#An Illustrated Guide to Korean

[armoricaroyalty]

Film Grammar for Simmers

What is film grammar?

"Film grammar" refers the unstated "rules" of editing used in movies and TV. Different types of shots have different associations and are used by editors to convey different types of information to the audience. Many of these principles were first described in the early 20th century by Soviet directors, but they're used consistently across genre, medium, and even language: Bollywood musicals, English period dramas, Korean horror movies, and American action blockbusters all use many of the same techniques.

Because these rules are so universal, virtually everyone has some internalized understanding of them. Even if they can’t name the different types of shots or explain how editors use images to construct meaning, the average person can tell when the “rules” are being broken. If you’ve ever thought a movie or episode of TV was confusing without being able to say why, there’s a good chance that there was something off with the editing.

Learning and applying the basics of film grammar can give your story a slicker and more-polished feel, without having to download shaders or spend hours in photoshop. It also has the bonus of enhancing readability by allowing your audience to use their knowledge of film and TV to understand what's happening in your story. You can use it to call attention to significant plot details and avoid introducing confusion through unclear visual language.

Best of all, it doesn't cost a dime.

The basics: types of shots

Shots are the basic building block of film. In Sims storytelling, a single shot is analogous to a single screenshot. In film, different types of shots are distinguished by the position of the camera relative to the subject. There are three big categories of shots, with some variation: long shots (LS), medium shots (MS), and close-ups (CU). This diagram, created by Daniel Chandler and hosted on visual-memory.co.uk illustrates the difference:

Source: The 'Grammar' of Television and Film, Daniel Chandler, visual-memory.co.uk. Link.

In film, scenes typically progress through the different types of shots in sequence: long shot, medium shot, close-up. When a new scene begins and the characters arrive in a new location, we typically begin with a wide establishing shot of the building’s exterior to show the audience where the scene will be taking place. Next comes a long shot of an interior space, which tells the where the characters are positioned relative to one another. The next shot is a medium shot of the characters conversing, and then finally, a close-up as the conversation reaches its emotional or informational climax. Insert shots are used judiciously throughout to establish themes or offer visual exposition.

Here's another visual guide to the different types of shots, illustrated with stills from Disney animated films.

This guide is almost 2,000 words long! To save your dash, I've put the meat of it under the cut.

Long shot and extreme long shots

A long shot (sometimes also called a wide shot) is one where the entire subject (usually a building, person, or group of people) is visible within the frame. The camera is positioned far away from the subject, prioritizing the details of the background over the details of the subject.

One of the most common uses of long shots and extreme long shots are establishing shots. An establishing shot is the first shot in a scene, and it sets the tone for the scene and is intended to give the viewer the information they’ll need to follow the scene: where a scene is taking place, who is in the scene, and where they are positioned in relation to one another. Without an establishing shot, a scene can feel ungrounded or “floaty.” Readers will have a harder time understanding what’s happening in the scene because on some level, they’ll be trying to puzzle out the answers to the who and where questions, distracting them from the most important questions: what is happening and why?

(I actually like to start my scenes with two establishing shots: an environmental shot focusing on the scenery, and then a second shot that establishes the characters and their position within the space.)

Long shots and extreme long shots have other uses, as well. Because the subject is small relative to their surroundings, they have an impersonal effect which can be used for comedy or tragedy.

In Fargo (1996) uses an extreme long shot to visually illustrate the main character’s sense of defeat after failing to secure funding for a business deal.The shot begins with a car in an empty parking lot, and then we see the protagonist make his way up from the bottom of the frame. He is alone in the shot, he is small, and the camera is positioned above him, looking down from a god-like perspective. All of these factors work together to convey his emotional state: he’s small, he’s alone, and in this moment, we are literally looking down on him. This shot effectively conveys how powerless he feels without any dialogue or even showing his face.

The same impersonal effect can also be used for comic purposes. If a character says something stupid or fails to impress other characters, cutting directly from a close-up to a long shot has a visual effect akin to chirping crickets. In this instance, a long shot serves as a visual “wait, what?” and invites the audience to laugh at the character rather than with them.

Medium Shots

Medium shots are “neutral” in filmmaking. Long shots and close-ups convey special meaning in their choice to focus on either the subject or the background, but a medium shot is balanced, giving equal focus to the character and their surroundings. In a medium shot, the character takes up 50% of the frame. They’re typically depicted from the waist-up and the audience can see both their face and hands, allowing the audience to see the character's facial expression and read their body-language, both important for interpreting meaning.

In most movies and TV shows, medium shots are the bread and butter of dialogue-heavy scenes, with close-ups, long shots, and inserts used for punctuation and emphasis. If you’re closely following the conventions of filmmaking, most of your dialogue scenes will be medium shots following the convention of shot-reverse shot:

To keep long conversations from feeling too visually monotonous, consider staging the scene as a walk-and-talk. Having two characters move through a space can add a lot of dynamism and visual interest to a scene that might otherwise feel boring or stiff.

Close Ups

Close-ups are close shots of a character’s face. The camera is positioned relatively near to the subject, showing just their head and shoulders. In a close-up, we don’t see any details of the background or the expressions of other characters.

In film, close-ups are used for emphasis. If a character is experiencing a strong emotion or delivering an important line of dialogue, a close-up underscores the importance of the moment by inviting the audience to focus only on the character and their emotion.

Close-ups don’t necessarily need to focus on the speaker. If the important thing about a line of dialogue is another character’s reaction to it, a close-up of the reaction is more effective than a close-up of the delivery.

One of the most iconic shots in Parasite (2019) is of the protagonist driving his employer around while she sits in the backseat, speaking on the phone. Even though she’s the one speaking, the details of her conversation matter less than the protagonist’s reaction to it. While she chatters obliviously in the background, we focus on the protagonist’s disgruntled, resentful response to her thoughtless words and behavior.

In my opinion, Simblr really overuses close-ups in dialogue. A lot of conversation scenes are framed entirely in close-ups, which has the same effect of highlighting an entire page in a textbook. The reader can’t actually tell what information is important, because the visuals are screaming that everything is important. Overusing close-ups also cuts the viewer off from the character’s body language and prevents them from learning anything about the character via their surroundings.

For example, a scene set in someone’s bedroom is a great opportunity for some subtle characterization—is it tidy or messy? what kind of decor have they chosen? do they have a gaming computer, a guitar, an overflowing bookshelf?—but if the author chooses to use only close-ups, we lose out on a chance to get to know the character via indirect means.

Inserts

An insert shot is when a shot of something other than a character’s face is inserted into a scene. Often, inserts are close-ups of a character’s hands or an object in the background. Insert shots can also be used to show us what a character is looking at or focusing on.

In rom-com The Prince & Me (2004) (see? I don’t just watch crime dramas…) the male lead is in an important meeting. We see him pick up a pen, look down at the papers in front of him, and apparently begin taking notes, but then we cut to an insert shot of his information packet. He’s doodling pictures of sports cars and is entirely disengaged from the conversation. Every other shot in the scene is an establishing shot or a medium shot or a close-up of someone speaking, but this insert gives us insight into the lead’s state of mind: he doesn’t want to be there and he isn’t paying attention.

Insert shots are, in my opinion, also used ineffectively on Simblr. A good insert gives us extra insight into what a character is thinking or focusing on, but a poorly-used insert feels…unfocused. A good insert might focus on pill bottles on a character’s desk to suggest a chemical dependency, on a family picture to suggest duty and loyalty, on a clock to suggest a time constraint, on a pile of dirty laundry or unanswered letters to suggest a character is struggling to keep up with their responsibilities. An ineffective insert shot might focus on the flowers in the background because they’re pretty, on a character’s hands because it seems artsy, on the place settings on a dining table because you spent forever placing each one individually and you’ll be damned if they don’t make it into the scene. These things might be lovely and they might break up a monotonous conversation and they might represent a lot of time and effort, but if they don’t contribute any meaning to a scene, consider cutting or repurposing them.

I want to emphasize: insert shots aren’t bad, but they should be carefully chosen to ensure they’re enhancing the meaning of the scene. Haphazard insert shots are distracting and can interfere with your reader’s ability to understand what is happening and why.

Putting it all together

One of the most basic principles of film theory is the Kuleshov effect, the idea that meaning in film comes from the interaction of two shots in sequence, and not from any single shot by itself. In the prototypical example, cutting from a close-up of a person’s neutral expression to a bowl of soup, children playing, or soldiers in a field suggests hunger, worry, or fear, respectively.

