "being anywhere at all other than my house".

yet though my desires are base, the benefits of riding a bike nonetheless attend their fulfillment. my stamina is way up, my resting heart rate is down, and my pant legs keep getting caught on my big-ass calves.

as with the bike, so with japanese.

∗ ∗ ∗

over the past few weeks i've read a half dozen novels in japanese. for the most part, it's all stuff i would have been thrilled to read in english. but most of those books had no english editions; and for the ones that did—well, that would have amounted to Buying A Car.

i've been learning japanese for a long time, and almost 100% of that time has been spent on immersion. when i first started this process, it was like pulling teeth in a haystack. i understood maybe 10% of what i was reading at any given moment. but, i had important business to attend to that absolutely required that i read japanese. and yes, that business was untranslated yuri VNs.

it turns out that 10% is enough. that 10% is the working end of the crowbar. 10% becomes 20% easier than you'd think. many years later, i'd say i'm up to about 98% depending on what i'm reading. i couldn't tell you when it happened; it happens slowly and unconsciously. you never feel like you're making progress, the same way you never feel the earth spinning.

∗ ∗ ∗

anyway, that's all i wanted to say. if i were you, i wouldn't construe anything in this post as advice, per se. these are just observations of things i believe strongly (and from experience) to be true.

in particular, one thing i don't think you should take away from this post is the idea that academic language study is pointless. it's super pointful! it's just that it's step one of a multi-step process.

it's been my experience that a lot of people—most people—get stuck at that step and never move on. they study and study and study, but they never get to a point where they feel like they're "ready" to "move on" to reading "real stuff".

if you want my two cents, it's this: i don't think you can get to that point through study alone. i don't think most people are ever going to feel like they're "ready".

you just have to want to do it, and you have to be patient enough with yourself to put up with doing it badly for a long time.

so, like, you might as well be reading about boys kissing or whatever while you work on it, is what i'm saying.

[alilybit]

If you wanted to support me and send a few buckaroos my way, then please check out my ko-fi :)

[alilybit]

thank you tumblr for all the reblogs and likes and all the love on our very first proper comic 💙💙 it means the absolute world to us!! we've honestly been shocked and astounded by the positive response we've gotten (it's so much more than we ever expected) and it's been so amazing to read through all your tags!

it's especially heartwarming to see how so many of you connected with what we made on a personal level. we never expected for it to reach so many people like that but we are so grateful and humbled by that!

our dream is to be able to keep telling stories just like this one, so if you'd like to help support our goal of doing it full time, or even if you just wanna leave a little tip, we have a ko-fi! ko-fi.com/saucypaws thanks again for reading and enjoying what we loved making! 💙💙

[alilybit]

meeting up

by saucypaws https://linktr.ee/saucypaws

[alilybit]

Jesslake Fanart Compilation

In chronological order, ranging from July 2021 to May 2023

[alilybit]

Hey Lillie! What's in your mind?

[alilybit]

what they dont tell you about being loudly transgender is sooner or later someone will say you helped/were the reason they transitioned and you just have to. sit with that for a while and how wonderful it is that a person can inspire others to take better care of themselves like that. the louder you are the better, you help strangers more than you know

[alilybit]

Summer of 2016~