#<- tags to reach my target audience

[shimidraco]

I think it would be really silly and cute if in drawings with an "anon" character (aka usually just a featureless person with like gray skin) they were drawn with antialiasing turned off so people could easily insert themselves into the drawing... idk if I'll do it bc I feel like that could easily become a reposting nightmare but it would be cute for personal use!!!

[lotus-pear]

it doesn't matter how babygirl ur fav man is, he will ALWAYS be ten times sexier as a woman

[ratajota]

[dewinabsentia]

whenever the ghouls sneeze, their element pops off ever so slightly. rain sneezes, the faucet trickles. cumulus sniffles, some papers slide off the table. it’s not very troublesome, even with dew, the most he ever does is light a candle or singe a leaf on one of mountain’s plants. but swiss. swiss, much like his multi elemental ability, is a wildcard. he’s popped lightbulbs, thrown open locked doors, froze an entire pot of freshly brewed coffee completely solid. some caffeine loving ghouls are still holding a grudge over that one. and phantom, ever the instigator, finds this endlessly entertaining. if he’s bored, he’ll light a candle that he knows will get swiss sneezing. the rest of the ghouls have taken to banning anything labeled “rose scented” from the den.

[meichenxi]

Language learning: slow learning versus toxic productivity

Or: the process in crisis

Five years ago, all of the productivity advice I read (and gave out) as a successful self-learner of many different languages had one basic premise: that I was not doing enough, and that I could always be doing more.

Several burnouts later, running headlong from one mental illness into another, I'd like to invite you to entertain the exact opposite idea: there is a limit to what you can do. I have run face-first into mine on multiple occasions, and burnt out. At many points I've stopped learning the language at all. Most importantly, I've learnt to be distrustful of the very premise that all of the so-called productivity or optimisation advice is based on.

More is not always more.

Listen to a podcast in the target language whilst you exercise. Exercise to give yourself more energy to learn your target language. Talk to yourself in the shower in your target language. Do Anki whilst eating breakfast. Listen to Glossika whilst walking to work. Change your phone settings to your target language. Bullet journal. Manage your time. Make friends in your target language. Control your time. Write a diary. There's always enough time. These are all things I have done myself and recommended others do, to increase exposure to the language, to increase productivity.

Productivity? What productivity? What, exactly, is it that we are producing? I am producing sentences and words but - for who? Who is listening? Nobody's here, in my room, at 7am on a Sunday. If productivity were just speaking or writing, I'd be productive in my native language too, by virtue of speaking out loud. Or conversely, in language learning circles, should we measure it in terms of input? How many hours did you spend listening to Chinese yesterday? What about today? Is there anything you do in your life, in your daily life, that you could optimise? You're wasting time. There's time here, for those that want it. If you want to get ahead, to be successful, to be a good language learner, you have to know how to use that time. Go online, and debate over which tools are the best; watch your videos. What exactly is it that is being produced?

Productivity is a measuring tool for concrete output: the productivity of a field means how much crop it can yield per harvest. The productivity of a factory is how many mobile phone chargers it can bring to market per year. There are direct and measurable ways to increase this sort of productivity. But what is productivity when it comes to knowledge work? Cal Newport's work, The Minimalists, Essentialism: they all run into the same problem, which is that nobody seems to know what 'productivity' for knowledge workers means at all. You can look at a factory line and see which parts need greasing up, figuratively or literally: it is very difficult, on the other hand, to look at the work of a self-contained writer and tell her where she is going 'wrong'. (And by 'wrong', I mean - slow.) And language learning is an even more particular subset of that particular subset of work.

You could judge a novelists' productivity two ways: by the 'busyness' of her daily writing routine, or the amount of novels she produces. But what exactly is being produced when we learn a language? What is the end product?

In some ways, language learning as a hobby is even more playful than traditionally thought of arts and crafts. (By 'play' I mean something which is done for its own sake, and which is pleasurable, and which may yield next to no monetary reward.) We might think of the poet as sitting on a tree and dangling his feet in the river, a vision of artful indolence, but at the end of the day there is output - a poem. A knitter has a jumper. A potter has a pot. But language learning doesn't follow this [work] + [time] = [tangible output] structure. We can't even use the second metric of 'productivity' to measure it at all. Something is being done, of course - I can learn to speak Greek, and speak it markedly better after two months than one - but my point is you can't look at a day's work and say, this is exactly how much I learnt. Learning is not memorisation in the short term - it's receiving input, and practicing how to wield and use a structure. It doesn't happen over the course of a ten-minute podcast.