The Kuleshov effect is the essence of visual storytelling in a medium like Simblr. You can elevate your storytelling by thinking not only about each individual shot, but about the way they’ll interact and flow into one another.

Mastering the basics of film grammar is a great (free!) way to take your storytelling to the next level. To learn more, you can find tons of guides and explainers about film grammar for free online, and your local library doubtless has books that explain the same principles and offers additional analysis.

Happy simming!

[fallloverfic]

S-Classes that I raised/My S-Class Hunters information post

내가 키운 S급들 | S-Classes that I raised (“SCTIR”) is an ongoing Korean fantasy webnovel on Munpia, Naver, Ridibooks, and Kakao by 근서 | Geunseo that has been adapted into an ongoing manhwa/webcomic (My S-Class Hunters) (though the manhwa is on hiatus at the moment after the conclusion of season 1). The second cover art is by onlyraii. The novel is published by 제이플미디어 | JAYPLEMEDIA.

Manhwa adaptation summary: "Yoojin is an F-ranker overshadowed by his little brother, an S-ranker. All he does is get in his brother’s way, causing trouble wherever he goes. When a seemingly routine dungeon raid goes wrong and costs Yoojin his brother’s life, Yoojin decides to use the wish granted by clearing the dungeon to reset his timeline. The plan was to lead a quiet life from now on… but now it turns out he can help other people become S-rankers?! Maybe this is Yoojin’s chance at building his own entourage of powerful metahumans… but it may be easier said than done." - Naver Webtoon

SCTIR the webnovel has an 858-episode main story, a 14-episode epilogue, a completed 167-episode Side Story (sequel) and an ongoing 27-episode Afterward/Later Story (sequel). It was first published on June 29th, 2018 (Munpia).

The main story and epilogue were reformatted into 35 ebooks (Naver, Ridibooks, Kakao), which began publication on May 1st, 2020, and the ebooks have interior illustrations from 비완 | Biwan for volumes 1-14 and a few other artists for the other 21 volumes. Here's a post on some of the interior art that JPLE has shared online.

The ebooks also have extra scenes in various places and possible revisions, which differs from what is available in the individual episodes. The Korean ebooks also began being released in paperback in November 2024.

A guide for reading SCTIR on Munpia and Naver (this is meant for another fandom, but it's also designed to work for anyone who wants to read any similar works on Munpia and Naver).

This is meant to be a collective post for information on the novel and manhwa, as well as translations, which will update as new information comes up.

Geunseo

Geunseo is the author of the webnovel. Back in mid-2022, Geunseo replied to questions from readers in a very long Q&A, which folks shared on various platforms.

Translations of the webnovel

There is no official English translation of the webnovel, though there are a few fan translators, but most are just people putting the episodes through machine translators ("MTL") and sharing those online, or doing modified/partial MTL, which involves MTL most/all of the episode and doing partial translation/editing on the results. There is also a lot of confusion because people tend to MTL the individual episodes, not the revised ebooks, so folks reading one but not the other one are going to have different understandings of the story.

Side Stories/Sequels

There are two side stories for SCTIR, both of which are sequels to the part that came before. The order is main story (not an official name, it's just the regular story) > Epilogue > Side Story > Afterward/Later Story. Side Story and Afterward/Later Story are only available on Naver for some reason.

SCTIR manhwa, My S-Class Hunters

SCTIR's manhwa adaptation is published on Naver Comics / Naver Series, began publication on November 15th, 2021, and is 153 episodes long. There's a trailer from right before it released on YouTube.

The manhwa is adapted by 제이플미디어 | JAYPLEMEDIA, with principle art by 비완 | Biwan, and the head of storyboard is seri. Other crew on the team include 징개 JINGGAE | JING_GAE (assistant direction), 김피로(KPR) | tired_kim, and 한흔 | hanheunhan. A lot of the crew share previews and behind the scenes material on their twitters. Although the manhwa is very far behind the novel, the crew are generally novel fans (Biwan did art for the ebooks, after all), and they will also sometimes do fanart for recent episodes of Side Story/Afterward, so be wary if you want to avoid spoilers. The manhwa currently stops in volume 7 of the novel, around episode 168.

The manhwa also differs in many ways from the novel, which is normal for an adaptation. Changes include some chronological reorganization of events, expansion of certain characters and relationships, some modifications to skills, additional scenes, etc.

The original Korean updates weekly on Naver on Tuesdays around 10:30-11:00 AM ET, though it's currently on hiatus after the conclusion of season 1. All translations are currently some ways behind the original Korean, so they have a bit to catch up on during the hiatus if they're ongoing.

The English translation updates weekly at 9 PM ET on Wednesdays on Webtoon, and at 00:00 ET on Wednesdays on Tappytoon. The Webtoon version is free to read, but the last several episodes are paywalled, and these episodes can be accessed by cookies (the currency on Webtoon). Guide for how to read for free on Tappytoon. SCTIR's manhwa is also available online in French (though it seems to be on a hiatus since 2022), German, Japanese (俺が育てたS級たち), Spanish (Los clase S que crié), and Thai.

April Fool's Day Jokes

Both the novel and manhwa teams, like a lot of Webtoon manhwa teams, usually do a joke post for April Fool's Day.

The 2022 joke post for the novel was seemingly a parody of the then-unreleased novel cover by onlyraii. The 2022 joke post for the manhwa was a magical girl Yoohyun parody.

The 2023 joke post for the manhwa was Yoojin, Yerim, Yoohyun, and Peace making heart signs.

The 2024 joke post for the manhwa was to have most of the cast become dinosaurs.

[amethystsoda]

What is time princess about? I've been seeing it on the Play store but I have no idea if to download it

hello anon! I'd be glad to give you an overview and some tips for starting out! :D

Time Princess is what happens when all your childhood dreams of getting transported into a book come true.

At heart, the game is a set of continual isekai stories, transporting you to different "books" with the help of a magic desk and giving you "create your own adventure" options to see how the story plays out.

Your fairy companion Isabelle helps you learn the ropes, and you have to go through one mandatory book (a Marie Antoinette themed story) to get access to your room and the larger bookstore

(I'll put the rest under a read more bc it'll get long)

For each chapter you complete, you earn 1-3 tickets. With these tickets, you can unlock new books! The more you play, the more you earn towards new stories.

The game currency works on a coins and diamonds system--you don't NEED to purchase anything to play (though it may make the game a bit easier in some areas)

You get free stamina to access books and crafting materials every 11 hours and the Time Princess discord server has codes pretty frequently for diamonds, tickets, etc.

I personally splurge for the Fashion Booster every 2 months because I know it helps support the game and the artists! I try not to use real money on the random outfits unless I REALLY want one bc it can get addictive.

One of my favorite parts of the game is that, as you play, you unlock "album" art (full color illustrations that tie into the story!!)

One other thing I love is that the game is very targeted towards Bisexuals, as there are TONS of queer wlw story lines (though because of the games' popularity overseas and censorship, often gets called "best friends" etc)

Another fun part is the variety of stories!!!! There's art history!! There's stuff based on old fairy tales like Swan Lake. There's fantasy stories like The Apothecary. There's a Pirate story!!! There's Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stories. There's a western cowboy story! There's futuristic scifi!!! There's a victorian flavored horror story!!!

Most, if not all, of the stories are with adult characters and have adult storylines!! (the books will also give you a content warning before downloading)

On top of the stories, there's plenty of other fun aspects--mini games, fashion challenges, checking in with your companions every day to earn crafting materials, joining a society, playing events, and just playing dress up with your outfits and taking pics for fun.

The discord community is great too, and there's often interview nights with some of the book authors and giveaways of materials and prizes (I actually ended up winning a plushie Lafayette one time!)

The discord server also has game guides and walkthroughs for everything!

Everyone who plays the game gets really into the stories and characters, so even though the tumblr presence of fans may be smaller, you have an immediate bond with the other players!!!

They've also done some really cool collabs with museums like The Louvre and the Flamenco museum. You get to earn clothes from famous paintings or historical ones during that event period!

Finally, don't forget to save your big clothing crafting for Saturdays! You get double the materials!!

[tosahobi-if]

hi yeri !! just wanted to ask where you get your resources for korean mythology from?

hihiiii! i do the majority of my research by purchasing or borrowing books, cross-referencing classical documents, reading academic papers, and government websites! i'll also do museum visits and in the future i'm planning on conducting interviews (i've done one with a mudang before, and she was reaaaally helpful!) i'm not a history major so i struggle with compiling resources, and for that reason i try to limit my inquiry to the methods i listed above!

