#I need to start reading more dictionaries and novels

[synthwayve]

OBSESSED. Hell yeah, go speak to Laurence you weird unstable creature. The way you draw Maria is absolutely stunning, I adore her expressions! I can hear their voices so clearly in this, excellent work!

A sequel to this short comic because I have jumped into the Micolash & Maria interactions rabbit hole and I have THOUGHTS.

[sancta-seraphina]

Hi, I hope this isn't too complex a question. What books would you recommend for someone looking to get into angels? I'm looking for anything... lore, other novels to read, comics, whatever you can offer

Oh man, please don't apologize, this is exactly my type of question! Also this post got a bit long.

Obviously, there are tons of references for lore. If you're looking for a basic run-down of angels in the Bible itself, I'm writing a series of posts on that subject specifically, even if updates are few and far between right now (I'm so, so sorry, the ballet eats all of my time):

[Biblically Accurate Angels Part I - Seraphim, Cherubim & Ophanim]

[Biblically Accurate Angels Part II - The Named Angels]

This is because the easiest and most accessible information on angels is in the Bible itself (and hey guess what—you can read the Bible for free online! If you need a translation suggestion, I would go for the ESV bibles, and there's a Catholic edition of the ESV if that's an issue. You could also get the NCB which is what I cited)

If you don't mind chewy literature, then I'd say please read Pseudo-Dionysius' De Coelesti Hierarchia, or St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. I cite both of these in my posts on angels since they're rather standard sources of information on them, and they're also where the Catholic church gets its canon from.

A great reference, even if I don't particularly agree with everything stated in it, is Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels. Most people look at it for angel names, but I'm very interested in his sources, since many of them I've not yet managed to get my little paws on.

I'm not even going to get into my favorite sources of angel lore because this is enough for someone just looking to start. I can do a separate post on those if people want them.

Now. Moving on from lore.

For classic literature, my two obvious recommendations are for The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. Over on IG, myself and Jami (@a-thenais) made a little book recommendation post. [You can find it here]. Being the angels nerds we are, everything is pretty on theme and has poetry, scripture, classics... the only thing we didn't do is current angel literature.

So for that, if you want a popular series, than I'd say go take a look at @nicosraf's Angels trilogy, especially since he just announced a new short novel coming out in December!

I personally also like @marsadler's First Creation, although I'd recommend his works mainly for horror fans.

And lastly, if you don't mind waiting/are keeping a list of angel books that are coming out, well, of course I'd suggest my own series [The Divine Tragedy], even if horror isn't everyone's cup of tea. The main series (Holiest, The Harrowing, & Heresiarch) and the series of novellas (The Infernal Apocrypha) are heavy on the horror, but in my last project, the Sepher Metatron, only the third part has horror in it, and the rest of it is more palatable to non-horror fans (the very first part of the book is also fully illustrated)

But if you can read Italian, then I'd also suggest @a-thenais' Nova Apocrypha Vulgata series! These are three novels (Thanatos, Hybris, & Afasia) that she is working towards publishing, and a few additional works too. You can read about them on her tumblr, and I've done multiple fanarts for them. We also tend to consider TDT and NAV 'twins', so if TDT is something you want to read, NAV will also something you'd probably like!

If you want to follow some angel artists, then please check out my pals @ultrainfinitepit (who makes gorgeous angel pins which I hoard) and @helplessavacado, both of whom have their own unique styles and stories as well.

[slayingfiction]

How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE B

Hamlet Propaganda:

Have you seen the man. Is he clinically insane or just putting on an antic disposition. Is the ghost real

Kim Dokja Propaganda:

I haven't read orv but he's fucking gotta be from what I've osmosised

He tries to remove his emotions out of the narrative soooo much, literally the most repressed guy ever. Okay so for context orv is about how this guy, Kim Dokja, has been the only reader of an obscure post-apocalyptic webnovel for years and the novel suddenly becomes reality. And at first you'll probably get the weird impression that his behavior is pretty strange for, you know, a literal apocalypse happening in his world - like yes, he is concerned with survival but he doesn't seem all that scared and he kinda treats it like a video game where he has to grind to make himself stronger and he also treats his companions like a party in an rpg. Then there's also the way he approaches the protagonist of the webnovel, from the start he just kind of describes him as a ruthless psychopath and jerk that is unfortunately a pretty useful ally. And also there's the fact that he carefully omits any mention of his past and when somebody asks if he's worried about his family when the apocalypse starts he just kinda... brushes it off? Anyway so yeah, this bastard is definitely traumatized, although I don't know how much of spoiler territory that would be, considering the fact that literally when he first reveals his trauma he's also unreliable about it. And turns out he does indeed, care A LOT about this world and the people around him. Because well, he kinda didn't care to mention that this webnovel that has become reality was like... literally his whole world before it literally became his whole world. Like, it was the only thing keeping him going for 10+ years and the protagonist that he likes to call a stupid jerk was his comfort character who he pretended to be when he felt like he couldn't handle something in his life by being himself. The protagonist is also canonically the person he loves the most according to a prophecy and he literally can't fathom the thought of him dying, even the timeline versions of him that directly oppose him. And I haven't even mentioned the Fourth Wall yet but I feel like this propaganda is a little long already

misreading the intentions of his companion (yoo joonghyuk) so many time.

YOU DON'T UNDERSTANDDD DOKJA IS SUCH A UNRELIABLE NARRATORRRRRR GOD I COULD WRITE AN ESSAY BUT I KNOW YOU LOVE DOKJA TOO BUT OMG HE'S JUST SO AAAAAAAAAAAH

Rest of Propaganda under cut!

he is the worst like actually. he starts the story talking about how normal and average he is. he is not. he is constantly mischaracterizing his friends and he's so good at lying to the readers that you don't even realize it at first. almost every single time he cries we have to be told by other characters because he never says it himself. there is literally a scene where his narration says "i wasn't crying" and then the in-universe entity that narrates the actions of people (orv is really weird and meta) says that he was, in fact, crying. honestly genuinely anything he says about himself (or doesn't say) cannot be trusted. he is just so frustrating. he drives me mad. i love him dearly. but he drives me so mad.

Dictionary definition of unreliable narrator. Does not tell the reader anything and then things happen and he's like oh yeah btw there was also this and this earlier but i just didn't feel like mentioning it. There's even a thing called the "Fourth Wall" that is able to see through kdj's bs so occasionally you get gems like,

Kim Dokja: I didn't cry

The Fourth Wall: [Kim Dokja was crying]

Imagine being so unreliable as a narrator you need a more powerful narrator to call out the actual narrator.

