#I used to read articles on topics that I was familiar about on Wikipedia in Spanish

[serial-experiments-rain]

I absolutely love reading Wikipedia articles in different languages, I read an article on chaos theory in polish, I did not understand a single word, but it was interesting.

Net zero information

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

If you had to pinpoint the main issue of MLB, the root of all evil if you may (aside from Astruc), what would it be?

If we're going super high level, it would be narrative consistency (I believe this is a synonym for "narrative coherence" or, at least, I've always used them pretty interchangeably and googling one finds you stuff on the other). I wanted to get an official definition of this term and wikipedia gave me this from a larger article on the theory of narrative paradigm:

Narrative coherence is the degree to which a story makes sense. Coherent stories are internally consistent, with sufficient detail, strong characters, and free of significant surprises. The ability to assess coherence is learned and improves with experience. Individuals assess a story's adherence by comparing it with similar stories. The ultimate test of narrative sense is whether the characters act reliably. If figures show continuity throughout their thoughts, motives, and actions, acceptance increases. However, characters behaving uncharacteristically destroy acceptance.

I also found a pretty good overview of the topic on the blog of a random editor. You can follow that link to read the whole thing, but I wanted to highlight this section on characters as I thought it was particularly relevant to the stuff I talk about on this blog:

Your characters will have their own personalities and behaviours that the reader will become familiar with as the story develops, so if you deviate from these patterns, the reader will notice. That’s why it’s important to maintain character consistency – that they would act in a way that is right and in keeping with their personality, rather than making them act out of character to make elements of the story fit.

As you can hopefully see from the above sources, the stuff I've talk about on here, and just generally thinking about the show, most of the issues with Miraculous have to do with the show being narratively incoherent. Characters do whatever the writers want them to do. Plot lines get dropped and picked back up then dropped (Lila) with no rhyme or reason. Big, meaningful setups lead to nothing (Gabriel learning all the temp heroes identities). Twists come out of nowhere (Kagami being a senti). They all indicate that something is majorly wrong here.

I am not involved in the production of this show, so I cannot tell you where all of these issues come from. It may be that the writing staff doesn't know what they're doing or it could be that unknown forces like marketing are driving the writers to do things that they'd rather not or it could be a mix of the two. For example, I'm pretty sure the magical charms we get in season four were only added to sell stuff like this and this, which is why I try to approach this show without pointing fingers at anyone too specific unless there's some hard evidence to back up what I'm saying. All I know is that this show has a massive writing problem and I'll end with a little advice on how I avoid this issue. It may or may not work for you. It all depends on your writing style.

When you sit down to write a story, it's very normal to not have a clear path for how to get from story point A to story point B. You don't need to find that path before you start writing. You just need to keep in mind that B is your goal and start figuring out how to logically get there.

I often describe this process as taking a journey with a known destination, but no planned route. However, just like with a road trip, the further you go, the more limited your options become because of the choices you made. If you skipped stopping at an interesting city or landmark, you can't change that fact and we're not turning the car around just so you can get a picture next to the big ball of string. You had your chance and you missed it. Accept that and move on.

Similarly, as you write your story, you have to own the choices you've already made on your journey. If you choose to let a character in on a massive secret (Alya learning Ladybug's identity), then you have to fully own how that choice would impact all elements of the story (Alya's opinion of Lila) not just the short sighted elements you wanted it to impact (note how Lila's not a thing in season four? Almost like they didn't plan out how to handle her and Alya at the same time?) Own the route you committed to and find a way to tell the next part of the story in a way that feels like it's on the same route and you'll be fine.

Does that mean occasionally having to give up on cool ideas that you really liked? Yep, but that's the nature of story telling. It's part of the reason why people are told to "kill their darlings." That's just a thing you have to learn to do if you want to be a good writer.

[thingsarentgreat]

Beware of propaganda coming from multiple angles.

You Are Not Immune To Propaganda has become a meme, but remember that it's frighteningly true. Read the articles, not just the headlines. Then read between their lines. Carve out some time to do a little research for multiple sources.