***wikipedia should not be utilized as a primary source! i've verified incorrect information in there before, at most it should be used as a collection for sources cited***

i'll try and recommend a handful of the more beginner sources i like, but please note that i have no idea whether or not most of these have english translations!

an illustrated guide to korean mythology (by won-oh choi, this one is in english!)

veritable records of the joseon dynasty (실록)

memorabilia of the three kingdoms (삼국유사)

history of the three kingdoms (삼국사기)

classic of the mountains and seas (山海经)

goguryeo arirang by park jijeong

the unknown history of baekje by jeong jaesoo

living korean myths by shin dongheun

jeju island's bonpuri and the myths around it by heo namchun

the gods are divided by seongtae yoon

encyclopedia of korean culture (website)

terms you may find helpful to search up

한국 신화 (hanguk shinhwa, or korean mythology)

건국 신화 (gonguk shinhwa, or state-foundation myths)

[hornyhermitry]

Professional translations & public witch hunts

For starters: If you think "TL;DR, who cares, I ain't reading all that" and are incapable of processing words for a prolonged amount of time beyond 240 character clickbait, you are not entitled to an opinion on translation to begin with.

I will take sufficient time for this one.

General:

In recent weeks I've repeatedly had the misfortune of coming across public harassment and incited hate mobs towards Jujutsu Kaisen's manga translator.

There's hordes of anti-social harassers pushing for someone to get fired from a professional job - in which he works because he is equipped with the necessary qualifications - purely due to disliking occasional translation choices in a comic.

This behavior has reached levels of exaggeration and reality disconnect, it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad due to a real person's livelihood being attacked.

This is not normal and tolerable behavior. It is equal to drumming up a hate mob in front of a café and threatening some employee inside, throwing rocks at the window and demanding for a barista to get fired because you didn't like the coffee beans they chose, or sure, maybe because they put actual sugar instead of sweetener into your coffee.

This is not a normal and acceptable way to behave.

If you think it is, there is something deeply wrong with your perception of society and what's respectful conduct towards another human being. When you encounter another person, you act respectfully at the very least. Kind, ideally.

Feel free to imagine yourself at work, making a mistake and thousands of people starting to call, email, shitpost online and harass you over it, dragging you publicly, shouting on the parking lot for you to be fired. Please reflect on yourself.

Now:

This dude does comic translations.

He did not authorize biochemical weapons in a war. He did not pass a law to deport all migrants and close the borders. He did not accidentally kill someone during a surgery. He did not hack & rob the annual employee bonus' account.

He wrote a word you don't like in a comic.

Planet Earth to Werry hater: Please come back down to reality and dial it back a few notches. This is a non-issue. Whether he makes mistakes or not, this level of hate and harassment is ENTIRELY out of pocket.

Moving on to translations.

Translations/criticizing translations:

Opinions on translations are like assholes - everyone got one. But that doesn't mean you need to pull them out in public. And especially not that you have to shit into random people's lives with them.

I've been reading manga and playing games in private for 27 years. I speak 4 Western languages and A2.2 Japanese. I've been working in the international entertainment industry with a focus on Asian to Western markets for over a decade, including Chinese, Japanese & Korean.

A lot of my time at work is filled with liaising between East and West, internally as well as externally. In my career, I've spent a lot of years supporting and later on consulting on localization.

I know what it is like to be a fan, and I am fully aware of the work reality behind translation.

I'm also intricately aware of the difficulties one faces when interpreting (!) from a source language as abstract and contextual as Japanese to a spelled out language such as English, French, Spanish, German, etc.

You cannot do a 1:1 translation. The nature of these languages is so different, you have to decide on one of many ways to translate something. And oftentimes, the content is so vague with so few indicators, the only thing you can do is guess and hope for the best - unless you happen to hit a rare jackpot of a person who has a guide with additional info and is able to provide this within the short deadline you are left with.

Even the most basic words already illustrate this difference.

Look at the example of

元気ですか / げんきですか = Genki desu ka

Genki is an adjective, "desu ka" is a question particle similar to "is it".

Genki already has many similar variants in meaning: "lively; full of spirit; energetic; vigorous; vital; spirited"

It is commonly translated as "How are you?" but that is not what it literally means.

Since "Genki desu ka?" is commonly used after the initial greeting when meeting someone, "How are you" is the closest equivalent to it in EN, due to it's function and usual placement within a dialogue.

The literal translation would be "Energetic is it?", or "Lively is it?"

That is obviously is no proper English.

Adjusting for grammar, it could be changed to "Are you lively?" - but the "you" is already a "fictional addition" to the sentence, as the original JP has no adress like this.

And asking someone if they are "lively" is also out of place. So more changes are needed.

Further adjusted for "natural sounding" would be "Are you doing good?" which now has 2 additional made up words, to transfer the question from JP to EN - "you" and "good".

This sentence does not necessarily have to mean "Are you good/How are you?". If I tell you my aunt Emma sends her regards, and you reply "Ah. Genki desu ka?" the translation would be "Oh. How is (Emma) doing?/Is Emma doing good?" JP's grammar works without these precise indicators who is talking about whom and is highly contextual whereas - Western languages need those.

Concluding, depending on who is talking to one another, who was mentioned on a page before, etc. a simple "Genki desu ka?" can be anything from "How are you?" to "Is (Panda) doing good?".

There is no literal 1:1 translation possible. The languages are too different.

The reality of translation is unclear source material open to multiple interpretations, once you settle on an interpretation having another dozen options to decide on for the specific wording, then having to adjust that to character and spacing limitations and doing all that with little turnover time.

On top of that, official translations work with styleguides and glossaries.

There could e.g. be a kind of character bible with notes about all characters and their peculiar ways of talking and what character traits those convey and an instruction to use approach XYZ to convey that.

"Speaks in a very poetic way, very roundabout and meandering" which could e.g. lead to overhauling the literal translation to add "personality" based on that.

Going by "(O) genki desu ka?" suddenly "How are you?"for the "poetic trait" becomes "How has life been treating you?"

Again - at the end overhauled again to make room for character limits and such, so maybe it becomes "How fare you?"

This change could have been added not because this particular line offers the exact context, but it is rooted in a style instruction to work with a certain speech pattern/type for a character - since the JP indicators at another spot might not offer satisfactory EN translations, so you have to add the "personality" elsewhere.

Translations of ongoing works utilize glossaries and you cannot use new terms if there is already a term established and submitted. Else it would be a mess of e.g. Cursed Energy in Chapter 2, Jinxed Force in Chapter 25, Hex Flow in Chapter 112, Curse Power in Chapter 156, Hex Energy in Chapter 287, etc.

Even if some months or years in you think another translation would be better suited, you are obliged to keep consistency with previous mentions and cannot just change these.

This also means if you take over translation work started by someone else, you have to work with their groundwork and established rules and terms and cannot change them.

Official translations commonly aim to make a foreign work accessible to local readers. If there is a bunch of teenage characters going to school, they should be relatable to local teenagers. As a result, regional and current slang might be added to make it sound more natural whereas the JP might just have "informal" indicators but less variance in vocabulary. The goal of a translation is to make a work accessible to a whole new language audience, hence the focus lies on making it readable without a prior 8 year degree in cultural studies. Things get simplified or changed for that reason.

Usually translators for a work consult with each other what the difficulties translating are, what possible options are, and what each language will run with. These considerations take a lot of time.

Having fans work out occurences deviating from the OG and explaining the specifics behind is it AMAZING community content and something for the people passionate about a story and about learning more about a culture. But it's not needed for the average joe buying a comic at a gas station.

This kind of deep dive is fandom! Enjoy and share and get excited! Enrich each others lives and understanding of a story! It's one of the best things there is.

Finally, a translation has to be timely & approved. There are multiple people involved in this.

It is not on poor John alone to make all decisions as he fancies and send it straight to print after going rogue, but he works within the guidelines & constraints this jobs brings with it. It's his name on the page but there are a lot more people involved in the final result.

Publicly claiming things like a translator "brutally butchers" a story or "is incapable of doing a job" because in a sea of solid translations of a very vague source language, every few chapters there's a specific word deep fandom who spends all their free-time on this particular story would have translated differently, is wildly inappropriate.

Interpreting differently is not doing a wrong job.