^ same submission, just spacing it out

This goes into spoiler territory, but; Kim Dokja is in possession of a skill called the Fourth Wall, which on the surface seems like it appears because he read the book that reverse-isekai’d into his own. However, as the story goes on it becomes clear that it’s pretty much a souped up version of his pre-existing dissociation. You cannot trust him to be honest about his feelings, his past traumas or his feelings about his past traumas, not to mention his tendency to just outright omit information that only gets revealed later on either when it becomes relevant or when an outsider POV reveals what’s actually happening.

Exhibit A: he says (in 1st person POV) that he’s not crying. The Fourth Wall immediately contradicts this (as it is literally words of the novel) by saying (in 3rd person POV) ‘Kim Dokja was crying’.

Exhibit B: Fails to mention entire actions when it shows him emotionally honest even in the slightest; we had to read from another character entirely when Kim Dokja was being physically affectionate with his companion. It’s so bad that there’s this entire paragraph about Kim Dokja describing himself hiding his eyes in his hands in jerky, weirdly specific detail and just AVOIDING EVERY WORD THAT MIGHT SHOW HE’S CRYING. The brilliance of ORV is that when you re-read the entire thing you get hints that ‘yes, this WAS hinted at the entire time’ but you have to dig it out of Kim Dokja’s repressed, depressed self-hating internal dialogue with your own two hands.

^ same submission, spacing it out (i really should've done this earlier.)

i am a simple man (not a man). i see a tumblr text post with the words “unreliable narrator in it”. i read nothing else. i reblog & tag #kim dokja okay but in all seriousness i’m just going with the musty basic example: so there’s this moment where he sacrifices himself to save this guy. as he lays on the ground bleeding out, he says “hey, you don’t like me, right? you should kill me to get some money” the guy says “no kim dokja i cant do that (going through the five stages of grief except there’s only one and it’s anger)” the constellations (twitch viewers irl) are like omg he (the guy) doesn’t want to kill his companion (kim dokja) and shower him (the guy) with money kim dokja: oh, he’s not killing me for the money. smart!

as i quote a brilliant youtube video (all of omniscient reader’s viewpoint in 6 minutes) “yoo joonghyuk sees kim dokja as a c_____”

yoo joonghyuk: companion

kim dokja: cunt

^ same submission, once again. spacing it out.

Hides his true feelings, tells the readers what he thinks is convenient for the plot and that his own personal feelings don’t matter or are not so significant. Has unreliable thoughts abt his companion and is a liar. And is also an omniscient reader.

Kim Dokja always perceived his companions in this like nonchalant way like “oh yeah we get along but really we’re just fighting to survive (apocalypse setting) it doesn’t run that deep” when they all do genuinely care for him and he does in turn. He just, doesn’t think of it as an equal relationship? Dokja’ll sacrifice a lot for them but will get seriously flabbergasted if they do the same thing, so fricking problematic. Not to mention Yoo Joonghyuk, his “Life and Death Companion” (read: husband). Kim Dokja always seems to think that Joonghyuk has it out for him, which is kinda true, but he is literally blind to the fact that he’s attached to him. Like, it’s so obvious??? Also they have hella sexual tension but that’s another thing entirely

se get some many pov changes where kdj in his pov just assumed things based on what he knew the characters would do. however because of his interference the characters have changed and he wouldn’t know that if it hit him in the face

He's an unreliable narrator because he lies to himself and thus the audience. He literally rewrote his own childhood core memory. If someone says, "this guy is my friend!" He will go through so many hoola hoops in his mind just to rationalize it. Because he fundamentally believe that no one could love him and even if they did they couldn't know him and he's just gonna hurt them. He cries sometimes in canon but a lot of those times it's not even mentioned as crying he's that unreliable of a narrator. No joke, one time this guys he has a gay thing with called him his "companion" to someone who had just killed him (long story) and this bitch thought "oh wow he's doing it for the coins (another long story) he's so smart i wish I'd thought to that. He's terrible. He literally has an exchange with something called the Fourth Wall (an even longer story) where it said "you're crying" and he said "no I'm not" but he was crying. He makes me insane because the reader is supposed to project onto him. He made me see how much of an unreliable narrator I WAS. ORV is just like that tho.

[nanowrimo]

How to Choose the Right Story Idea

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Scrivener, a 2023 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is an award-winning writing app containing all the tools you need to get writing and keep writing. They’ve teamed up with S J Watson, bestselling author of Before I Go To Sleep, to get some tips on deciding if your story idea is a good one. 

If you’re writing fiction, the thing that must come first is the idea. Without that we have nothing. But what are ideas; how do we get them; and crucially, how can we choose which ones are good enough to sustain a long piece of fiction? 

These are big questions, so let’s consider them here. 

What is an Idea?

I came across two interesting dictionary definitions of what an idea is:

Something such as a thought or conception that is the product of mental activity; and

A sense that something can happen, a notion or expectation.

The seeds of ideas are everywhere. Everything we see, hear, read or watch can spark a thought, and we need to remain alert to those sparks, as some might become useful ideas. But being alert is not enough. Rarely do ideas arrive fully formed. Usually we have to actively work on promising nuggets in order to turn them into gold. We can’t just sit around and wait for the lightning bolt to strike.

Instead, get used to actively, and playfully, interrogating your daily musings. Ask yourself questions. ‘I wonder what would happen if…’ or, ‘Why did that person just..?’ etc. Don’t censor yourself. Let your mind take you to wild and fanciful places. You can always reign it back in later. Fill your notebook.

Choosing an idea to work on

Not all ideas are created equal. So how do we choose? Look at the second definition above. Some ideas seem exciting at first but they’re limited. It’s hard to see how they can lead to interesting characters and high-stakes conflict. Others invite you into a world brimming with possibilities. They seem to open doors. These are the ones to work on.

The best, most fertile ideas, are magnetic. They grow by attracting other ideas to them. You’ll notice connections, and find yourself asking ‘What if..?’ and ‘I wonder why..?’ more and more. When this happens, you know you’re on to something, but at this point it can still help to ask yourself some questions.

First, which ideas excite you?  Are there any that you can’t quite believe no one else has written? If so, go for it! If not, then perhaps proceed more cautiously. Don’t reject them outright, necessarily. Maybe you just need an extra ingredient or two. Give it time and wait until you do get that glimmer of excitement. 

Next, can you see a protagonist with a goal and obstacles that stand in their way? If not, maybe you have an idea for a situation, but not an actual novel. ‘What if a totalitarian regime came to power?’ is not an idea for a story, but ‘What if two people fall in love in a world governed by a regime that has outlawed romantic attachment?’ is. Again, keep going, stir the pot until you can come up with characters and conflict.

Also ask, are the stakes high enough to maintain a reader’s interest, and if not can they be raised? Are their problems, if not universal, then at least relatable? A professor searching for the key to immortality is one thing, but a professor searching for the key to immortality because his wife is dying is suddenly something else. Keep going until you feel that tug of universality. 