Decolonize Palestine is a good source that's been going around lately. There is also a lot of easy-to-access information on Wikipedia regarding broad overviews of wars, their inciting incidents, their outcomes, their treaties, who benefitted from what, etc. If you can go the extra mile, please use it more as a springboard to access the primary sources listed in their "External Links" section. I've linked a lot of Wiki entries in the following paragraph to introduce topics.

Look into the history of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict to at least familiarize yourself with an overview of Palestine's internal and external struggles against Israel's colonialism. Know about the 1948 Palestine War, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1967 Six Day War, the 1987 First Intifada, the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, the 2000 Second Intifada. Pay attention to the numbers of civilian casualties listed in each of those war articles, too. Take a minute to learn what Fatah is in comparison to Hamas, when the last time an election between the two was held (2006), and then which of them currently runs Gaza. Try to look both further back and further forward than that. Not everything is in this post. This is one of the world's longest continuing conflicts.

"I don't want to do homework and this is really complicated" ok well it is complicated but it is also required reading for you to participate in the class discussion, even if you just take 30 minutes on your lunch to skim a little more than a headline or Twitter post. You gotta inoculate yourself with knowledge of history. Like I said, the sources linked here are mostly Wikipedia for broad overviews - scroll to the bottom and find their primary sources. Look up these topics on your own and find more sources.

I'm saying ALL of this not only because it's important on its own, but also because as expected, every damn right-winger and conservative war hawk is using the most recent tragedy as a way to ramp up Islamophobia, while white nationalists are using it to ramp up antisemitism. It's the same type of game plan deployed again and again to take advantage of sorrow, fear, and outrage following intense violence. They want to channel it into hatred of an ethnic group instead. They want your support to pursue more violence against that ethnic group while cloaked in the name of retaliatory justice and peace.

Remember that your enemy is not Islam nor Judaism, nor innocent Palestinians trying to live, nor innocent Israelis trying to live - your enemy is and always has been the states which oppress the people trapped under their boots. Making sure you blur the separation is part of the game-plan.

[fiercynn]

perspectives on แผลเก่า | plae kao, aka kwan riam or the scar: a summary of analyses in english

so while working on my bad buddy fake dating fic traffic was slow for the crash years, i got interested in learning more about the play that the architecture students put on in pat and pran’s second year: แผลเก่า | plae kao (alternately romanized as “phlae kao” or “plae gow”, and translated into english as “the scar”, “the old scar”, “the old wound”, or “kwan riam”).

i tried to find out as much as i could about the story, and somewhere along the way it stopped being about fic research and more just about my own interest in film – especially when i started reading analyses of two of the film adaptations of the story, and, in particular, the role that the 1977 film adaptation had in thai cinema and history. there's a lot out there about the impact the film had domestically in fostering thai nationalism, and also in presenting a specific view of thailand to international audiences. so i thought i would share what i found for other english-speakers who are curious but, like me, don’t speak thai!

caveat that i've obviously missed the vast majority of analysis on the films from scholars and writers writing in thai, and my sources are overly-reliant on non-thai authors (i believe two out of the six analyses i read are by non-thai authors).

there have been many adaptations of the story, but i've included only the ones for which i could find substantial information in english.

ORIGINAL 1936 NOVEL written by mai muengderm; i unfortunately could not find much in english about the novel.

1977 FILM directed by cherd (also romanized as choed) songsri and starring nantana ngaograjang as riam and “ek” sorapong chatree as kwan, this is the classic version of the story that most people seem familiar with. the film set the record at the time for the highest-grossing thai film and was one of the first thai films to win a major international award. you can read a synopsis of the film on its wikipedia page and watch the trailer with english subtitles, plus you can read about the film’s restoration when it was rereleased in thai theatres in 2018.

it seems fairly well-established by critics that director cherd songsri’s intent in making แผลเก่า | plae kao was to cement an idea of “thainess” that was based in certain characteristics (folk-derived, agrarian) and values (traditional, buddhist, anti-communist, and anti-westernization), and that the film was promoting this image both to thai citizens and to international audiences as an expression of thai nationalism in the late 1970s (which was operating under authoritarian regime). he said this about his intent:

