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Includes any kind of partner. Does not include those who want a partner but haven't had one yet.

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Don’t rely too much on logic, just trust in your magic, cuz Karma hits like a sweet bitch!♥︎

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new fits!!! ✨

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I have no reason to feel despair.

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I am never going to complain about Greek Duolingo again

I mean, I am. But still.

So, as some of you know, my family has been coming to this tiny Greek seaside village for several years. Just over a week ago I came out here with my mum, under the impression that early September, after the height of the summer heat, would be a good time to have a holiday. ANYWAY Storm Daniel had other ideas about that. Locally things are improving (I'm actually really pissed off about the disaster-porn tone of most English-language media coverage, but that's another post). The power is back on, there's running water most of the time, and though the latter is not drinkable, a truck from the government came and handled out free bottled water yesterday. But we are currently kind of stuck. Can't do tourist things. Can't go home. There aren't any local flights out until Saturday and the road to Thessaloniki is still closed.

So this evening, feeling kind of aimless and depressed, I go down to the nearest beach with a couple of binbags and start cleaning up in an effort to at least do something positive. I always try to do this at least once out here and obviously, after the storm, there's a lot more plastic and rubbish than usual.

At some point I find this large, round bit of metal - some kind of machinery part, I think -- that's too big for the bag, so I take it to the bins on its own, leaving the rubbish bag on the beach. And when I come back for it, something among the stones beside it moves.

Specifically, it pulls its head sharply inside its shell

So, meanwhile I've been trying to learn some Greek with the help of Duolingo.

I currently have a 33-day streak and... I have questions. Shouldn't I be able to use the past or future tenses by now? Shouldn't I be able to say "x is like y"? I can't do those things. But one thing I absolutely can say all day long is έχω μια χελώνα : I have a turtle.

This is far from the limit of Duolingo Greek's turtle-related content. "An obsession with turtles" is my mother's characterisation. I can inform you that the turtle is not a bird, and, improbably, that the turtle is drinking milk. I can introduce you to a turtle in company with a horse and an elephant. As far as Duolingo is concerned, it really is turtles all the way down.

Now this, you may be able to see, is not a turtle. It has claws rather than flippers. It is a tortoise. I know there are wild tortoises in Greece: my aunt once rescued a pair of them shagging in the middle of the road -- but that was up in the mountains. I've even seen one myself, but it was also on a road and very dead.

I am 95% certain they don't belong on beaches. There's nothing for it to eat, except, unfortunately, a lot of plastic. Even if it gets off the beach it will immediately find itself on a road where it could get hit by a car. I'm pretty sure it must have been washed down by the floodwater and has been just sitting there, dazed, ever since.

Now obviously the first thing I want to do on encountering this unusual animal is to go and tell my mummy, so I do. The tortoise immediately brightens her day. She agrees that the tortoise is not happy on the beach and needs to be taken somewhere safe. it gets surprisingly wriggly when picked up so we put it in a carrier bag with some grapes and cucumber and go looking for somewhere to rehome it.

We find a path leading up between the houses towards a likely-looking field, but before we get very far a dog in a yard goes berserk and a man's head pops over a fence and demands to know what we're doing. He does this in English, as evidently we're just that obviously tourists.

"I found a tortoise on the beach!" I explain. "We want to find somewhere to put it."

"A what," he asks.

"It's like a, you know," I begin and then to my astonishment I find myself saying... "μια χελώνα"

"Oh! A turtle!" he says.

"But from the land. δεν είναι χελώνα", [it is not a turtle,] I say, as I am worried he will tell me to put it back near the sea where I found it. As it turns out it actually IS a χελώνα, Greek does not distinguish between turtles and tortoises, but I don't know that; I can't even name the days of the week or identify any colours other than pink yet, give me a break.

The man's entire demeanour changes and thaws. He does not worry about my turtle-that-is-not-a-turtle conundrum. He knows where οι χελώνες come from and where η χελώνα μας belongs. He leads us through a gate into a courtyard area.

"[somethingsomething] μια χελώνα," he explains to the assembled onlookers, of whom there are, suddenly, a surprising number.