Learning happens - encoding happens - when the brain is doing other things. In other words, much like every creative process, you need downtime. You need rest, and sleep, and fun, and brightness and joy in your life. You might 'remember' a bunch of words on Anki, but you need to sleep before you can review them again: that's the whole point.

There is a much wider problem here, a culture of goals and optimising your life and glowing up, and to be honest, I find it disturbing. I think that for a very long time my language learning metrics were a stand-in, a relic, for the kinds of unhealthy and obsessively perfectionist thinking that gave me an eating disorder. How many of us truly believe - genuinely, with every inch of our heart - that we are better people if we 'better' ourselves? Learn more. Exercise more. Study more. How do you feel about yourself at the end of a day, exhausted, because you've completed day 75/100? Do you feel better about yourself because you've achieved? I'm guessing that you do.

For many people - including for myself - this wider culture has spilled over into their hobbies. Hobbies like language learning in particular are a target for this because they are so easily quantifiable - and we are encouraged, if we want to succeed, to quantify them. How else will we know how to improve?

Over the last few years, after burning out, after living off grid and without wifi and doing extreme minimalism and a lot of other lifestyle experiments to try and understand why modern life is so fucking hard, it's become clear that most systems of 'productivity' measure 'optimisation' by getting the most done in a day, but they don't stop to question whether you should be doing those things at all.

They don't stop to ask: what matters? They don't stop to ask: why am I trying to write a novel, finish my dissertation, pursue a romantic relationship, get healthy, learn ice-skating, learn to cook, look after my aging parents, and learn guitar at the same time? They don't ask: how do I prioritise, and where do I find silence? They ask: how do I cram more time in the day? They don't ask: how do I slow time down? They don't ask: how can I know what matters, if I never give myself space to think?

In other words: 'productivity' in language learning is measured by 'busy-work', by how much you can see from the surface.

You can't measure how well the learning is going, exactly, but you can measure how many hours a day you show up and grind. Whether or not that struggle is the best use of your time, or whether you're spending the time on things that will truly bring you value and quality, is a different question altogether.

And it's not one most 'productivity culture' will ever ask.

There will be things in your language learning journey that, to borrow from self-help terminology, no longer serve you. Habits and relics and resources and mindsets that worked for you once, or no longer did. Those books that are too advanced that you feel like you 'should' be able to read. That textbook that's been sitting beside your bed for a year. That habit of scrolling social media in your target language that was helpful when you were at a more intermediate level, but does little for you now that you're advanced.

Take stock of these. Simplify. Do less, but do it better. Productivity culture never stops to ask: what can I do without? It always asks, instead: how can I do more? But maybe - just maybe - the way to do more is to focus on fewer things, but do them well.

Multi-tasking isn't multi-tasking, but switching quickly between different focuses of attention. The average American owns 300,000 things, and watches television for 4-5 hours a day. On average, if you are distracted, it takes you 20 minutes to reach the same level of deep focus: but the average American office worker opens an email within six seconds of receiving it. Are you any better with your phone? How much time do you spend there? If you meditate, that's wonderful, but do you have any time to let yourself think? To walk and to understand how to feel? I don't want to sound like a boomer, but: can you name the birds? Do you live in a place, not just a room?

Stop trying to be 'productive'. Do less. Do it well.

I am now facing a wall in my learning of Chinese, and I'm still not sure how to get around it. The reason for this is because so much of the advice I gave others around language learning, and so much of the advice I found online, is focused on this sort of optimisation. But I no longer want to be listening to something, to be watching something, every second of every day. I have a partner to love and a house to appreciate and I want to spend time, humming and pleasant, alone with my thoughts, and it's summer, dear diary, and I don't want to stay indoors. Routines can keep you afloat, but they can also drown you. Do something different. Do something new. Do something that is not productive, that produces nothing, idle away, walk to work without music and perhaps when you sit down to your language learning that evening, you'll be filled with a renewed vigour and love for it. Do it because you love it, not because you scheduled it in your calendar.