People on social media love attention and shitstorms. You get one narcissist with a following pointing out a debatable translation in a snarky smartass way and everyone wants a piece of the smartass cake.

What I struggle with is how people who don't speak a second language & often barely speak their own language with literacy above elementary school, feel entitled to an opinion here. What makes you an expert on cross-cultural art interpretation? What makes you think your opinion holds any weight here? Oh you read a Tweet by s/o else? *clap*

What makes you think you have the right to go after another person's job for no reason other than spite and some internet gotcha over a comic?

If you really value the creation of near perfect translations that much, be the change you want to see in the world.

Learn another language. Get that degree. Get that job in animanga and do your best.

Or for a start, send a polite mail about your concerns to VIZ instead of starting a personal witch hunt for some guy doing his job.

[weaponwiki]

Rainbow Six Siege players, interested in Arknights?

Arknights is having it's Rainbow Six Siege collab in approximately 3 months. If you're interested in getting to know the game, and later when the collab happens, you'll be able to get a few familiar faces playable.

What is Arknights? Arknights is a free-to-play tactical tower defense game with character collecting features.

"Easy to understand, hard to master", as a tower defense game with high difficulty content, different game modes, and many characters to collect, Arknights offers an unique gameplay experience where you make use of your various operators to make the decisions to win. The game is available in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan server) Japanese, Korean, English (Global server). The event that introduces the Siege operators has passed in the CN server, but JP, KR and Eng servers will be having the collaboration event at the same time (approx. 8-9/24), and presumably on the TW server a few months later of that.

Collab? Siege operators featured in Arknights are Ash, Tachanka, Frost, Blitz, Ela, Fuze, Iana and Doc. You can get Tachanka and Fuze by playing the event (Operation Originium Dust for Tachanka and Operation Lucent Arrowhead for Fuze). Other characters are split in headhunting banners, where you have to roll for the opportunity to acquire them, separated as Ash+Frost+Blitz and Ela+Iana+Doc.

Ash and Ela are 6-stars, highest rarity in the game while the others are 5-stars, second highest rarity in the game. The acquisition probability for these characters is 2% for the 6-stars and 8% for the 5-stars. If you fail to get a 6-star after rolling 50 times, the 2% chance will go up by 2% every time you do not get a 6-star (51st roll will have a 4% and your 52nd roll will have 6% chance and so forth.) The chance to acquire the characters is 50%, however if you reach 120 rolls you will automatically acquire Ash/Ela and once per banner, if you get one of the two 5-stars, the next 5-star will automatically be the other 5-star (e.g., you get Frost, then the next 5-star is guaranteed to be Blitz).

Why now? Arknights is estimated to have the collab in a few months (which should have in-game content for Siege as well). Arknights does require some time investment to get to a point where you can play through all of the content that the collab will provide. With six of the playable Siege operators being gacha-exclusive, this will give you ample time to save up. (If you do not save up, you can still acquire the characters, but this will take up a lot of your time compared to starting earlier and saving up.)

How difficult? Arknights has many different types of gameplay, but you don't need to play all of them straight away. The game starts relatively easy, explaining the gameplay principles and later adding various gimmicks to overcome. If you are struggling with a specific stage, Arknights has an active community providing guides and tips.

Platform? Arknights is a mobile game available through Apple Store and Google Play but it's also available for pc through Google Play, or with an emulator like BlueStacks. The gameplay is as easy as on a mobile device or on PC.

Anything else? The event will feature costumes for Ash, Tachanka, Ela, Iana and Doc. These are purely cosmetic items (new illustration and a different character model and different effect animations). But if you want those as well, it's reccomended to start saving for those.

Ending note, while Arknights offers an unique and fun gameplay experience as well as good music and story, if you are prone to lootbox/gacha spending issues in relation to in-game purchases, I would not reccomend the game. While Arknights is seen as a "better than average" gacha, it is still a game that lives on micro-transactions. You can enjoy the story, soundtracks and gameplay content through many content creators found online.

[varanusniloticus]

No idea if this Korean manual deals with explanations that pertain uniquely to Fior di Battaglia (They'e using Posta Dente di Cenghiaro and the golden garter symbology) but making an modernly illustrated translation + guide to Fiore's Armizare sounds like a great retirement project...

[staticbluue]

Greetings and Salutations! Commissions Open!!

Commission me on artistree! They use your money to plant trees!

Read my horror comic Dreams for Sale on Webtoon and Tapas!!!!!

Buy a print!

I'm Brian (he/him) and I make art. This blog is mostly for my illustrations, but I also do comics, short and weird writing, and vocal synth music. I have a sideblog for reblogs, doodles, and photographs. You can find me on Instagram with art and music, and YouTube with music.

I have a short comic on Webtoon Canvas and Tapas, and I have a longer one currently in the works!

Here is a guide to what I post on this blog:

Star Trek: This is what I'm doing right now. Lots of Data. I swear I'm a comic artist, I swear I'm working on my original projects, but. . . Data. . .

Dreams for Sale: A horror anthology about the colliding paths of a journalist and a shopkeeper.

Status: Monthly updates starting THIS HALLOWEEN!

Forget Me Not: A drama about mental illness, loss, talent, and rock music.

Status: scripting in progress

Cicada Season: A short story about the unsettling events that occur before an aspiring writer goes off to college.

Status: scripting in progress

1920s story, currently untitled: A supernatural horror story involving a private detective and the. . . person. . . he finds by the side of the road.

Status: saved for later

Beautiful Machine: A sci-fi story about a guy with an android repair shop, his assistant, and an android who refuses to be turned off.

Status: saved for later

Circuit: A far-future sci-fi mystery about the power source of a country that exists entirely in an underground silo.

Status: saved for later

Mari: A surreal story about the way one artist sees the world.

Status: saved for later

Death of the Author: A dark comedy about a struggling author, a spirit, and a medium running a Korean exorcism business out of a New Jersey apartment.

Status: saved for later

Today's reminder: Short and usually surreal posts that I write just for fun!

[ultramarine-spirit]

Sign up for an art class and Q&A with Spoon!

A little late to the party, but I translated the article about the lecture Spoon will give at NHK's Culture Center:

Ranked 2nd in AnimeJapan's Survey of Manga We Want to See Animated.

A very popular Korean fantasy work, "Who Made Me a Princess", reached its conclusion in Korea in the spring of 2022 and in Japan in the fall of the same year. Spoon-sensei, who is in charge of the illustrations for the work, will answer your questions about how she draws attractive characters, her particular style, and her thoughts now that the work has been completed. In addition, the teacher will draw the character that is voted the best by everyone among the main characters on the day of the lecture.

After the course is over, all applicants will receive a signed illustration drawn by the teacher in the course as a data present! (I assume this refers to a digital file).

Click HERE to ask questions (in japanese) and vote (deadline: January 20th, JST time).

An interpreter (korean to japanese) will be provided.

The teacher will speak with her face hidden.

An archived version will be available at a later date (the article doesn't say if it will be made public, but I assume it's only for those who signed up for the class).

Course details:

Date of the lecture: January 28th (JST time), 2023.

Number of lectures: One time only.

Day of the week: Saturday, 14:00-15:00 (JST time).

Type of course: Online (Zoom).

Course fee: 3.300 yen.

Mini guide to signing up: The course is paid (3.300 yen, about 25 USD), so you'll need a credit card such as Visa or Mastercard (PayPal doesn't work). Apart from that, you'll need to make an account on NHK's website.

The website asks you basic user information, but you'll have to use a name written in japanese (katakana and furigana), and a japanese address (you can use an online generator for this and the postal code). After confirming your account with the typical email verification process, you'll be able to sign up for Spoon's course HERE. After paying, you should recieve an email with the receipt, and NHK will send you the Zoom link the day of the lecture. That's about it!

[ninja-muse]

January took forever and February took days. February also saw robins and single-jacket weather and geese migrations, and now it is also seeing December-grade snowfall? The 21st century is weird.

Anyway, I feel like this was another good reading month, even though I had some decidedly all right books in my list and a few moments of "I have hundreds of unread books, why is there nothing to read?!" I managed to offload five (5!) reading copies and only take two in, though I already know I've got two more coming towards me soon because I just can't say no, apparently.

As for book hauls and the TBR shelf situation: I only bought one book, the latest installment of the Rivers of London comics, which I hadn't realized was out so obviously I had to get it. And then read it a couple days later. Also read off my shelves were Dreadnought by Cherie Priest (which had only been on my shelf for 13 years), The Compleat Discworld Atlas, and Jackalope Wives and Other Stories by T. Kingfisher, which isn't pictured because I have the ebook and I couldn't get a good pic of my phone. (People who do this, please send tips!)