"ΜΙΑ ΧΕΛΩΝΑ!!!" crows the throng of delighted small children, who are, suddenly, everywhere.

"μια χελώνα!" I agree, accepting that at least for current purposes, that is what it is.

"Μπορούμε να δούμε τη χελώνα σας; [can we see your turtle?]" asks an adorable little girl, shyly, and I understand??

The children fucking love looking at the χελώνα and showing it to them is kind of magical?

I finally put the tortoise down on the grass of this wild area off to the side of the courtyard, and marvel aloud that it is weird that I barely know any Greek except how to say μια χελώνα.

"I think she will soon run off," a kind lady called Aspasia assures me, seeing I remain slightly anxious about its fate. "I don't know why I'm saying 'she'. I suppose because χελώνα is feminine in Greek."

"Yes! I know that!" I exclaim, thrilled.

"Well done!" she says. And also she asks if we are OK for drinking water after the storm and if we need any help with anything and is just generally incredibly lovely and now we know more of the neighbours!

So "μια χελώνα" has just become, by a long way, my most-used and most understood and all-around most conversationally successful phrase in Greek. So I guess I have to admit I was wrong to doubt Duolingo's wisdom: it is correct to be obsessed with turtles. And I concede that prior to learning how to count to ten or to distinguish right from left, the simple ability to yell the word TURTLE over and over again is, it turns out, a crucial element of the responsible traveller's social skills.

(I am pretty fluent in Italian and turtles haven't come up in conversation even once?)

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Finally getting around to posting this because the new trailer has made me insane

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*THE* DOOMED YURI IS BACK

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homura's phone (sorry for calling it her "spinal cord sword", i swear to god i remember landlines and know what non-cell phones look like, it just didn't click) from the walpurgisnacht rising poster

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Wake up babe, new suffering just dropped.

The PMMM sub-Reddit won’t let me post anything for some reason so here, have a mummified Sayaka doodle or two :D

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frame redraw from the trailer !!

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he has one plan and one plan only

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constellation

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first ever actual tumblr post. hows about it ^_^

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my favorite youtube comment ive ever seen by far

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Art by Riyu_QvQ

(Source)

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Observation Log Series: Sayaka [II]

Rewatched some Sayaka episodes to see if I forgot any details - interestingly, I managed to observe her room this time. Magical girls and their dwellings seem to infer a lot about them [well, the home of a magical girl is just the shell of their Witch's labyrinth after all]. Unlike Homura who has a lot of frames hung up about Walpurgisnacht, coupled with gears and clockwork to resemble a swinging pendulum [which was, of course, shaped like an axe in foreshadowing of Homulily's 'funeral'] or Madoka's strange house full of chairs in one room, Sayaka's room....has a lot of mirrors.

It's probably picked up by many people prior already, but it's no less interesting as this seems to confirm the analysis on how Sayaka lives in an 'echo chamber' of her own depressive thoughts and is obsessed with herself not in a way that is purely selfish, but rather a desire for others to understand why she's infatuated with her own grief to begin with. Since this sentiment was not received, she spiralled.

In the second picture, you can also see more clearly a crown sitting atop her shelf. It eludes to the crown of Oktavia.

This is more of an observation for myself because I Think It's Cool, but when Sayaka's despair spikes during the scene of the men discussing sigma male shit or whatever, her eyes reflect the magic circles that is often seen bubbling around her to heal wounds. Here, as opposed to 'healing' purposes, it's the activation of her powers for the [possible] use of violence against human beings.

This one's a bit more obvious: the signboard behind both of them are a forecast warning on rainy weather and that individuals should optimally seek shelter as soon as possible < at first I interpreted this as a typhoon season warning, which was the stage set-up for Walpurgisnacht's arrival , but umbrellas aren't the emblems for typhoon storms, they're for rain. The sign is inscribed in the Witch runes we see, not the Japanese language, which wouldn't be far-fetched to say that it's a warning of Oktavia's imminent birth.

That's all for today. This analysis is rushed because I have assignments. but I wanted to just. Put it out there. Even if I am only five hundred years late/slow to the party.

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Sailor Moon Crystal | Rainbow Double Moon Heart Ache!