A lesson, related, from my martial arts teacher. He said:

If you are tired, do not train. If you do not train, rest. 'Rest' does not mean go on your phone.

The same principle applies here. If you are tired of learning, which you may well be, rest. Not going on your phone, not watching Netflix. I mean taking a walk and sitting under the tree and looking at the patterning of the sky. I mean lying with your dog and absently scratching his tummy. If you're tired, and you have the luxury to stop - stop. Let yourself be tired. Don't drink caffeine. Sleep.

Last year, I was able to write 340,000 words of fiction because I focused on one thing: writing my book. Apart from things that I literally needed to do to survive and maintain my health and relationships around me, I didn't set a single other to-do. My daily list looked like: write for three hours. Not a word limit. Not exercise, though I ended up doing that, not learning a language. I imagine that if I had tried to focus on Chinese at the same time that I wouldn't have achieved anywhere near half the result. I still learnt Chinese, a very decent amount - I went to China and Taiwan for three months in total! - but I did it because I wanted to, of a whim, on a Sunday, something fun. It wasn't a must, or anything I was forcing myself to do. Many days I didn't do any Chinese at all. It was so immensely freeing to be able to think, at 11am: I'm finished for today. Even when I was at work, because I knew I was just there to pay the rent, I felt serene. Stressed on a day-to-day level, certainly, because all work is stressful, but - there wasn't any striving. I just did the best I could. And that was enough.

I am writing this, now, as I come out of my first ever information-overload burnout. I've burnt out, but I've never experienced one of these before: even looking at a book, at a phone, physically hurt my eyes. I couldn't bear to listen to people speak and would lock myself away in my room. I physically felt I could not talk, and had to take extensive time off work. Even looking at a pen and a blank page was too much; listening to podcasts was too much; reading the instructions for dinner was too much too. The only way I could heal was by doing absolutely nothing at all. That period shocked me deeply, because it showed me how absolutely dependent I was on having some input of information all of the time. No wonder I was tired.

I know, now, that there are lots of movements built around this same idea, by frustrated learners all over the world: the growing realisation that metrics and Excel and polylogger and tracking tracking tracking can't be the only way to learn. That a list of the number of books you've read in one year is hardly indicative of how well you understood those books, and what you learned from them. You've read 20 books this year already - good job. When do you think about them? What time do you spend on reflection? Why did you choose those books? Which chapters, and which characters, hit you the hardest? Why?

Minimalism, deep work, 'monk mode', essentialism, every writer's dream to run away and write in a cabin in the woods, slow learning, Buddhism, Stoicism, Marie Kondo-ism, the art of less, project 333, my no-buy-year, slow fashion, slow food, slow travel:

What all of these philosophies have in common is the idea that doing things deliberately ('mindfully') means 1) doing things slowly, 2) doing things well, and 3) doing things one at a time.

I am now at a place in my life where I understand the value of time alone with my thoughts. I don't want to listen to podcasts every minute of the waking day, because I need time to think about them. I need time to let the ideas for my novel grow in the dark. Nothing can be heard in noise; so make space for silence. I am a member of the real, living, breathing world, and that means I cannot devote 8 hours a day to Chinese television shows like I could when I was 20. I have to call my father. I have to do the dishes. I want to flex my creative muscles in other ways. Alternatively - I no longer believe that my worth is tied up inherently with how well I do my hobbies.

You're just some guy. There's freedom in that. You, my friend - you suck <3

Let yourself be bad. Let yourself be mediocre. Let yourself 'slide backwards' or regress, because all that means is that you're putting focus somewhere else. It'll come back. It always does.

I'm no longer comfortable, therefore, with the way that the language learning community tackles productivity. Please don't misunderstand; a lot of us have time spare that we could use to do things 'better' for us. I know. But I just believe now that getting rid of things, like the time you spend on your phone, is going to be more helpful in the long run than trying to force yourself into some gruelling, achievement-centric regime that collapses from within after two months of struggle and self-flagellation.

The other realisation I have had is just how much happier I am spending more time being alive, really alive, and less time in front of a screen. For a language like German or Gaelic that's much easier, because you can study with books, but with Chinese you always have to study to some extent with audios, flashcards, computers. Especially if - like me - you can read novels without a dictionary, but cannot handwrite even your Chinese name. So where next?