And following on from my Digger update from last month: the books are one step closing to shipping internationally! Hooray!

Oh, and a friend with a book box subscription passed a map from the Daevabad Trilogy on to me, so I have yet another decoration for my shelves. Still finding the optimal place for it, and feeling blessed to have such friends.

No idea what March is going to bring, except I feel like there'll be more dithering about reading material.

And now without further ado, in order of enjoyment…

Perilous Times - Thomas D. Lee

Rising sea levels. Mass extinctions. Racists. In-fighting. Dragons. If ever there was a time for the Knights of the Round Table to save the day, this would be it. But can they? Out in May.

8/10

Black main character, 🏳️‍🌈 main character (gay), British-Indian/Muslim main character; Black, amputee, and 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (trans woman, sapphic, gay)

warning: existential despair, violence

The Compleat Discworld Atlas - Terry Pratchett with the Discworld Emporium

A guide to the Disc, with maps in.

8/10

The 2000s Made Me Gay - Grace Perry

Essays on pop culture and queerness.

7.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: discussions of homophobia

The Porcelain Moon - Janie Chang

Faced with an arranged marriage, Pauline decides to travel to the Western Front to find her cousin. Meanwhile, Camille is caught between an abusive marriage and her secret love for a Chinese translator.

7/10

Chinese main and secondary characters, secondary character with discalculia, Chinese-Canadian author, 🇨🇦

warning: rape, domestic violence, racism, miscarriage

Jackalope Wives and Other Stories - T. Kingfisher

Short stories and other writings.

7.5/10

Dreadnought - Cherie Priest

Mercy travels from Tennessee to Washington Territory to visit her estranged father, two decades into the American Civil War. It won’t be easy.

7/10

Black and Mexican secondary characters

warning: war, gore, occasional racial slurs, including the N-word

The Fairy Tellers - Nicholas Jubber

Explorations into the history of fairy tales and the people who told them.

7/10

contains discussion of and biographies for Syrian and Indian tale tellers

Rivers of London, Vol. 10 - Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Celeste Bronfman with José María Beroy (illustrator)

Chelsea and Olympia Thames accidentally free an angry artist from a tree near their campsite—but don’t worry, they’ve got a plan.

6.5/10

Black-British main and secondary characters, Korean and Indian secondary characters

Happy Place - Emily Henry

Harriet and Wyn are back in Vermont for their annual friend reunion. This could be the last time, so it’s got to count. Which means nobody can know they broke up months ago. Out in May.

6.5/10

protagonist with depression, Black, Indo-American, and 🏳️‍🌈 (sapphic) secondary characters

This Winter - Alice Oseman

The Spring siblings would really like a normal Christmas. Shame about this one.

6/10

🏳️‍🌈 characters (gay, bisexual), 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: discussion of eating disorders and mental illness, some of which is distinctly negative

Nocturne - Alyssa Wees

A ballerina in 1930s Chicago acquires a mysterious patron and finds herself in a fairy tale. One of the dark ones.

7/10

warning: abuse, grief, coercion

Full of Briars - Seanan McGuire

Quentin’s parents want to take him away from his found family.

6/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (bisexual), 🏳️‍🌈 author

Under Lock & Skeleton Key - Gigi Pandian

Tempest is home after her magic show ended in disaster. Then her former assistant is found dead inside an old wall, and it might have something to do with the family curse.

4.5/10

Indo-American protagonist, Black and Indo-American secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 side characters, Indo-American author

Currently reading:

The Magician’s Daughter - H.G. Parry

Biddy’s magical guardian is under attack and she must leave her island home to protect him.

Stats

Monthly total: 13 Yearly total: 25/140 Queer books: 4 Authors of colour: 2 Books by women: 9 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1 Off the TBR shelves: 4 Books hauled: 1 ARCs acquired: 2 ARCs unhauled: 5 DNFs: 0

January

[spicykaraage]

Tenipuri Complete Character Profile - Kuranosuke Shiraishi

[PROFILE]

Birthday: April 14th (Aries)

Blood Type: B

Relatives: Father, Mother, Older Sister, Younger Sister (Yukari Shiraishi), Cat, Rhinoceros Beetle (Kaburiel)

Father’s Occupation: Pharmacist

Elementary School: South Umeda Elementary School

Middle School: Shitenhoji Junior High School

Grade & Class: Third Year | Class 3-2 | Seat 14

Club: Tennis Club (Captain)

Committee: Health Committee

Strong Subjects: Chemistry

Weak Subjects: None

Frequently Visited Spot at School: Infirmary

World Cup Team: U-17 World Cup Japanese Representatives

Favorite Motto: “Crowning glory.” ➜ “Can I pass on this question?” [23.5] ➜ “No man is an island.” [TP]

Daily Routines: Doing (yoga) stretches after bathing

Hobbies: Chess, calisthenics, writing novels [23.5]

Favorite Color: Bright Green

Favorite Music: Trance music

Favorite Movie: Korean films

Favorite Book: Illustrated plant encyclopedias, guides on how to write novels [23.5]

Favorite Food: Cheese risotto, meal replacements [23.5], medicinal herb soba that he makes himself [23.5]

Favorite Anniversary: The day he met Kaburiel

Preferred Type: A girl who smells like shampoo ➜ A Yamato Nadeshiko [23.5]

Ideal Date Spot: A botanical garden

His Gift for a Special Person: “I’ll give you a wake-up call every morning.”

Where He Wants to Travel: Mont Saint-Michel

Thing He Wants Most Right Now: A full-length mirror ➜ A wife for Kaburiel [23.5]

Dislikes: Girls who try to hit on guys ➜ Blonde, glamorous beauties [23.5]

Skills Outside of Tennis: Identifying poisonous plants, befriending rhinoceros beetles [23.5]

Spends Allowance On: Health goods

Routine During the World Cup: Mental training, reading self-help books ➜ Yoga, researching poses for his “Ecstasy” catchphrase [TP]

[DATA]

Height: 178cm

Weight: 66kg ➜ 64kg [23.5]

Shoe Size: 27cm

Dominant Arm: Left

Vision: 1.5 Left & Right

Play Style: All-Rounder

Signature Moves: Entaku Shot, Star Bible [TP]

Number of Poisonous Plants He is Knowledgeable About: 200 types

Favorite Brands:

Racquet: MIZUNO (Wenew 900Ti)

Shoes: DIADORA (Speed Zone PRO)

Overall Rating: Speed: 4 / Power: 4 / Stamina: 4 / Mental: 4 / Technique: 4 / Total: 20

Kurobe Memo: “For a middle school student, his abilities are perfectly balanced. He even has techniques to use as finishers. Just what exactly could his weakness be…?” [RB]

[POSSESSIONS]

What’s in His Locker at U-17 Training Camp:

Books on medicinal herbs // He’s lended one to Fuji

A wooden perch // For Kaburiel

Bandages // He changes them after bathing

Shiraishi’s special comedy DVD

[ronjawalkinaround]

Hallyu! The Korean Wave

Exhibition review, V&A museum

On until 25 June, 2023

"Cultural identities come from somewhere, they have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essential past, they are subjects of the continuous “play” of history, culture and power." - Stuart Hall, 1996 (Questions of Cultural Identity).

 This play of history and influences in the Korean (in this case, mostly South Korean) popular culture is an essential aspect of describing this culture. Its sudden spread across the world, namely Hallyu, is what the exhibition in V&A museum leads you through. Relationships with the cultures of Japan and America and changing influence spheres in Korea are presented in a way that does not feel like a boring history lesson, more like a well-illustrated and immersive one. The generational differences are to be seen and appreciated through the presentation of the changing trends, the confrontation of the 19th century manuscripts, and recent popular K-pop clips. Visitors are welcomed to the exhibition with Gangnam Style (song by PSY, 2012) and then guided through a timeline that ends with the most current trends again. The old prints and gadgets are followed by costumes, music, scenes from the tragically beautiful Korean cinema (like Oldboy, 2003), and even a rebuilt room from a movie – a bathroom from Parasite (2019). One of the main points of the exhibition, as explained by the curator Rosalie Kim, is to "talk to both types of visitors (meaning the old and new generations) and bridge the gap". Looking through the eyes of a young European visitor, this has been executed well, although it may seem that the exhibition is not for people who know the culture, it targets mostly foreign (UK) people who want to get acquainted and dive just a little deeper into the Korean world. Although the arrangement of some objects could be clearer at times, the evolution of Korean history and culture, and their impact on one another are portrayed thoroughly and playfully though the vibrant installations, moving images and artefacts of Hallyu. 