Finally, does your idea seem original?  This is important, but beware! Almost everything has been done before, the key is how you combine ideas and what you do with them. Don’t reject every idea that is reminiscent of something else, but instead look for how you’re going to make it your own. 

In short, daydream, be playful with your thoughts and observations, and sooner or later something will come along that seems on fire with possibility. Congratulations! Now the hard work starts…

SJ Watson is author of Before I Go To Sleep, which was turned into a film starring Nicole Kidman. He has since published two further psychological thrillers, Second Life and Final Cut, and has set up The Writers’ Lodge, which aims to help and support writers at every stage of their creative writing journey. S J Watson recently launched a public novel writing project called The Experiment. He writes using Scrivener.

All NaNoWriMo participants receive 20% off Scrivener for macOS and Windows from now until December 7, 2023, with the code NANOWRIMO23 .

Top photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

[the-yuri-librarian]

Bloom into You Analysis: Chapter One

Bloom into You tells the story of high school freshman Yuu, as she discovers herself and tries to gain an understanding of "love," which all of her friends seem enamored with. She has never had someone who felt special to her in that way, though she desperately wants to. This all changes when she meets sophomore Nanami, who has also never fallen in love. As they get to know each other, Nanami begins to fall in love with Yuu, though Yuu does not understand why. At the same time, Yuu thinks her chest may be starting to flutter, a feeling that she has longed for but still does not understand...

In this analysis series, I am going to explore Bloom into You chapter by chapter, breaking down what the writing is doing, how what the writing is doing works, and why the series is so popular. But, first, here's my favorite panel from chapter one.

Analysis below the cut

This may be common sense on some level, but the first chapters of most works of fiction typically have the same goals: establish the main character(s) (including their personality and flaws), the setting, the story, and the antagonist(s), as well as any thematic through-lines that will be present in the story. These goals, however, are especially important for a series that is released weekly; when you're reading a novel or a collection of chapters in a manga volume, the writer has a lot more room -- and as a result, leeway -- to take their time laying the groundwork for their story. But, when something is released chapter by chapter on a week-to-week basis, like Bloom into You, it is imperative that the writer does their best to give you, the reader, a reason to come back next week, and the week after that, and so on. The constraints of the weekly release schedule are something to keep in mind as we proceed with this analysis, not just for this chapter, but for all chapters. The constant stress to keep audience engagement high likely had an impact on the writing decisions Nakatani Nio made as she developed this story, for better and worse. With that being said, let's dive in on page one:

Full disclosure: I really love this page. It utilizes a combination of visual storytelling, internal monologue, and the manga itself as a framing device to perfectly establish the protagonist, Yuu, in a single page. Visually, Yuu is laying on her bed listening to music, (presumably) a light novel spread across her lap. The "camera," which serves as the audience's POV, is above her, so she is staring at us as she stares at the ceiling. Laying next to her are a couple of romance mangas, another book, her music player (an mp3 player of some kind), and an open CD case. Even without the inner monologue, you can immediately tell that Yuu is interested in romance. Nakatani then uses Yuu's inner monologue to take the audience's initial impression of Yuu and twist it. She is not interested in love in the same way the average teenage girl is; she is not particularly boy crazy, nor is she very experienced in the ways of love. Instead, she is interested in love precisely because she has never experienced it. She even thinks it herself: "I don't need a dictionary to understand the meaning... But I've never felt them for myself" (v. 1, Ch. 1, page 4; emphasis original). This not only works to make Yuu more complex as a character, but it is also a way to draw the audience in. It leads them to wonder, "Why hasn't she experienced love? Has she been hurt in the past? Or, is something else going on?" And then, finally, in what I genuinely think is brilliant, Nakatani turns the manga itself into a framing device by allowing the title of the chapter to interact with Yuu's inner monologue. The first box of Yuu's inner monologue reads, "The words in shoujo manga and love songs... They're always sparkling brightly" (ch. 1, page 4; emphasis original). She then laments that she knows what the words mean, but she's never felt them for herself. In comparison, the title of the chapter is "I cannot reach the stars." Thanks to the use of bold text for emphasis, Nakatani is drawing a straight line from the monologue to the chapter title. In other words, the stars that Yuu cannot reach are the feelings in the manga and love songs she is lamenting about. This gives the audience incredible insight into Yuu's character, because it tells us right away that not only does she yearn to feel the love that comics and songs talk about, but she also blames herself for her inability to feel romantic feelings, a thought that is going to become a driving force of the plot right away.

The next four pages work to set up the story. In summary, Yuu is not sure what club she wants to join, and one of her teachers recommends the student council, offering for her to sit in on one of their meetings. Yuu agrees because it sounds interesting, but on her way to the student council building, she gets lost. Instead, she stumbles upon a boy asking a girl out, which leads to:

This is our introduction to Nanami, the somewhat deuteragonist, and, more importantly, Yuu's main love interest. As the above image implies, Nanami turns this guy down. Then, she spots Yuu, who admits she is lost, and together they go to the student council building, where Nanami reveals she is a member of the student council. As the chapter progresses, Yuu, and by extension the audience, learns a lot about Nanami, mainly through dialogue. She is a sophomore, ten people (including by some girls) have confessed their love to her since she started high school, and she has turned everyone down largely because she was not interested, but also because "none of their confessions made [Nanami's] heart pound" (ch. 1, page 22; emphasis original). This information is given briskly, and as it happens we watch as Yuu becomes more and more interested in Nanami. At first, it is explicitly because she saw Nanami turn down a confession; her inner monologue in the next scene reveals that Yuu was confessed to at her middle school graduation and has not answered yet. Then, she hangs out with Nanami and Sayaka (Nanami's best friend and fellow student council member and sophomore) the next day, and begins to realize that Nanami is a cool and interesting person. Then, when Nanami reveals she has never felt love, Yuu's interest in her increases exponentially. The pacing and speed at which we are given information really works here, as Nakatani employs Yuu's increasing interest in Nanami to keep the reader engaged while also only highlighting the key aspects of Nanami's personality. She provides the audience enough information to keep us interested, but not so much information we have the full picture. This series of scenes culminates in the final scene of the chapter, when Yuu asks Nanami for advice in the student council room the next day.

On the third day after Yuu meets Nanami, she finds herself exactly as she hoped: alone with Nanami in the student council room. She explains that she has been confessed to and that the boy in question is expecting a response. As she relays this information, Nanami mistakes her intentions and says that she is not the right person to give out advice on this subject. Yuu responds that she's already decided to turn him down. During this conversation, the audience is shown a flashback of the confession, and when the flashback is over, Yuu does just that: she turns the boy down. When she is done and has had a moment to relax, Nanami takes her hand and asks Yuu in clear terms if there has ever been anyone special to her, if she has ever had romantic feelings for anyone. Yuu says no, and this leads to the page that my favorite panel is from:

There is excellent storytelling happening here. At first, Yuu and Nanami are holding hands and standing acorss from each other, then, with a turn of the page, Nanami is pulling Yuu closer. In the next panel, the camera cuts wide, showing us how empty the room is and just how close our lead girls are standing. The perspective shifts here are meant to put the audience on edge and add pressure to the tension that has building all chapter. Then, on the last panel, right as the tension is at its highest, the plot twists, letting the tension release like a stretched rubber band. It's a twist for Yuu too; the confusion on her face is painfully clear, as she begins to realize she has misread Nanami. Then, Nanami voices the realization Yuu is having out loud, informing her that they are not the same, they are different...