“when i produced แผลเก่า | plae kao, i used the slogan 'we must show thai traditional style to the world.' this produced a great deal of negative sentiment towards the picture, because some people believe that this is not a topic to be shown on film. i am a stubborn person though, and once i set my mind to including this in my films, well it's been in every film I have ever made. the press is always asking me when i will make a contemporary film, but now, no one is asking.”

beyond that, i found a lot of interesting examinations of both the film itself and the larger context it existed in within thai cinema:

"the pastoral romance returns": a 2018 review of the restored film by kong rithdee for bangkok post that discusses cherd’s intent and posits that the film’s popularity with thai audiences came from a nostalgia for a “simpler” past during a time of political turmoil in the 1970s.

"thai cinema since 1970": a 2001 article by anchalee chaiworaporn for film in south east asia: views from the region that characterizes critique of แผลเก่า | plae kao:

“some thai critics see cherd as promoting just the image of thailand that foreigners want to see – an exotic traditional eastern society. but to be fair, it must be said that cherd himself would see his repeated attempts to create a sense of traditional, often rural, pre-modern thailand, as an important work of cultural resistance, an attempt to delineate the thai personality and its basis in rural life and rural traditions, and to examine the importance of buddhism as not only a religion but as an element significantly shaping thai character” (p. 153).

"cold fire: gender, development, and the film industry in cold war thailand": an unpublished 2017 phd dissertation by rebecca townsend (who, i should note, is american and does not appear to be of thai or southeast asian origin herself) for cornell university, which goes further in critiquing แผลเก่า | plae kao, using the lenses of gender and nationalism. the dissertation looks at how thai cinema functioned during the cold war era as a nationalistic tool of thailand’s monarchy and authoritarian governments, as well as of u.s. influence. films like แผลเก่า | plae kao, townsend argues, were used to construct the image of an “ideal thai woman” who was passive, virtuous, traditional, and apolitical – quite in contrast to actual thai women of the time – and this “ideal thai woman” was seen as the bearer of thai authenticity and essential to the national cultural identity and national security during the cold war. riam, in townsend’s analysis, represents the tension in thailand in the 1970s between romanticized nostalgia for a rural, traditional thai heritage and the reality of development, urbanization, and the threat of westernization.

"phantom light: to save and project": a 2020 piece by imogen sara smith for film comment that discusses films shown at a series on lost film hosted by the museum of modern art in new york city, including แผลเก่า | plae kao. interestingly, this piece notes that the film includes a subplot of where a visiting theater company performs a stylized melodrama that echoes the larger story, which i found fascinating given plae kao’s role as a story within a story in bad buddy. so many layers!

2014 FILM directed by m.l. pundhevanop dhewakul and starring “new” chaiyaphol poupart as kwan and “mai” davika hoorne as riam. you can read a summary and watch the trailer with english subtitles. some analyses of this version:

"the romanticization of scars": a 2014 film review by kong rithdee (who also wrote the first piece on the 1977 version linked above) for bangkok post, which compares this production to the 1977 version and finds it lacking, largely because the context in which it was made has a “psychological distance” from the source. kong alleges that the film is “hyper-romanticized”, both in acting and post-production, and hypothesizes that this approach was deemed necessary to reach modern audiences.

"a love idealized and its scars revisited in ‘plae kao’": a 2014 film review by prae sakaowan for coconuts bangkok that has a different take, praising the production for its “vintage appeal” and its “irrational, full-hearted embrace of romantic love”, focusing less on how the film functions socially.

2018 AMATEUR STAGE VERSION not analysis actually, but a half-hour video of a (possibly student? i couldn’t find much information about who put it on) stage version. unfortunately ot does not have english subtitles, but i still enjoyed watching it! there are some elements of it that have been treated ahistorically, as dramatic interpretations of older stories often do, and the scenes of kwan and riam helped me understand their dynamic better.

so that’s what i've learned! definitely curious if others have thoughts, or know more about the story or any of the adaptations.

also yes i did read the entirey of a 283 page dissertation to learn more about this asldkjfldsjfls

[warriorbard2012]

Hey, got any tips/starting points for people who want to get into the DC comics with Maggie? Happy pride btw!