Thank you for your attention, now go see Peppermint Candy.

[learninternational]

Hangul and Vocabulary in Korean Language: An Illustrated Guide

The Korean language is a fascinating and complex system, with a unique writing system and vocabulary that reflects the country's rich cultural heritage. In this article, we'll take a closer look at Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and explore some essential vocabulary words and phrases to get you started on your Korean language journey.

Hangul: The Korean Alphabet

Hangul is a unique and scientifically designed alphabet that consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. It's considered one of the most logical and easiest to learn alphabets in the world.

Consonants:

(g/k) - sounds like "g" or "k"

(n) - sounds like "n"

(m) - sounds like "m"

(s) - sounds like "s"

(ng) - sounds like "ng"

(j) - sounds like "j"

(ch) - sounds like "ch"

(k) - sounds like "k"

(t) - sounds like "t"

(p) - sounds like "p"

(h) - sounds like "h"

Vowels:

(a) - sounds like "ah"

(ya) - sounds like "yah"

(eo) - sounds like "uh"

(yeo) - sounds like "yuh"

(yo) - sounds like "yo"

(yu) - sounds like "yu"

(u) - sounds like "oo"

(e) - sounds like "eh"

(ye) - sounds like "yeh"

(i) - sounds like "ee"

Vocabulary: Essential Words and Phrases

Here are some essential vocabulary words and phrases to get you started:

(annyeonghaseyo) - Hello

(gamsahamnida) - Thank you

(joheunhamnida) - Excuse me/Sorry

(ye) - Yes

(aniyo) - No

(joh-ah-ha-mnida) - I like it

(joh-eun nalssi-eoyo) - The weather is nice

(eodie issna-yo?) - Where are you from?

Illustrated Guide

Here's an illustrated guide to help you remember some of the essential vocabulary words and phrases:

[Image of a person saying "" (annyeonghaseyo) - Hello]

[Image of a person saying "" (gamsahamnida) - Thank you]

[Image of a person saying "" (joheunhamnida) - Excuse me/Sorry]

Conclusion

Hangul and vocabulary are the building blocks of the Korean language. By mastering the Hangul alphabet and learning essential vocabulary words and phrases, you'll be well on your way to becoming proficient in Korean. Remember to practice regularly and use visual aids like illustrations to help you remember new words and phrases.

[charlotteswebbbbb]

What's the vibe? #63

Cannes wrapped up > next interesting festivals in August are Locarno and Venice (where I think we're getting a new Luca Guadanino film).

The Euros start next week. First England game is on the 17th June and they're up against Serbia.

French Open still going strong til the 9th - a women quarter final to check out is Coco Gauff v Ons Jabeur today, right now.

Isamaya x FaceGym collab and cosmetic surgery tourism:

Isamaya Ffrench has releases a gua shua metal accessory in collaboration with FaceGym. This non invasive cosmetic "procedure" if you can call it that, is an example of 1, the rise in this traditional, culture based way of approaching health and 2, related to the want for non invasive techniques.

The former - relating to maybe "decolonial" ways of living - "how did my grandma do this and is it related to today? does it work first of all?" You could also see this strand of thought going into storytelling, unfamiliar territory for some but I think that if Hollywood is obsessed with IP that already exists, that newness is risky for them. Independent wise, the base is built, the curiosity set up in adventurous watchers who love Letterboxd, so could work in that context. (Maybe this is West specific, the rest of the world is obviously going to delve into national myths.)

One of the biggest reasons in the big Korean soft power exploding alongside the fact that the music, food and general culture is big is beauty tourism. Korean skincare exploding has people looking at their "cutting edge" treatments to improve themselves on holiday. A little botox at 1, colour matching at 2.30, great dinner at 5.

Curating and individualism:

This is a funny read - as with many things about culture I never find people go deep enough about anything. I find that when people discuss trend cycles or something they've been in it for a while but now it's just...culture. It's the pouring of 300 bottles of liquor to create the glorious cocktail. They lack - I find it uninteresting

"are we killing culture?" isn't even a real idea or question. Culture will shift, mutate, regroup. I even think because of almost a year of activism, some tactics will be borrowed - it might be of the same speed/faster/underground or aggressively IRL because that's where you find

At the end of the piece, there's this link which was attached to the phrase "find our way back to reality".

IDK - even this doesn't move me - it's very stiff in terms of what to do. Like what do you enjoy? What's your perspective on things? There's consumption but people like enjoyment....which is why they consume? The most interesting writings or stuff is like maybe visiting Cafe Oto. You can observe from outside, hear the muffled sounds, enjoy a chat with a friend, go inside, experience something weird, different, go back out, write down observations, go back in and maybe read a little on stage to the audience and see how they feel about it.

I think now we've gotten near to peak curation, a lot of hidden gems are found and easily accessed - which is great for people, sometimes not great for creators, or businesses that are suddenly overwhelmed unnecessarily.

from above: "Structurally, the Internet is not getting better anytime soon; I have not hidden my pessimism about its future. But human creativity persists, even in hostile conditions. Figures like Gee, Reilly, and Shuherk make me hopeful that fun, interesting niches of activity can still survive online. There’s another word that we might apply to such people: “connoisseurs,” in the art-historical sense of passionate observers who shape a discipline through their judgments. We’ve always had connoisseurs, from the radio d.j. to the bookstore clerk, subtly but vitally informing the culture that the rest of us choose to consume. As Shuherk put it, “The person in the nineties working at Blockbuster—we’re the same person.”

I do think that the backlash to a lot of this in the next few years (or months) is just extreme gatekeeping especially for spaces for more marginalised people. Everyone wants to go to the cool thing but tourism decreases the legitimacy.

We're also in extreme tough economic times - see Black Keys, J-Lo cancelling US tour dates, Melt Festival in Germany stopping after 27 years due to changing festival landscape, (Maybe even Jamie XX doing a 10 night residency at Venue MOT). These examples to say anything smaller than the super established runs at a risk. It's hard to create culture when you can't pay rent but also hard to keep going if your audience extract the uniqueness from your creation.

from above: "An exasperated Dominic Cook, a former director at the Royal Court theatre, last month went so far as to call for renationalising the arts. His point, provocatively framed, was that the current system is broken. The model that worked when he started out in the late 1980s — when generous state funding and box office receipts combined to more or less cover costs — now requires hefty supplemental doses of private funding. "

We deeply need funding bodies to keep culture flowing - whether some new Medicis want to step in or "ethical" funding bodies or the government, we'll be happy nonetheless.

I mean this also doesn't mean that cool things aren't happening in industries such as film. For example something like not/nowhere or other cinemas are giving people the chance to learn new skills and showcase work.

4 the dating data heads:

androgyny dressing:

[dankusner]

Infinite Scroll

The New Generation of Online Culture Curators

In a digital landscape overrun by algorithms and A.I., we need human guides to help us decide what’s worth paying attention to.

Illustration of a hand holding a phone. Curated items floating in the composition.

The current Internet landscape sometimes feels like the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”: directionless, inexplicable, bound to change in confusing ways.

Our social-media feeds don’t offer much except the forward acceleration of algorithmic recommendations.

Google and other forms of search are becoming clogged with content generated by artificial intelligence.

Knowing what you’re looking for doesn’t always help you chart a path, because niche communities can be difficult to locate and to keep up with.

We are in a transitional phase of digital culture, and thus more in need than ever of friendly faces, personable human guides (not unlike a “stalker” in the Zone), to help us navigate this treacherous ground.

Such guides go by many names—call them influencers, or content creators, or just “this one guy I follow.”

Guided by their own cultivated sense of taste, they bring their audiences news and insights in a particular cultural area, whether it’s fashion, books, music, food, or film.

Perhaps the best way to think of these guides is as curators;

like a museum curator pulling works together for an exhibition,

they organize the avalanche of online content into something coherent and comprehensible, restoring missing context and building narratives.

They highlight valuable things that we less-expert Internet surfers are likely to miss.

Andrea Hernández, the proprietor of Snaxshot, a newsletter and social-media account dedicated to “curating the food and beverage space,” told me recently, “Curation is about being able to filter the noise.”