...because Nanami is falling in love with Yuu. Just like that, with the flip of a page, the rest of the story is set up. Yuu, the girl who cannot fall in love, has made likely the most popular girl in school fall for her, seemingly because of the explicit fact that she has never fallen in love before. This twist takes the hook that was already in the audience's mouth and sets it into the flesh of their cheek; they're hooked now, and there is no telling where the story will go from here. Not all is perfect, though. In this scene, Nanami actually comes on a little too strongly for my taste, particularly dropping the L word so early. This is likely an effect of the weekly release schedule that I mentioned earlier; Nakatani likely wanted to end the chapter on the strongest note possible, leading to such a powerful confession. Additionally, it is hard to tell how valid this complaint is, as I am dealing with an admitted constraint: I do not read or write Japanese. This inherently limits my understanding of the scene, because I am perpetually an additional step away from understanding Nakatani's true meaning; not only am I reading the line through my own cultural values and life experiences, but the line itself has been translated from the Japanese, and since translation is itself an art, the translator's own cultural values and life experiences likely affects how they translate it. With that being said, assuming this is not a translator error and the original Japanese does say "love," then there is a moment later in the story that is the ideal place for Nanami to say "love" for the first time (in my opinion at least) that I will point out when we get there.

And, with Nanami's confession, the chapter ends. In the pages of this chapter, we can already see the emergence of the story's main theme: what is love? But, as the characters progress, this story is also going to grapple with questions of bodily autonomy, friendship, and what it means to find your way in the world. This story is, in my view, ultimately a coming-of-age story for Yuu. Not just romantically, but developmentally. She has to find her way in the world when everyone around her seemingly already knows their way. And, it is that journey that makes this story so special.

I hope you enjoyed this analysis! Sorry it was so long. Honestly, there was a lot more I wanted to say, but I ended up summarizing a lot to keep it as brief as I could. Chapter two is fewer pages so it'll be shorter (I hope). Speaking of, chapter 2 will go up on Wednesday, January 10th. Hope to see you then! ^-^

p.s. if you can fluently read Japanese and are interested in helping me on this project, please DM me!

p.p.s here's a cute bonus image from the end of the chapter!

[pygmi-cygni]

vent - functional literacy vs YA publication

this has been sitting in my head for years, really, but I'm so glad more people are starting to notice the effects.

YA novels have been slowly corrupting publishing strategy and overall, the literacy of readers.

DISCLAIMER

I am not saying people shouldn't read YA. Obviously, YA is a genre best suited for a certain age group (12-18). YA is fitted for the appropriate Lexile level of 12-18 year olds.

However.

More than half of YA readers are older than eighteen, most in their early to mid twenties.

Why is this a problem?

The accessibility, popularity, and easy reading level of YA novels is appealing to mass audiences. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it means that adults are not expanding their reading level. This is a troubling reality for advanced employment.

In a work environment, reading is content-appropriate and usually highly advanced. Employees need to analyze and maturely reason with product/client problems and find solutions. As you get older, the reading content is supposed to evolve to fit that mindset.

When adults are consistently reading below the expectation, it weakens their reasoning skills and makes them functionally illiterate.

About 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate.

What is functional literacy?

Literacy is the ability to read and write proficiently and at an age-appropriate level. Functional Literacy is the ability to reason and use reading/writing skills to connect topics to the world around you.

TLDR: literacy: I can read the paragraph. functional literacy: I can find the theme/deeper meaning of the paragraph and relate it to something contextually relevant.

Why is this bad?

An inability to reason and analyze means that employees and adults in general are less equipped to deal with age-appropriate problems. After a while, underperforming becomes a norm. In advanced fields of work like medicine and technology, this inhibits expansion and proactive care.

The YA industry has normalized a mediocre, basic structure of writing. A problem has arisen with the lexile level juxtaposed with the content level.

Plenty of 'YA' novels contain graphic content that is very mature and should be handled as such - namely, sex and mental health. In a lot of popular BookTok and 'mafia/forbidden romance' books, the reading and writing level is consumable for 14-18 year olds, but the content maturity is very adult.

Hence, mature topics are handled poorly and young people are exposed to very damaging material without proper education or understanding of real-life consequences. Similar to the sex ed crisis; when teenagers aren't given a proper explanation and education about impactful issues, they grow into uneducated and naive adults.

Does this show up in school?

Yes. yes, 1000%. I work as a TA for several of my professors and I tutor high school students.

I have noticed a resounding difference in reading and writing ability in the last five years.

When I was in the tenth grade, we read Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ayn Rand. it was expected that you could reasonably explain and hypothesize about themes, real-life examples, and differences between old and new world priorities.

I have talked to students that don't know what a theme is. They cannot analyze more than spelling and grammar. The writing quality they test into basically plateaus at 9th grade. Most popular media is a 9th grade or younger reading level. This doesn't prompt people to advance their reading skills, because 'they don't have to.'

This terrifies me, because there are so many occupations that require advanced lexile levels and adults just aren't meeting standard.

A large part of this has to do with the internet.

DISCLAIMER 2

I am not bashing the internet. I love Google. The only thing I have to say is that google has changed the way we think. Before google was more than a learning device, usually you would find a dictionary or a thesaurus to look up definitions.

I am Gen Z (I'll be nineteen soon) and I was raised with a home computer, but my mom insisted I use the encyclopedias first. When you go through the process of looking up the letter, then the cross section, blah de blah, it creates a kind of 'deep processing' where you get the context, definition, and application of the word/subject you're looking up.

When you google a word/subject, it gives you a surface level summary and a definition. Hell, you don't even have to spell the word right, it'll do it for you.

This also creates the spelling issues of most adults. With autocorrect and voice-to-text, spelling isn't a priority. I think my grade is the last that even did spelling sheets.

This is scary, personally.

I think in the future, educated positions will be replaced with AI and most people will fill in the jobs that don't require more than a high school diploma. In America, some states don't require a Master's to teach.