Hello Anon! Happy Pride to you as well! This is the first time anyone has asked me about comics, so I'm very excited to answer this!

So bear with me because this is a long answer, and I'm going to start by saying that the Maggie in the comics and the Maggie in the Supergirl TV Show are different characters. And while they have similar characteristics and values, they also have a lot of differences. So if you are looking for comics that deal with the familiar Maggie from the TV series, you will be disappointed because there are none. (But there is a lot of fanfiction of the TV Show Maggie, which helps with that disappointment, I've found. *wink*)

But if you can put aside the TV show version and want to understand where the character of Maggie Sawyer comes from, then there are several places that you can start.

The first one is at the very beginning. Which is Superman Vol 2 #4 (1987), where Maggie was first introduced. She was a frequent reoccurring character in the Superman series and was his primary police contact for a while. Her back story is explained chiefly during her Superman run, including her coming out story.

Maggie also became the main character in a four-issue series called Metropolis SCU, which won a GLAAD award in 1997. And then she was the main character in another four-part series called: MAGGIE SAWYER, SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT. This series was the first time a major comic book publisher (DC Comics) had a heroine that was an out lesbian. (A fact I didn't know until I was researching this answer... I thought Kate Kane or Renee Montoya held that title, oops.)

Then, in the mid-2000s, Maggie was transferred to Gotham and became a significant character in the Gotham Central series, along with Renee Montoya. And she is featured in a few other significant Batman storylines, such as Batman: No Man's Land, Infinite Crisis, and 52.

This brings me to option two; you can skip everything I mentioned before and start with Detective Comics #856 (part of the Batwoman Origin Comic Elegy), where Maggie meets Kate Kane. Maggie then becomes a significant part of 2011 The New 52 Batwoman Series. This is where I first met the character and fell in love with her. There is enough of her backstory here explaining that I felt safe understanding who she was. I enjoyed her story with Kate, even if the ending of that particular run is a bit controversial (but that's a topic for another day.)

The last option I give you is to start with DC's Bombshells, a four-volume series, and Bombshells United, a 3 volume series, which is an alternate reality where female superheroes guard the homefront during WWII. Not only is Maggie a character, but all of your favorite DC female characters are there, and this comic is very queer and features a host of Sapphic love between various heroes. (I highly recommend this series in general, because it's so good. )

In conclusion, I sincerely hope that this list helps you find a starting point that helps you dive deeper into the character of Maggie Sawyer. Feel free to message me back and let me know what you think! Happy Reading! :)

Also, here are a few articles(which do contain spoilers) that I used as references in writing this list: https://www.dc.com/blog/2022/06/24/sapphic-planet-the-many-loves-of-d-cs-bombshells

[bookishgalaxies]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐮𝐳 𝐍𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐚

summary: When Luz Noceda gets her Hogwarts acceptance letter in the mail, she was over the moon. Little did she know that a Hogwarts acceptance letter meant more than just the chance to learn magic.

pairings: luz noceda x amity blight, hunter x willow park, and eda clawthorne x raine whispers

type: ongoing story, updated 1.8.24

warnings: none

a/n: been twirling this idea around in my head for awhile, finally decided to write it.

Luz Noceda had no idea that her day was about to brighten and her life was going to change. The walk home from her mom’s place of work was like every other; filled with trees and quaint looking houses. The summer air was fresh and for once the sky wasn’t just bright blue, but partially covered with clouds. Luz knew her house was near when she saw the familiar sidewalk chalk scribblings her neighbour’s had made of unicorns and dragons flying through the air. She approved of the colourful palette and crazy style used by the nine year old artists. Luz would give anything for her life to be filled with adventure, colour, and chaos.

Arriving home, Luz propped her bike against the front porch and opened the door, being careful not to step on the mail that had been dropped through the slot on the house door. Running upstairs to put her satchel and jacket down, she came back down to place the mail on the kitchen counter for her mom. Luz wouldn’t have taken any interest in the mail if it wasn’t for the fact that she spotted her name in the stack of envelopes and brochures. Her name was written in a beautiful cursive with forest green coloured ink.