(I follow Hernández for her skill at discovering the wildest examples of direct-to-consumer drinks startups, such as Feisty, a purveyor of “protein soda.”)

She continued, “I go out and I scour through the Internet and I come to you with my offerings.”

Unlike a museum curator, however, the digital personalities I have taken to following also become the faces of their work, broadcasting recordings of themselves, on TikTok and Instagram, as a way of building a trusting relationship with their followers.

One such curator is Derrick Gee, a former online radio d.j. who lives in Australia.

I first encountered Gee on TikTok and was pulled in by his architect-ish look: thin wireframe glasses and stylishly baggy, often monochrome outfits.

He records videos of himself talking into a microphone in a low, soothing voice, breaking down trends in contemporary pop music and reviewing high-end audio equipment.

Gee has become a fixture of my feed; I am one of his more than three hundred thousand followers.

He has introduced me to the world of Korean alt-rap, provided a playlist of ear-tickling minimalist piano instrumentals, and explained why Mitski’s latest album feels so vintage (because of an effect called “slap-back echo”).

I trust him not only to show me something cool but to teach me something new.

“I’m connecting the dots between cultures and sounds and eras,” he told me.

When Gee was a teen-ager, his electric-bass teacher played a similar role for him when he exposed Gee to James Jamerson, the Motown bass player who put jazz runs into pop songs.

“That opened my whole world up,” Gee said.

Gee’s practiced demeanor on the mike comes from his career off of social media.

He began working in graphic design and then in television development, but he also pursued an interest in music with a self-recorded radio show, which he began uploading to the Web site Mixcloud in 2012.

That show evolved into jobs with the music label 88rising, SiriusXM, and Mixcloud itself.

Gee began posting on TikTok in early 2022, after being introduced to the platform by a successful influencer who was trying to break into music.

Gee began with videos documenting his speaker collection but quickly moved on to leveraging his music expertise.

He told me that he is still a d.j., of a sort:

“What I do is radio but with a camera on. It’s just a break between songs,” he said.

By working outside of music-world institutions, he hopes to play a small part in moving the industry forward, pushing for more informed consumption.

He described himself as a kind of elder-brother figure to his audience:

“If I can turn you, a seventeen-year-old Korean American, on to U.K. garage, I’ve done my job.”

(For anyone who doesn’t follow Gee, “U.K. garage” is not garage rock but an influential British genre of electronic dance music that originated in the nineties and has made an impact on contemporary K-pop.)

Digital platforms are largely devoted to making users consume more, faster—think of TikTok’s frenetic “For You” feed or Spotify’s automated playlists.

Curators slow down the unending scroll and provide their followers with a way of savoring culture, rather than just inhaling it, developing a sense of appreciation.

Laura Reilly, who lives in Brooklyn, runs a newsletter and an Instagram account called Magasin (the French word for “store”), which she launched in 2021.

Now with more than twenty-eight thousand subscribers, Magasin touts itself with the tagline

“It’s a store. It’s a magazine. (It’s a fashion shopping newsletter.)”

But it goes beyond simple recommendations, championing lesser-known brands—the provider of earthy, upscale basics Studio Nicholson;

the knitwear maker Lauren Manoogian—and often interrogating the act of shopping itself.

“The more you learn about a brand,” Reilly told me, “the longer you’re going to hold on to those pieces.”

In other words, her informative posts are an antidote to fast fashion.

Reilly now employs a news editor and a menswear columnist, but she serves as a writer, editor, photographer, and model.

Magasin’s Instagram account features photo carrousels of her wearing outfits from the brands that the newsletter covers, but they are often dressing-room-mirror selfies, rather than polished portraits.

This goes beyond convenience into an intentional business strategy: like influencing, curating online can be a parasocial act.

“In order to be competitive, I needed to inject more of myself and my image into the newsletter,” she said.

Curation takes work, and like any other kind of labor it is only sustainable if it’s reasonably compensated.

Gee monetizes his account by creating sponsored content on TikTok, primarily for audio-equipment brands.

Magasin earns the majority of its revenue from affiliate marketing—for every reader who clicks a link to, say, a new Proenza Schouler cashmere sweater, and buys one,

Reilly earns a commission based on a small percentage of the sale price.

Before Magasin, Reilly worked in e-commerce fashion writing at the magazine InStyle, highlighting new product releases and deals.

That approach provided inspiration for her newsletter, and set her apart from other solo fashion commentators:

“I didn’t want it to be something that was a diary; I wanted it to be a service,” she said.

In a previous era of the Internet, we might have thought of figures like these simply as influencers, whose ability to attract large followings online gives them a power that sometimes surpasses that of traditional publications.

But the idea of an influencer has, as Reilly put it, become “a little flattened over time,” connoting shallow, uninformed, even misleading content dictated by sponsors.

“There’s a distinction between influencing and what I do,” Reilly insisted.

The archetypal influencer produces life-style porn of one form or another, playing up the aspirational glamour of their own home or meals or vacations.

The new wave of curators is more outward-looking, borrowing from the influencer’s playbook and piggybacking on social media’s intimate interaction with followers in order to address a body of culture beyond themselves.

Nathan Shuherk, an online curator of literature living in Indianapolis, didn’t mind the comparison between what he does and influencerdom.

Given “how much of culture is filtered through the eyes of influencers,” he told me, we ought to take the job seriously.

On TikTok, under the username @schizophrenicreads, Shuherk posts videos in which he delivers enthusiastic monologues about nonfiction books that reflect his personal preference for leftist, revisionist, socially engaged works of history—

“How to Hide an Empire,” by Daniel Immerwahr;

“Midwest Futures,” by Phil Christman.

He began posting on TikTok, in 2021, as a way to pass on recommendations for articles and books to his friends; he has now amassed nearly a hundred and eighty thousand followers.

Prior to running @schizophrenicreads, Shuherk had accumulated experience in a very different kind of public speaking.

He has schizophrenia, and in 2017 dropped out of a master’s program in library science and went on disability leave from work to adapt to living with the illness.

He occupied himself by giving lectures about his experiences for advocacy organizations.

His account name was partly a reference to his illness and partly a joke about his wide-ranging taste in reading. “I never really conceived of doing this for a mass audience; I was trying to be my friends’ unemployed librarian,” he said.

Owing to the cutoffs for receiving disability benefits, Shuherk tries to limit his income, but he maintains a small Patreon account, where fans can donate money and get access to extra material, including a podcast. (Full disclosure: I appeared on one episode.)

Shuherk cast the rise of curatorial accounts like his as a failure of the legacy-media ecosystem.

The job of providing well-informed recommendations once belonged to professional critics employed by newspapers and magazines.

As media companies have struggled to adjust to the digital age, the number of full-time criticism jobs has dwindled, leaving a void that Shuherk and others are filling.

We sometimes blame the figure of the influencer for these changes.

“One hundred per cent, that’s wrong,” Shuherk told me.

Internet users still desire guidance from voices with expertise; it’s just that those experts, lacking other options, are increasingly finding their audiences online.

“My option for becoming a book reviewer was sitting down on TikTok,” Shuherk said. “There isn’t really a path for me outside of this.”

The onslaught of online content requires filtering, whether technological or human, and those of us who dislike the idea of A.I. or algorithms doing the filtering for us might think more about how we support the online personalities who do the job well.

Structurally, the Internet is not getting better anytime soon;

I have not hidden my pessimism about its future.

But human creativity persists, even in hostile conditions.

Figures like Gee, Reilly, and Shuherk make me hopeful that fun, interesting niches of activity can still survive online.

There’s another word that we might apply to such people: “connoisseurs,” in the art-historical sense of passionate observers who shape a discipline through their judgments.

We’ve always had connoisseurs, from the radio d.j. to the bookstore clerk, subtly but vitally informing the culture that the rest of us choose to consume.

As Shuherk put it, “The person in the nineties working at Blockbuster—we’re the same person.” ♦

ly, “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.”

[jasonwu0602]

Nailing Your English Job Interview: A Vital Preparation Guide

Preparing for an English job interview is like studying a new language. It demands practice, preparation, and a lot of fortitude. Just like the Austin Korean classes near me or the Austin German classes near me, you need to put in the time and effort to be proficient. From learning how to answer standard questions fluently to practicing good non-verbal communication, diligence is necessary. Heck, even the Austin Arabic classes near me and Austin Hindi classes near me need a certain level of dedication! Just as studying foreign languages requires focus on syntax, pronunciation, and grammar, so does preparing for an English job interview. Just like the Austin English courses near me, you need to focus on speaking clearly, structuring your responses, and using appropriate professional vocabulary. So, put your best foot forward and make a solid first impression by prepping correctly!