I suppose medicine, technology, science etc would still advance if we had AI to do it for us, but I can't imagine living as a species without the ability to think maturely. The dependence on everything else would be disturbing.

anyway thanks for listening xox

[mejomonster]

How did you learn Chinese, like did you use a specific program like Duolingo or did you take classes? How hard was it to read Priest's novels with where you were at in your language learning journey? I want to get back into learning (been wanting to since I watched The Untamed,) but I gave up about 8 months ago 😭

Hey ovo)/ so uh. That's a big question. I have a studyblr @rigelmejo so if you really want the full on journey lol its on there, steps i took and what I studied and progress and study tools I found and used and stuff I've linked for people.

For the shortest tip I can give you? Would be to check out the Heavenly Path site if you're interested in learning to read novels. You'll need to figure out your own way to study about 1000 common hanzi, basic grammar, and basic pronunciation (I link resources on rigelmejo), but after that point the Heavenly Path site has reading resources for graded reading, easier kids novels, easier manhua, webnovels by difficulty level, all the way up! So you can at that point just follow their recommendations and use reading tools they link (like Pleco and Readibu apps which I suggest you download asap - they include tools where you can click a chinese word when reading for translation and audio pronunciation and pinyin). So yeah at 1000 hanzi, just start reading from their suggestions! (Also consider downloading Bilibili Comics app as it has English and Chinese free manhua, so you can start reading manhua earlier, and youtube/viki.com learn mode and Any platforms with dual english/chinese subs and start trying to look up 1 word every 5 minutes or more as curious and practicing reading the chinese words in subs you've learned). I suggest you check out all pages on the Heavenly site, they link a ton of resources.

The short-ish version of what I did the first year I studied chinese? I fumbled a lot, read through an entire grammar guide summary in a few weeks here http://chinese-grammar.com/, watched some YouTube tone videos and went through a pronunciation guide here https://www.dong-chinese.com/learn/sounds/pinyin which took a week or two and I'd do it every few months, read through the book Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters by Tuttle publishing in about 2 months (I really liked their mnemonics to help me remember hanzi), started Ben Whatley memrise decks 1000 Chinese common words and 2000 common words (took about 2 weeks to finish one then I took a few months break then studied the other 1000, mainly focusing on studying new words and not reviewing until the last week if I had time - in retrospect I think learners would do better with the Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck but the memrise courses I used worked fine for me). I was watching cdramas as usual most weeks, English subs with the Chinese hardsubs on the video file like most youtube cdramas, with Google Translate app on my phone to look up a word every several minutes as curious. Once I was 3ish months in and learning the memrise Ben Whatley 2000 common chinese words, I read some Mandarin Companion graded readers in Pleco app then some more 300-600 word graded readers in Pleco. That gets me to like month 6ish. Then I started reading manhua and looking up words in pleco or Google translate when I needed to in order to grasp main idea overall (or was curious about a particular word). Kept reading graded readers in pleco.

Around month 8 I tried 天涯客 and 镇魂, both brutally hard. I was reading in Pleco in the Clipboard Reader (from websites) or the Reader tool (i bought it for like $20 dollars along with handwriting recognition, OCR, and expanded dictionaries). Mandarinspot.com has a good reading tool too that can add pinyin if you need it, and Readibu in some ways i prefer to Pleco depending on your particular reading needs on a given day. Tried a few easier webnovels, tried a pingxie fanfic 寒舍 which was hard but easier than priest novels (love that fanfic). I kept bouncing between webnovels then around month 10 天涯客 novels took about 1.5 hours to read through a chapter. At that point I brute force tried to read it or 寒舍 daily with 1 chapter a day, got 28 chapters in before i burned out with 天涯客 and 60ish chapters into 寒舍. It was about a year in. I cram studied 500 hanzi in some common hanzi deck with mnemonics I found on anki over a month, hoping if I improved vocab I'd read easier. I also was gradually trying to watch more cdrama with only chinese subs, around month 6 I finally watched Granting You a Dreamlike life full episodes with no eng subs (about 5-10 word lookups an episode), watched 15ish eps, then after that shows got less daunting to try watching.

A little over a year in Word of Honor came out and I watched it in chinese first because I was too impatient for eng subs. After that went decently I got braver about reading, tried Listening Reading Method (see @rigelmejo for those experiments), more stuff etc like extensive reading with no word lookups.

In retrospect I WISH I'd started with easier novels Heavenly Path recommended. However on the other hand? I've seen people who read their first cnovel with Pleco as early as 3-6 months in which blows my mind. So me picking hard novels to start isn't the Hardest thing in comparison lol. This past year (so at start of year 3 studying lol) I actually read like 10 things on Heavenly Paths easier recommendations and it helped immensely in filling in gaps in vocab and reading fluidity I had. So if you do pick a priest novel as your first novel and manage to chug through it without giving up, be aware "easier" novels may still have stuff you can learn later so don't rule them out as reading materials later on.

I've also seen people do literally no study except maybe some curious Google searches on hanzi or grammar or pronunciation, then brute force read novels in Readibu until they improved. A brutal way to do it but possible. (I really recommend at minimum learning hanzi are made of radicals though as it makes recognizing and remembering them so much easier).

I think the best thing I did for learning to read was just being Brave and Trying to read regularly. And it gradually got less hard.

[lurkingteapot]

thai language study update

Another year, another update.

I've hit three years since I first consciously got exposed to Thai recently, and I'm about 3-4 weeks from three years of having learned the alphabet.

I hit a really, really big slump at the beginning of the year, partially fuelled by a momentuos gmmtv shop fuckup. Didn't watch anything between January and June, hardly took any lessons (maybe one a month, if that), didn't log into my language exchange apps, nothing. Had one small irl convo at a restaurant in March, and the fact that I can recall that as the one thing I did probably speaks volumes.

But! Friends and I decided we'd take another trip to Thailand, and when preparations for that trip rolled around, so did my language learning mojo. I paid for a dictionary app. Watched 23.5 with my partner. Finished Last Twilight. Went back on the language exchange app. Actually texted friends I'd made in Thailand about maybe hanging out when I got there. And I went, and I did, and I HAD improved and I'm glad I went.

Where am I at?

I don't think I've improved a lot on the side of production. My reading has improved -- I'm actually reading a novel in Thai now, albeit a very easy to read, pulpy one. I need to find more ways to improve speaking, and I ought to write more, too. My listening comprehension needs more work, too -- scripted content is fine, mostly, but interviews, variety shows, or similar stuff still brings me up short way too often.

I kind of feel like I've hit a plateau, but I'll try keep chipping away at it. Probably start to challenge myself more, too ... we'll see.

[abby118]

Hi Abby, One thing I don't understand is the power scale. For example Odin seems much more powerful than Thor and Loki.

He seems to possess and know magic that not even Loki would know how to use, such as depriving Thor of his powers and giving Loki an Asgardian appearance, or the impositions he gives to Mjolnir. I also think I read somewhere that it would be the odinforce that gives gravity to Asgard?

But at the same time I don't understand why he didn't at least teach these spells to Thor who should be the successor to the crown.