The letter was in a cream coloured envelope, closed by a crimson wax seal. Luz spent at least three minutes tracing the crest that had been stamped into the wax in wonder. Finally deciding to break the seal, she pulled out the letter and almost collapsed.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Hieronymus Bump (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Luz Noceda,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Eda Clawthorne Deputy Headmistress

Luz had no words, what kind of main character event was this? Was she going to be the next chosen one? The next hero burdened with glorious purpose? It was all unclear, but she knew at the very least she needed to figure out what Hogwarts was and who this ultra-powerful Principal Bump guy could be. Her brain was already five steps ahead of her, forgetting about the fact that the letter could have been a fluke or a sales tactic.

She went straight to the best source for all research topics that were oddly specific: Wikipedia. The article for Hogwarts was long, which Luz considered to be a good thing. It meant more information and possible lore.

After scrolling, drawing, and pondering for a while, Luz had a scribbled guide and a bike route mapped. A quick note was scribbled on the back of a coupon booklet that read:

Be home by dinner, I went out on a bike ride. Love you mami!

Finally arriving at the place Wikipedia had described as “a run-down bar named The Leaky Cauldron”, Luz locked her bike against a light post and ventured inside of the place that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years.

Stepping into the pub was an experience Luz could have lived without. It smelled strongly of alcohol with an undertone of damp dust. It was bustling with people in robes that looked to be decades old. Luz scanned the room with determination to find someone who looked remotely in charge. Finally settling on approaching the old man sitting by the bar who looked like he had potential to be wise.

“I need directions to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry please!” Luz stated, proudly holding up her acceptance letter to the school.

The old man looked at her quizzically, then laughed a breathless laugh. He was balled and hunched over in a chair, as if he was barely holding on to life. He pointed to a man with a soft face sitting at a table across the room and yelled to him.

“Longbottom! Show the muggle-born to Diagon Alley!” The man, known as Longbottom, whipped his head around, nearly falling out of his chair.

He got up and said something to the white haired lady sitting across from him before making his way over to Luz. He bore a “Hi, my name is:” name tag on top of his knitted sweater. Luz read that his first name was Neville,

“Are you a real wizard? Can you do magic? Do you have a wand?” Luz bombarded him with questions the second he was close enough to hear her.

“I-yes, my wand is uhm,” he he held up the stick-like object and showed it to Luz “I was never one for flashy spells though. Always was better with plants.”

Luz looked in amazement at the wand that was held out in front of her. Her eyes flicking up to his, she nearly jumped when she said.

“Show me where I need to go to get one of those!”

Neville spoke to her as he lead her to the back of The Leaky Cauldron. He told her about where they were going, how it was full of magical stores. Instructing her to pull out her list of items attached to her letter.

“So we aren’t going to Hogwarts?” Luz asked, her voice taking on a bit of disappointment.

“You won’t ride the train to Hogwarts until September 1st. Right now, I’m taking you to Diagon Alley.” Neville replied, tapping a series of bricks with his wand.

Luz squealed with excitement as she saw the bricks magically unfold. The pitch of the squeal causing the man to briefly place his hand over his ears. She ran past him into the bustling street and stopped to take it all in.

Shops lining the street with intriguing names like 2nd Hand Brooms and Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. Each of there’s signs hanging having a different shape and colour. At the end of the alley there loomed a large building with a statue of a dragon sitting atop of it. Luz let her mind wonder if anyone had ever climbed on top of the building and sat on the dragon?

“Luz! Over here!” Mr. Longbottom called, waving her forward.

The next few hours could only be described as pure bliss for Luz. Trading her muggle money for nice wizard coins, trying on robes that made her feel like a true witch, and picking out the right quill in which she would be doing all her writing with.

Luz was completely mesmerised with her wand. The multicoloured, eight inch stick with a phoenix feather core was now her most prized possession. Ollivander, the ancient wand shop keeper, had handed it to her with a warning. Telling her to not get her hopes up since phoenix feather wands are picky about their owners.

She followed the instructions the shopkeeper gave her for casting a simple illumination spell. The light that came from the end of the wand could only be described as radiant. Luz swore she couldn’t see for a split second afterward. Seemingly from Ollivander’s expression, he hadn’t been expecting that.