I don't have any answers. I'm not sure how to pair the two things together, to be honest, because almost all of my language learning has traditionally made use of technology. It's all been goal-orientated, systems-orientated, and despite the fact that I've failed at using these systems every day for years, despite the fact that Anki has NEVER worked for me, despite the fact that I have spent hundreds if not thousands of pounds on courses here, there, a wealth of overwhelm and five thousand words saved on Pleco, did I read that right? Five thousand. No wonder I'm stressed.

Regardless of happiness, it's much easier to achieve a state of deep focus and work when you're not online. After my period of information burnout, I feel actual physical pain from the weight of choices online. It's exhausting. I'm watching a Chinese show, but I want to go on tumblr. I'm on tumblr, but I feel guilty for not watching the Chinese show. I'm constantly torn between doing this and that, never fully committing to anything, seeing a post by Lindie Botes and thinking, damn, she's good. I should be better. But I don't want to compare myself to her. Do you know what? She is good. I admire her immensely. But I don't want to judge my self-worth by some imagined scale of productivity anymore - and, the more time passes, the more I'm not sure what 'productivity' in the context of language learning even means.

Try slow, focused, deep learning. You might just find it works.

There's something refreshing, almost counter-cultural, anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-rat-race, about this thought. Slow learning. I think there's an answer here, somewhere. It's a problem I've been dancing around for a while; and do you remember how you learnt your first foreign language? For me, it was on the floor, absolutely absorbed in German comic books, flicking through the dictionary furiously and scribbling things down in a notebook. I only had one book, and one dictionary, and one grammar book. I want to go back to that sort of simplicity. There was joy in that.

One again: I don't have any answers. I don't know exactly what direction this blog is going to go in, as I wrestle with these sorts of meta-problems. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And for now, if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this long and frankly absurdly rambling post (thank you for bearing with me!) it's an alternative answer for the question I get so often, about what you can do to learn the language when you're tired, because:

Yes, you could watch reality TV shows in Chinese, or you could give yourself permission to be human. You could rest.

Thanks guys. Meichenxi out <3

[plague-of-rats]

Son of God, Son of Man

This is probably my Ultrakill magnum opus; They drive me insane

[nilufleur]

we are not the same because you like villains (sad background story, secret inferiority complex, likeable traits, eventual redemption arc) and i like villains (evil, completely bad morals, zero likeable traits, complex personality)

[imactuallysoup]

sneet snort, I'm a dork

Bad Mr. Glutton.

.

.

.

Bonus; bad bunny, go with the rest towards your doom.

Laughing jack will forever be my comfort character <3

[seagull9111]

me showing up to the battle in my will solace fit like:

[dunndunie]

Hardcore and I mean HARDCORE villain stans are funny to me because the villain in question could literally bomb an orphanage and kick puppies for fun as long as they got a pretty face and a tragic backstory and no one bats an eye but when a student or a pro hero says or does something that's remotely fucked up they're collectively typing out their call out posts

[rocksmakingthings]

Made another moss mirror, but BIGGER and more extravagant :)

Her before photos (first one in almost all of her trinket glory, and the second what she looks like naked):

OG fairy portal/moss mirror post

More details/progress under cut!!

a lot of her frame broke off not long after I bought her (which was years ago, she's just been stuck a trinket display since) so I hot glued some cardboard on the back to fill her out.

Took the mirror out to work on the frame, so empty frame pic:

Literally everything was just hot glued onto the frame, the mirror reattached and rehung in its rightful place.

I actually loved the original frame, but the broken pieces were lost ages ago. I still wanted to keep some of it, though, so near the end I decided to leave a little frame un-mossed and instead wrap little fake vines around it!

Love how much on here was just stuff from my collection! A lot of the base moss was store-bought from a craft store, but still real moss. Everything I either had as a crafting thing just laying around, or was stuff I'd collected locally in my woods or backyard!

Some of the moss (especially the lichen), the snake skin, the wall fungi, the pine cone, the chicken bone and feather, the acorn, the cicada shells, and the crystal all are just real things I've collected !! Hmm... meant to put more acorns though... oh well!!

Very happy with how she came out !!!!!!

As a bonus for making it this far into the post, here's my cat helping me on the project!!