Furthermore, I don't understand why in the war against Laufey he would have had such difficulty beating him, to the point of losing an eye. But then Thor seems very capable of destroying all of Jotuneim with his hammer and Loki simply kills Lufey by leaving him a spell with the scepter. Maybe they are script errors and the writers didn't think about it? Or am I just overestimating Odin's power?

Hey, everything you've mentioned here is really down to how you interpret it and I'll have to disagree with a lot of these statements.

Warning - long post

Now, I'm not gonna get too much into the details because I really don't feel like getting dragged into more discourse, but I'll start with the one that's perhaps the most controversial in the fandom - the supposed "spell" Odin put on Loki. I know that for some reason, people like this version, but I do not consider it canon, it just doesn't make sense to me. And before anyone jumps at this, no I don't see the book (Marvel Studios Visual Dictionary) as a relevant guide because oftentimes, the writers of such "additional" books aren't given every tiny worldbuilding detail (especially not the ones which weren't directly revealed in the movies) and thus end up making their own to put there. Does that make it canon? Technically, kind of, but not logically. It's the same as the T1 novel casually mentioning Odin's brothers even if the movie canon doesn't really hint at them (though that might be an inconvenient comparison as you can explain Vili and Vé better than said spell).

Why do I think this? Well, if you look at it from a strictly strategic point of view, it would be very risky/downright not work. We don't know whether Odin was already ill at the time of finding Loki, but would anything have happen to him during Loki's life, or simply after his inevitable death, the spell would fade and with it, the entire political scheme he had in mind involving Loki. From here on, I will be going into hc territory but this is how I see it. (You'd have to read my hcs about how I think magic works for this, but long story short, I don't believe it can be taught unless inherited.) I think, Loki, being a shapeshifter and someone with the predisposition to wield magic, shifted because he sensed that was needed for his survival when Odin held him. And I also think that was the final thing based on which Odin made the decision to take him in. Loki being one of the Aesir was exactly what Odin needed; being one of them, Loki wouldn't turn on them, he couldn't. I think that because this shift happened so early on in Loki's life, his body grew to see it as its natural state which is why he returns to it immediately after coming to contact with the Casket/the Jotun. If you look at it from a biological standpoint, Loki appearing as a born Aesir is much more than just skin colour change. The traits of the Aesir are so utterly different, involving things which are not present in the Jotuns at all (his original species can't grow hair (they don't need it), their eyes are completely different, so are their teeth etc. I could go on and on. His height changed, meaning he's got a different skeleton. That is a permanent shift have I ever seen one). That's a whole different species and even when he kind of shifted back for a few moments, he kept those traits. Now, I'm not saying that Loki's origins didn't leave a mark on his biology because they have (for example, look at the heat scans in TA, which might have been his recovery process after the torture he'd been through), but it is also canon (and obvious) he does feel cold, his breath shows up in Jotunheim (if we do see the novel as canon, then "Loki shivered and rubbed his arms".) etc. That is what I think about that one.

'Odin seems much more powerful than Thor and Loki.' 'He seems to possess and know magic that not even Loki would know how to use, such as depriving Thor of his powers and giving Loki an Asgardian appearance, or the impositions he gives to Mjolnir.'

Key word - seems. They didn't list their skillsets to you (you learn a whole lot of things when living as the prince of this realm heavily centred around magic for over a millennium and just because in these short few years, this sliver of their life spans, you didn't see something, that doesn't mean they're not capable of it, whether we are talking about Thor or Loki) and Odin is the king and I suppose with that comes access to Gungnir for example, to which is related a lot of Odin's power. If Odin is a magic user even without his staff, then just like Loki (or Thor, depending on how you view Thor's lightning) he will be specialised in areas other magic users are not as versed in; he had so much more time to study them if that is the case. (Just like Odin isn't capable of Loki's magic because they are different and most likely a result of different studies.)

'I also think I read somewhere that it would be the odinforce that gives gravity to Asgard?'

That sounds like another hc of someone who didn't think it through. I've never run into this piece of info but just think about how Asgard was created to begin with. They must have started with no king and nothing there, with the realm's crystalline core most likely generated by the presence of the Bifrost. You cannot inhabit such place if there's no prior gravity.

'But at the same time I don't understand why he didn't at least teach these spells to Thor who should be the successor to the crown.'

Again, depends on how you interpret magic and Thor's power.

'Furthermore, I don't understand why in the war against Laufey he would have had such difficulty beating him, to the point of losing an eye. But then Thor seems very capable of destroying all of Jotuneim with his hammer and Loki simply kills Lufey by leaving him a spell with the scepter.'

If I remember correctly, it was one frost giant for one trained Einheri, wasn't it? The strength comparisons. You cannot exactly compare Odin and Thor's physique, especially with the age difference and the difference in circumstances - Odin might have been already ill at the time of the war, their weapons are incomparable because each serves a different purpose and since the Asgard-Jotunheim war, they must have imporved the training + Thor does look like a gym overachiever, doesn't he? When it comes to Loki, they were in Asgard (a completely different climate), he had a major tactical advantage and you are comparing ice (again, in Asgard) to a highly trained mage who was wielding the king's staff.

[everythingisablog]

Dark academia wrapped in the beauty of Shakespeare: A reader's review on "If we were villains" by M.L. Rio.

Spoiler alert

1. Introduction: M.L. Rio's debut book, If we were villains, is her work of fiction. The story is emotionally charged, but the primary genres are romance and thriller, in my opinion.

2. Plot: The story is narrated by Oliver ten years after it has occured. It begins by casually highlighting the bond between seven friends studying at an elite art school. The slow progression of events that lead to the need for a murder is beautifully captured in words. It is simply blissful to watch how the seven actors connect with the characters they play and read about, most of whom are from Shakespeare's plays. Their relationships with each other all grow (and deteriorate) at precisely the right times. At first the story might seem slow paced but given the upcoming events the slow pace is worth the patience.

The chemistry and confusion between Oliver and James are completely realistic, yet beautiful. Furthermore, the realization of their feelings for each other, the period of denial, and the painfully late acceptance make them the best ship in the novel.

3.Characters: When discussing the seven main protagonists

Oliver: I think most of us can relate to him. How he isn't perfect, he's insecure and yet never talks about it is how most of us have felt at some point of our lives.

James: He is the perfect example of a "hero." He is patient, wise, sensitive AND good looking. We can all wish to be more like him (and yet we don't want to be in his place)

Meredith: Her personality is not for everyone. She is attractive, but perhaps only on the outside. I would not call her a negative character; she strikes me as more gray.

Alexander: Is the group's jokester. He can be irritable, but not harmful.

Filippa: Currently, she remains the group's enigma. Their knowledge of her family and life away from campus is limited. But she is a true and dependable friend. (I adore her connection with Oliver).

Wren: She is the group's sensitive angel. Richard's cousin and yet she is nothing like him.