“Did I do something wrong?” Luz asked nervously.

She didn’t know what the right wand was supposed to feel like. She did know, however, that she wanted all her magic to feel like what it just felt like: natural. She was delighted when the white-haired man looked at her and spoke in a knowledgeable tone.

“The wand chooses the wizard Ms. Noceda. That one has chosen you.”

Luz almost combusted out of excitement right then. Putting the wand back in its box and giving Ollivander the appropriate amount of money, Luz strides out of the shop with the largest smile on her face.

“So what kind of wand ended up choosing you?” Neville asked as he walked with her back down Diagon Alley.

“I think the wand maker said it was made of Phoenix feather?” Luz recalled

“I knew a kid in my day with a wand like that. He was quite the hero.” Neville commented

Luz’s stomach made a sound that could only be compared to a roll of thunder. Thinking back on her day, she remembered she hadn’t eaten since the late breakfast of cinnamon waffles she had with her mom. Luz had a funny way of forgetting to eat when she became hyper focused or busy.

After Neville heard this he offered to take her to the best ice cream shop the wizarding world has to offer. Of course Luz delightfully obliged. Feeling her mouth water as they entered into the shop with tables and chairs scattered throughout the place.

Sitting down, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She almost declined the call before she realised it was her mother, then quickly answered it. Greeting her mother, hoping her mom wouldn’t sense the bit of nervousness in her voice. Her mom talked for about a minute or two about how she would be running late and wouldn’t be home until around 7:00. Telling Luz to not wait if she wanted to make dinner for herself and giving a swift goodbye.

Holding the phone to her ear for just a second longer before her mother hung up, Luz locked eyes with someone. That someone being a green haired girl who looked around Luz’s age with enchanting golden eyes. The eye contact was brief however, as a woman that resembled the girl stormed out of the shop. Luz assumed the beautiful girl was her daughter as she scurried off after her.

Placing her phone back into her pocket, she took the ice cream Mr. Longbottom had bought her. It was pink with chunks of what looked like strawberry in it. Tasting it, Luz decided she never wanted to eat any other ice cream again. Even wizard ice cream was delicious! Much better than the ice cream that her mother always bought from the market. It was creamy and sweet with the perfect amount of strawberry flavour.

She spoke with Neville for a bit about his life and what Howard’s was like. He told her he taught Herbology at the school and was looking forward to seeing her around the castle. Telling her to keep her eager and curious spirit. He offered to introduce her to the divination teacher, who happened to be his wife. Luz liked her name, Luna Lovegood, it had a nice ring to it. She asked question after question until she observed the sun starting to set, realising it was time for her to head home.

Bidding Neville a goodbye and a thank you Luz set off back home with all her wizarding gear.As she unchained her bike from the lamppost outside of The Leaky Cauldron, she was happy her mom had her put a backer on it for grocery runs. It made carrying all of her home things much easier.

The evening air was crisp as Luz rode home, blowing her dark brown hair from her face. The time was 6:04 last she checked, which meant she was pushing it with getting home and putting her stuff away before her mom arrived. If wasn’t that Luz didn’t intend to tell her mom….it was just that she wanted to do it without a pile of unconventional school supplies in her arms.

Arriving home, Luz propped her bike against the front porch of her home, carrying all of her things in her arms. She could barely unlock the door without dropping anything. Closing the door with her foot, Luz raced to her room, shoving all of her things in the back of her closet. Making sure to not break a single thing and leave the books at the front of the pile so she could grab them later. September 1st was going to be an interesting day when it eventually came.

thank you so much for reading !!

remember to stay hydrated and rest well !!

[almsspring2023]

Weekly Challenges support group

The Weekly Challenges support group provided me with various weekly tasks and a fun range of ways to improve different aspects of my English!