Mastering the Art of Interview Preparation and Presentation

When embarking on the journey of landing your ideal role, being well-prepared for the interview process is crucial. This involves researching the company and planning your responses ahead of time. Here are a few tips on how you can articulate your qualifications and work experience more effectively.

Do your homework: Research the Company

Understanding the company's mission, culture, products, and overall brand identity can set you apart from other candidates. Take your time to:

Explore the company's website, social media, and recent news.

Familiarize yourself with the company’s values and interests.

Understand the company's products, services, and target customer.

This will help you tailor your answers and show the interviewer that you're serious about the opportunity.

Plan Your Responses: Show Off Your Skills

Well-prepared responses can demonstrate your skills, experience, and overall suitability for the position. Here's how:

Anticipate likely interview questions and prepare concise, focused responses.

Use real-world examples to illustrate your skills and experience.

Practice your responses to ensure you present them naturally.

Remember, your goal is to convince the interviewer that you have the skills, knowledge, and experience to effectively perform the role.

Articulate Your Qualifications: Be Specific

When talking about your qualifications:

Mention the specific qualifications you hold and how they're relevant to the job.

Describe how you have utilised these qualifications in your past roles.

Offer examples of projects you've worked on or successes you've had because of these qualifications.

Discuss your Working Experience: Tell a Story

Your work experience is more than just jobs and dates. Use it to tell a compelling story:

Highlight key roles and responsibilities you've held.

Discuss the skills and knowledge you've gained.

Show how your past experience will help you succeed in this new role.

Remember, it's not just about what you did—it's about how you did it and the impact you made.

By doing diligent research, preparing your responses, and articulating your qualifications and work experience effectively, you stand a better chance of making a positive impression and securing the job you desire. Happy interviewing!

Navigating English Interview Questions With Confidence

Are you gearing up for an English-language job interview? While it's perfectly normal to feel nervous, a bit of preparation can go a long way in boosting your confidence. Here, we'll guide you through common interview questions in English and help you plan your responses. Remember, an accurate and appropriate use of English is key to acing your interview.

Common English Interview Questions

Check out the following common English interview questions:

Tell me about yourself.

Why should we hire you?

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Why do you want to work here?

How do you handle stress and pressure?

Describe a difficult work situation and how you overcame it.

What are your goals for the future?

Why are you leaving or have left your job?

How do you evaluate success?

Planning Your Responses

Now let's break down how to effectively plan your responses:

Be specific: Avoid generic answers. Instead, share specific experiences or accomplishments that demonstrate your skills relevant to the position.

Use the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result. This technique is particularly useful for behavioral interview questions.

Tailor your answers: Shape your answers to align with the job requirements and company culture.

Practice: Record your answers and listen to them. This helps to verify your language proficiency and the quality of the content.

The necessity of accurate and appropriate English use in an interview setting cannot be overstressed. It's not just the content of your responses that matter, but also how you communicate them. Fine-tune your English proficiency and increase your chances of acing your interview by investing in one-on-one tutoring sessions with qualified teachers on AmazingTalker. No contracts, transparent pricing, and flexible lesson options are guaranteed. Plus, you can have a discussion about the course content with the teacher before classes. Don't leave your interview success to chance. Prepare today with AmazingTalker.

Seizing Success: The Value of English Test Preparation and the Role of AmazingTalker

Whether you're interviewing for a job, applying for a scholarship, or seeking top-tier university acceptance, your ability to communicate effectively in English is crucial. Hence, preparing for English tests not only sharpens your language proficiency but also provides the competitive edge that sets you apart.

Confidence Boosting Benefits

Imagine walking into an interview and impressing the panel with your fluent English. Test preparation:

Helps you demonstrate your language capability convincingly,

Increases your self-confidence,

Enhances your comprehension skills, and

Showcases your dedication and discipline.

Introducing AmazingTalker: Your Personalized Learning Partner

While an EF SET Certificate might help, there's a platform that offers an approach tailored to your specific needs: AmazingTalker. As an innovative language learning platform, AmazingTalker provides:

Personalized one-on-one teaching with customized materials,

Transparent qualifications and experience of tutors,

No requirement of contracts along with transparent pricing, and

Flexible lesson options to accommodate your schedule.

You can select a teacher based on your budget, requirements, and available slots. The platform also facilitates discussion on course content with teachers before classes. To ensure that you're making an educated choice, it even offers a 25-minute trial lesson.

AmazingTalker is not just confined to English—it proudly offers online courses in 48 different languages, including Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, and German. So whether your ambition drives you towards becoming a polyglot, or you're focused on mastering English, AmazingTalker is the answer to your language learning needs.

Refining English Speaking Skills Through Practice

When learning a new language, the importance of practice cannot be overstated. It's not just about memorizing words and phrases but also getting the chance to use them in a real conversation. This can help boost your confidence and refine your speaking skills. One effective method to practice your English is by speaking aloud or recording yourself.

Speaking aloud allows you to hear how you sound, giving you the chance to correct any pronunciation mistakes you may make. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. The more you practice, the easier it becomes to form sentences and express your thoughts in English.

The same goes for recording yourself. By listening to these recordings, you can identify your strengths and areas that need improvement. You can also see your progress over time, which can be a great confidence booster. This will also help you to become more fluent and natural in your speech.

Here are some tips when practicing speaking aloud or recording yourself:

Make it a routine. Set aside time each day for practice.

Start with easy words and phrases, then gradually move on to more complex sentences.

Listen to English speakers and try to mimic their pronunciation.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Making mistakes is part of the learning process.

Keep a positive mindset. Believe in your ability to improve.

Remember, practice is key in mastering any language. With consistent effort and the right strategies, you'll be speaking English confidently and fluently in no time.

How AmazingTalker Assists with Interview Preparations

AmazingTalker, a pioneering online English tutoring platform, provides an array of services to help you prepare for interviews. This platform offers personalized one-on-one teaching, allowing learners to focus on specific areas they wish to improve. Whether it's honing your English communication skills or understanding the nitty-gritties of cracking an interview, AmazingTalker has got you covered.

Personalized Learning Experience

One-on-one teaching: Tutors provide individualized attention, helping you to focus on your areas of improvement.

Customized materials: Tutors prepare personalized resources tailored to your specific needs and goals.

Transparent and Experienced Tutors

Transparent qualifications: AmazingTalker provides complete clarity on the experiences and qualifications of its tutors. This transparency allows you to choose a tutor who meets your requirements best.

Experienced tutors: AmazingTalker houses a pool of experienced tutors trained in various fields, including interview preparation.

Flexible and Transparent Pricing

No contracts: AmazingTalker does not bind you in contracts. Enjoy the flexibility of learning at your own pace.

Transparent pricing: All prices are clearly stated, with no hidden charges.

Flexible lesson options: Choose a lesson package according to your needs and schedule.

Choose Your Own Teacher

Selecting teachers: AmazingTalker enables you to select a teacher based on your budget, requirements, and schedule.

Discuss course content: You can discuss the course content with the teacher before starting the classes.

Trial lesson: For your comfort, AmazingTalker offers a 25-minute trial lesson. This helps you to understand the teaching style of the tutor and align your expectations.

Despite its focus on English teaching, AmazingTalker also offers online courses in 48 other languages including Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, and German.

In a nutshell, AmazingTalker opens a world of opportunities to boost your interview preparation journey. With personalized teaching, experienced and qualified tutors, transparent pricing, and the flexibility to choose your teacher, AmazingTalker empowers you to approach your interviews with confidence.

Harness the Power of English Mastery with AmazingTalker

In conclusion, preparing adequately for an English job interview is paramount. A lack of preparation can be detrimental, hindering your chances of landing the job. From communicating eloquently to understanding the nuances of the English language, every aspect counts. It's not just about knowing the language, it's about showcasing your skills and presenting your best self on the big day. So, why limit your potential due to a language barrier? With AmazingTalker, you can expertly boost your English proficiency. The platform offers personalized learning experiences that align with your individual needs, ensuring you become confident in your English speaking ability. So, take the plunge today. Be daring, be persistent, seize your opportunity with AmazingTalker. With the right resources and guidance, you can bring your A-game to any English job interview and secure that dream job. AmazingTalker is here to help you turn your goals into achievements. After all, your success is a reflection of your preparation. Let's make it count!