Richard: A man capable of inspiring a whole book written about him. The horror started when he lost himself in the role he was playing, forgetting to return to reality. I believe the majority of his problems stemmed from his excessive drinking.

4. Language: The book is beautifully written, but I recommend that new readers keep a dictionary nearby. As someone whose first language is not English, this book may contain some heavy words, but they make the writing so much more beautiful. The careful use of Shakespeare's quotations and phrases adds rhythm to the reading.

Oliver even mentions at one point that Shakespeare was almost like a member of the group.

5.Conclusion: Overall, I give the book five stars and recommend it to anyone who enjoys dark academia, romance, and a massive plot twist. The book takes the reader on an emotional and event-filled rollercoaster.

[wildflower-otome]

I’ve been trying to gather every shred of English content for Wonderful Wonder World that I can get my hands on (I made a spreadsheet to keep track) and first off I am just so immensely grateful for people like you in the fandom who’ve been doing the Lord’s work and translating some of this stuff. However, there’s still 60 titles that I can’t find translated anywhere but I want to read them but I don’t know any Japanese at all. Someone on Reddit suggested I fill out Seven Seas’ reader survey and request some of these to be translated, so I did, but I was wondering if you had any other advice. Is it possible to translate a whole manga or light novel just with the powers of Google Translate and editing? Should I start trying to learn Japanese and, if so, are there any particular resources I should use and what would that timeline look like?

I think it is possible to use Google Translate to get a rough/approximate idea of something, but I think there would still be some inacccuracies and some funny sounding stuff just because machines don't necessarily get nuance/context in a way a human translator would. Or at least that's my experience from comparing translations for things in languages I don't understand haha. But it is still an option because learning a language can be a lengthy and time consuming process.

For my own translations, I'm pretty bare bones with it and don't really use any special software apart from a dictionary (google translate I only use if I want to double check that I've got the right interpretation of a line, and even then I take it with a grain of salt). For context I'm around N2 level at the moment as far as Japanese grammar/vocab goes, but I think even if you're at a lower level it's still possible, just may need to put in a bit more effort with looking up stuff/guessing from context etc.

How long it takes to learn can be hard to say exactly because it depends on the person (level of motivation, learning ability, method etc). When I first started off, I remember using the Genki textbooks, so I would recommend those. The TRY! 文法から伸ばす日本語 series is also pretty good too, and I've also found Kenneth G. Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters really useful for learning kanji. For more ideas there's also LearningJapanese on reddit if you're interested.

Not sure if you've seen them already, but @caffedrine also has a whole bunch of summaries for a few of the novels as well, maybe there's some other kind people that know of other HnKnA resource posts?

[not-the-aesthete]

The moon fascinates me.

My dear, serenade me.

Maybe a poem? Maybe just two lines of thought?

Hi everyone! It's my b'day and I thought about posting some writing of my own(yes, those two lines are written by me). When I wrote it, I was just sitting on my desk with my dictionary and just going through some words. Then I stumbled upon the word “serenade” and it has such a sweet meaning that I felt like I needed to use it somewhere right away. At that time, I was really obsessed with the moon(I am even now) so I started thinking about how I can use both “serenade” and “the moon” together. Then after a few moments, it just came to me and I wrote it! Hope y'all like it!

ser-en-ade /ˌserəˈneɪd/

noun (in the past) : a song or tune played or sung at night by a man outside the window of the woman he loves.

Isn't it sweet?

Anyways, I want to introduce myself :

Hi, I'm Prasee! You can call me Beatrix or Bea or Beax, whatever!

I'm from Assam, India.

I'm a student of science in my junior year of high-school. For more about my academics.

I'm learning Greek on Duolingo too.

I love coffee, cats & dogs, gilmore girls, anime, movies(ranging from horror to comedy to romantic to science fiction and more) etc etc...

I love reading books(ranging from novels to self-help to journalism to cybersecurity to science - kinda almost anything that helps me learn and interests me)...

I write poems or just lines sometimes and I sing(I'm kinda a singer and sometimes I do perform on stage).

I'm here to post my writings or writings that I like from other writers. (Please don't repost my writings with the #original in the post and if you do, do credit me or mention).

If you dm, I might not reply for hours or sometimes(if you're lucky) I'll reply in a second lol.

Also, pictures I use are from Pinterest.

And here are my insta accounts :

Public - not.the.aesthete (inactive)

Private - pxasee (inactive)

P. S. - I also have a studyblr @pxasee

Take care, tata! :3 <3

[rigelmejo]

I'm linking some of MoonIvy's reddit posts, in case you'd like to read about their language learning journey. They are awesome! They're one of the authors of the Heavenly Path Reading Guide! That guide is super helpful, and I followed a lot of it's advice (and Heavenly Path's recommendations) once I was starting to read more. Heavenly Path also has a ton of recommendations of things you can read that are different difficulty levels, so I suggest browsing their suggestions if you have no idea what to read.

Also, if you use Readibu app, the app can give you a rough estimate of the HSK level of the chapter you're reading (you'll just open the chapter you're reading, click the book icon in lower middle of screen, then click Stats. You'll see a Comprehension % by reader's HSK level). For beginners, I suggest you try to find novels that say 90% or more over the HSK 4 level, or at least 80% and up if you can't find anything easy at first. Once you've moved from graded readers to simpler kids novels like 秃秃大王, novels with a 90%+ comprehension at HSK 4 level above will be the next easiest for you to read. (Later on: if you're looking to extensively read and barely look words up, look for 95-98% comprehension at the HSK level you think you're roughly at). For example, I'm reading 盗墓笔记 and it's 93% comprehensible for HSK 5 level, 98% comprehensible at HSK 6 level, and my vocabulary range is between HSK 5-6 roughly so it makes sense I can read dmbj extensively if I want (without word lookups and still understand it), but still have several unknown words I could look up if desired.

From intermediate to native webnovels in 18 months (Some wonderful mentions of what MoonIvy read. I also read 秃秃大王, 大林和小林, and 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 and felt they were really good novels to read after graded readers but before novels like 盗墓笔记 and 撒野).

21 months of reading native books, and breaking into native platforms

Learn Mandarin Chinese to read danmei — it will be challenging but worth it

I can read novels without a dictionary after 3 years of reading danmei (Chinese boy love)

I reached 3,000 unique character knowledge by reading children's books and danmei (Chinese boy love) 

Some little notes of my own experience, I guess in relating to the journey others took. So: for me, I read stuff WAY harder than graded readers, when I initially tried to read webnovels. It was hard, and it probably made me feel more exhausted than I needed to feel. But it was motivating. So if you really enjoy X difficult novel, you can try to read it whenever, and keep reading it as long as you feel the desire to.