I really wanted more groups but as my time is limited, I decided to pick the Weekly Challenges Group as it was possible to fit around my existing schedule. I think this was the case for many others as well, judging by the introductory posts thread! But more about that in the next paragraph. For now, I wanted to say it was very nice to be able to have a group with at least some level of interaction and support but at the same time for it not to be tied to a time and/or a place. For a busy university student, this kind of thing is a luxury! I have some trouble with carrying out independent work, but this kind of thing where you can choose a task from a list and complete it whenever (within the weekly deadline) was surprisingly fun and painless. It was also interesting as we had to also come up with a challenge every week as well!

I was supremely busy the week this group started, so I did get a bit of a late start as I didn’t notice the first task in time. The first task was to write an introduction on the thread, and to comment on three other people’s introductions, which I did. The introductory post was supposed to contain something about your studies, ALMS goals, and the reason for choosing the group. I never know what to write in these things! My interests even within my studies are pretty varied and hard to pin down, but that’s basically what I wrote, so not very helpful. But that’s the geography student life. It was interesting to read the others’ posts as well, and I did notice many of us picked this group for its flexible hours. But the group members were of many different fields of study and ALMS goals!

First Challenges

I’ll count the first actual challenge as the first one, even if we technically started with the introductions. For my first challenge I posted one about reading the news. I challenged people to read the news in English instead of Finnish and linked a bunch of example sites. I personally read a ton of news daily and I like to browse different sources for global news and different points of view. I do this in a very on-and-off pattern – sometimes I browse more global news in English, sometimes I just read the Finnish sites. Either way, I tried to pick some sites form different sides of the world on my suggested news sites list. It contained 9 different news sites links, mostly Great Britain and U.S. based news outlets, but I did try to get some from different continents as well. Some of these I like to browse myself as well, like Reuters or Al Jazeera International.

For the challenge to complete I picked a vocabulary challenge, for finding some unfamiliar words and writing sentences with those. The person who set the challenge provided a website link with a bunch of academic words, but I was familiar with most of it. I did find a financial term I wasn’t too familiar with and that led me to look up some financial jargon, because why not. Finances aren’t something I know a lot about, vocabulary-wise (or who am I kidding, not in any other way either). I found a lot of words I didn’t really know (in my first language either, for the most part) and wrote a paragraph of five sentences with as many of the more complex words as I could fit in.

Second Challenges

For the second week, I challenged people to have an entire conversation in English. They could either come up with it themselves, or rope in another person to talk to. I did recommend talking it out loud, though. I also added an idea of clicking a random Wikipedia article for the discussion topic, but maybe that was a bit extra.

The challenge I completed was a fun one! It was to click a random coordinates generator and find out the travel instructions to actually get there and write those up. The coordinates the linked site gave me were in the Gulf of Mexico near Veracruz, Mexico. For a short summary, I found out the fastest way to get there is by flying to Mexico City and to go by plane or whichever other method to Veracruz. I also researched Veracruz a bit – a cool-looking place, established in the 1500s. To get to my coordinates far out in the sea, I figured I’d have to hitch a ride on a fishing boat or something.

I also did another challenge this week, which was to play a wordshake game (specifically this one: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/vocabulary/vocabulary-games/wordshake). In it, the game randomly gives you some letters with which you have to form any words you can come up with. Great for vocabulary training! I got a little bit addicted and played for 40 minutes or so. My best score was 73: the letters I got were very usable, and it was more about running out of time than not coming up with enough words. You can only write so fast when clicking letters!

Third Challenges

The challenge I set for the third week was to choose a song lyric or a poem and try to analyze the meaning or style of it. I also wrote some helpful questions for the pondering. Admittedly it was maybe a bit too complex, as I don’t think anyone picked it.

For this week’s challenge, I picked one that was to watch a movie and write a short review about it. I did watch an entire movie for it, specifically the movie Dog Day Afternoon from 1975. Special mention to the dialogue; it’s great. For the most part it feels very modern and not at all stale, but it’s good to know of some things like the Attica prison riot that is mentioned, a hot topic of the time. The movie is very 1970’s paced compared to modern movies, but it fits it well and it’s an interesting story based on true events. I really like the movie, and I might as well paste my review below:

“I watched the movie Dog Day Afternoon from 1975. Admittedly it was a re-watch, but it's been a while since I saw it the first time. I really like the movie, it has some choice dialogue and a good plot. Al Pacino pulls his role off really well, I'd say it's one of his best movies. It even won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay back in the day. It's based on a true story of a bank robbery in 1972 and the Life magazine article of it. Compared to more recent films it might seem a bit slow-paced as movies from the 70's often comparatively are, but that doesn't bother me whatsoever. It doesn't feel antiquated in its writing at all. I really recommend watching it!”