[overleftdown]

i realize i'm in kind of in this slim pocket of the fandom because i only talk about dynamics and also farleigh. i talk about farleigh a lot. but i'm curious. can you guys please share the worst take you've seen in this fandom PLEASE. i need entertainment. i've been busy with college, so i don't have much time to actually browse the tags.

like gimme anything teehee.

[dykeiism]

@ women who identified as trans/nb as teens but later came to realize that they were women: do you believe that there's anything that the adults in your life could have said to you to help you come to this realization earlier and make the process less stressful? or would your sensitivity to invalidation and rejection have made this an impossible task?

[finallyhappy000]

from my short story, such a small love

[pilotduty]

boyfriend who meows dedicated 2 @lightningzombie

[kissoulie]

𓈒ㅤׂㅤ𓇼 ࣪ 𓈒ㅤׂㅤ⭒

𓆡 ⭒ㅤ𓈒ㅤׂ 🫧

— NSFW, MDNI. edging ♡

warnings: fem bodied reader, they/them pronouns used, petnames (angel, baby), titty play, somno, edging but otherwise tame

a/n: it's my birthday!!!!!!!! so naturally i am giving yall a gift ♡ this is a general fic & not abt any idol in particular!

His hands roam your body over your clothes. The rough pads of his fingers brushing against your inner thighs, your stomach, the column of your throat. You stir quietly, nose scrunched as those hands wander beneath your underwear, brushing against the pulsating heat of your sex. He presses against it, watching in amusement as you grind against his hand.

“Does my little angel want me that badly?” He knows you cannot reply, only chuckling to himself as you let out a whine. He removes his hand, bringing his sticky fingers to his mouth to lick, “Oh, baby, you smell heavenly.”

You can hear the wet sounds of him sucking his fingers, pressing them—still covered in drool—against your cheek. The cold makes you flinch, betraying your little ruse.

“My little angel’s conscious, aren’t they?” He muses, touching you over your clothes once more. He pushes down your top, exposing your chest to his hungry eyes. His fingers pinch your nipple, flicking the other one, his mouth latching onto your breast. His teeth scrape, tongue pressing against your salty skin. He sucks a mark there.

Oh, my gods, you think. Your thighs are spread, a sudden hardness poking at your entrance. You feel hands tugging at your underwear, and then you hear them rip. “Sorry, baby, I can barely wait another moment to have you.”

A hand smacks your sex, pulling yet another pitiful whine from you. Your eyes finally open, gazing up blearily at the man above you. His lips split in a grin, your eyes darting down to his hands that hold the length of his thick cock between your spread thighs. Your lips part, closing quickly before parting again. Your tongue darts out to wet them.

“Pretty little mouth you have there.” He smacks his length against your stomach, drawing your eyes back to it. Your pupils are blown wide, completely fixated on him, “Maybe I should use it next time.”

He slowly slides himself back and forth, collecting your arousal before pushing the tip into your eager hole. Only the tip, before he’s pulling out. A whine comes from you, blinking up at him wantonly as he slips just the tip in again. And again, it’s taken from you. Just the tip, again. And again. And again. And again.

You sob from frustration, moving to grab him and guide him home before his large hand stops you. Your eyes are filled with tears as you utter the one word you think he wants to hear, “Please!”

Instead of finally shoving himself into your waiting heat, he pulls away entirely, pinning both wrists above your head. “Patience, baby.”

His other hand plays with your chest while your body cools down, a sticky mess between your thighs aching as you find yourself completely desperate for him.

He forces you to stay like that for a while, mouthing at your chest while your breathing goes from labored to calm. You start dozing, his warm mouth latching onto your neck and placing wet kisses. It feels so good, but does nothing to quell the ache. A soft sigh escapes your lips, and he props himself up again.

“Let’s try this again, baby.” He sinks the tip of his dick in easily, your walls parting to take him eagerly. Once the tip pops in, he’s taking it back out. “You will learn patience. The sooner you do, the quicker I fuck you.”

In, out, in, out, in.

He slowly sinks into you, the stretch delicious from being tormented for so long. You immediately try to buck your hips into his, only for his hand on your throat stopping you. “Patience. I want to see how long it takes before my pretty angel falls apart from nothing but my dick inside them.”

taesan, jay, heeseung, ricky, theo, keeho, eunseok, wonbin, san, seonghwa

taglist: @tkooooop, @haolovre ♡