There was one person who shared their reading experience on the chineselanguage subreddit (I'm trying to find the post again) who read 撒野 after like 3 months of initial study. That's way faster than I would've tried! That's a huge spike in difficulty from knowing nothing to reading a novel with thousands of unique words in a few months! But some people just will find that they enjoy doing that, and it works for them, so don't be afraid to just TRY doing what you want to do and see how it goes. It might go awesome. And if it's so hard it's demotivating, you can always go look for something easier for a while.

I tried to read 镇魂 from pretty much my first month, and never got farther than a couple paragraphs until over a year of study. I'd take a glance at it once in a while, and see if it was easier to read, until one day it was 'doable' to actually try reading (while looking unknown words up). I tried reading 默读 from like month 5 onward, usually using a parallel mtl text and only picking up a few words, it was not doable to read until maybe 1.5-2 years into learning. I was already reading the mtl of 默读 because the english translation only had like 20 chapters back then, so I just would try to read the chinese original in small sentence pieces at times. Around 8-10 months I started trying to read 天涯客, and it kind of was doable in Pleco app's Reader as long as I looked up a lot of words. It used to take me 1.5-2 hours to get through a chapter, then over the next 6 months things got better and it'd take 1 hour then 40 minutes then finally 20-30 minutes per chapter. At the same time as reading 天涯客, I also read 小王子 around month 12 extensively (looking no words up) because I had the print book and wanted to practice reading extensively, I read 笑猫日记 by 杨红樱 read in Pleco while looking up words (which was easier for me to read than 天涯客 and helped me build up reading stamina and basic vocabulary a bit), and I read a pingxie fanfic called 寒舍 by 夏灬安兰. I read around 60 chapters of that fanfic, and 30 chapters of 天涯客, over those 6 months. 寒舍 was harder to read than 笑猫日记, but easier than 天涯客, so I would switch between all 3 stories depending on how hard/easy I wanted my reading to be. Eventually 笑猫日记 felt readable without word lookups, so I used 寒舍 as my 'easier' read and 天涯客 (and added 镇魂) as my harder reads. Then 寒舍 became readable without word lookups if I wanted (still had unknown words but they no longer affected my ability to follow the plot and most important details), so 镇魂 became my harder novel to read.

And that's pretty much the strategy I continued to use: I would bounce between a 'easier' novel I could read extensively, a medium difficulty novel I could just look keywords up with (if I didn't feel like looking up a ton of words) to understand, and a 'harder' novel I had to look up words in order to read. Maybe 2 years in (I don't quite remember now), I picked some 'easier' novels from Heavenly Path's recommendations with only 1000-2000 unique words, and read some of them to fill in gaps in my basic vocabulary (so looking up unknown words) and practice extensive reading with some of them. I think that was a really helpful decision, and improved my reading comprehension and stamina a LOT. If I could go back, I would've read a lot more 'easier' 1000-2000 unique word novels before trying to push right into the novels I did. But then, on the other hand? I think pushing right into 'difficult' novels helped me learn vocabulary to read priest's writing in particular, much faster, which was rough going at the start but now pays off because I find that author's stories have more words/phrases/sentence structures I'm comfortable with, and also a decent murder mystery/investigative vocabulary base which is helpful since it's a genre I like reading. Without all the 镇魂 reading I did in the past, I think 破云 would be almost incomprehensible to me. But instead, since I did read those investigative words a lot early on, novels like 默读 and SCI are now 'medium' feeling novels to me, and 破云 is harder but readable if I look words up.

[yasmijn]

The importance of consuming before producing

I have been thinking a lot about this idea. A friend once asked me about how to consistently write - back then I answered: you just do. Write. Anything that comes to mind, just write it down. Then it'll come naturally to you, you'll think less, and you'll get better at finding your words and structuring your sentences.

But the more I think about it, there is another crucial thing that you need to do and would greatly impact how you write: You need to read.

Read critically. Look up the unfamiliar words you found on your dictionary. See how the author positions his/her sentence. How they build suspense, how they scatter the important details here and there instead of writing them in bullet points. Understand how they are able to tell their story in such way that one is hesitant to pause their reading. Try to understand what it is about the writing that you like, what makes it so good and engaging, and find ways to replicate the same effect in your writing.

Definitely works in any kind of writings - whether it is a news article, a research report, a novel, a short story, a poem, an email, even a text! When you consume a writing, you don't just digest it as is. Ask yourself: What is the objective of this writing? What idea is trying to be conveyed to me? How is it done so efficiently? Or instead, why is this writing so bad? What can I do to not replicate this effect?

In a verbal medium, you should also start by learning to listen. Listen and learn from the other person - What ideas are they trying to convey? How do they structure their ideas? How to convey them in a way that does not intimidate or offend the other person?

I do think that speaking is a lot more complex than writing as a choice of communication. I mean, people basically have to write things down before speaking them - whether with a literal pen on a piece of paper or an imaginary one in the back of your brain.

Let's start reading and listening more mindfully, and critically.

[sizzleissues]

Are you currently reading anything?

Be prepared for an onslaught because I am not normal and I read several things at once and that’s not even counting fanfiction! These were all started within this year and I plan to finish them before next!

First section - Sizzle pretends she’s smart and knows things (non-fiction)

A village in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd - very readable and I highly recommend! Really deepened my understanding of the life of ordinary people during the Third Reich. On my need to finish list

How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch by Harry Cliff - Wonderful and I learned a lot about particle physics from what I’ve read so far!

An Emotional Dictionary by Susie Dent - What is on the tin, words to describe common feelings that you might not have known existed. Less of a read and more of a resource but wonderful nonetheless.

For a recommendation of non-fiction that I would read again, Sapiens : a brief history of humankind and Homo Deus : a brief history of tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Second section - Sizzle is a contemporary YA reader through and through (she swears she reads many genres not just YA romance, you caught her at a lacklustre month guys) (she wanted to slam her face into a wall reading Lord of the Flies - she gets its a satire, did not help the feeling) (fiction)

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston - rereading with the movie out. As remarkably witty and swoony as ever

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - rereading as well because it’s my favourite book by the author. Fun time all around

There’s a couple others but it think I’m dnf-ing them because I know my worth. Please throw me some good older thought-provoking fiction my way I need it >_<. I recommend Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson - gripping murder mystery novel in a writing style I adore (:

Final section - Sizzle faces the haunting sight of her ao3 marked for later list (fanfiction)

All the Missing Pieces by @uptoolateart - I will sing its praises from the rooftop. Amazing exploration of Adrien’s character and how canon things and the sort of au the fic is set in affects things in his future. Love me some adult Adrienette with kids expansion pack

Bon voyage by @keeperofthebox - Quickly ascending the ranks of my favourite fics with each chapter. I love seeing Adrien struggle I guess >_<

Of course I have plenty of other fics marked that I have yet to read or finish because a.time or b.they’re ongoing still.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk and wish me luck in finished all this by December.