(I really do!)

Fourth Challenges

For my fourth challenge I went to my loved and hated word game, Semantle (https://semantle.com/). You can play it once a day, but you can also play the previous day’s puzzle if you missed it. There’s a good explanation on the site, but it’s a game where you try to guess a word by semantics, basically by its meaning, by using words that are measured on a hot-or-cold scale how close they are to the key word. I think it’s more understandable by actually going in and doing it. Just start inputting words and go from there. There is a hint-button you can click a couple times – but consider when it’s the most useful, as it’s uses are very limited! This game causes me pain because it’s very hard, but it really makes you think and scour your vocabulary and winning it is great, of course. Sometimes it’s also about luck. A good example is that I played it when I set the challenge, and for the previous days’ puzzle I could not for the life of me guess it even with the help of some synonym sites – I got very close but no dice, with over 150 guesses I could not crack it. Then I tried the next day puzzle and got it in 7 tries, because I happened to start with a useful word. There’s also a Junior version, which is a bit easier.

For the challenge I picked one that was about watching some sports with English commentary. As an ice hockey fan I tend to watch the NHL games at least around it’s the final rounds of the season, but I haven’t watched much lately as my favorite team did not do too well last autumn. I took this as an excuse to catch up on how they’ve been doing and really tried to listen to the commentators, especially. I watched the highlights of a couple of hockey games and actually ended up watching some hockey slang videos as well out of curiosity. While the commentators might say some stuff like “a one-timer” (shooting the puck directly off a pass without playing it) it’s the players who have very specific and fun terminology! Celly is a better-known word and pretty self-explanatory (the celebration after scoring a goal) but if a hockey fan is talking about a player’s flow, they don’t mean the players’ skills but their exceptionally long hair.

And that’s all the challenges I set and completed in period 3! It was fun doing very different things for the group, and a challenge in itself to come up with stuff as well. This group offered a fun spice of variety in my ALMS work. I don’t have much to comment I didn’t touch upon in my summaries above, so I’ll only add the number of hours I took completing these all, which is altogether roughly 11 hours of work added to the pile – including compiling this blog text.

[howtofightwrite]

When fighting a beast(Boar, Bear, Lion, Wolf, ect.) with a weapon, do you stick to the manuscripts, techniques, and disciplines that teach you how to fight other humans? Or do you just improvise and/or adopt a new style of fighting?

None of the above.

Hunting animals is an entirely distinct skill set and methodology from battlefield combat or dueling. In the case of boars, there was a separate kind of spear specifically designed for hunting them. The boar spear has a heavy cross guard designed to prevent the animal from migrating up the shaft and killing its wielder. That whole, bad ass moment when someone's been run through, but pulls themselves further down the blade? Yeah, boars will do that, and then kill you. In some cases, the animal will even survive the experience. Boars are not a joke.

I'm less familiar with the specific methodology for hunting boars, and what little I know about dealing with bears is from not wanting to kill it, and instead simply driving it off.

Wolves in Europe are an interesting topic, because they posed a threat human settlements. Even as late as the 18th century, there were still recorded instances of wolf packs killing multiple citizens. There's an infamous case in 1450 (I'm aware that Wikipedia dates this attack to 1439), where a pack of wolves reportedly killed forty clergy in Notre Dame Square, before escaping. They were later lured back into the square, trapped there, and picked off by a mix of bowmen, and thrown objects. While the Notre Dame killings are the most famous element of that story, the pack of wolves had been stalking Parisians for a few years by this point (that 1439 date is not completely wrong.) Most of these mass attacks (and this phenomena wasn't limited to Paris), tended to be late in particularly brutal winters (1449 to 1450 was one of these), which meant the wolves were starving, as were many of the people they preyed upon. (If you're interested in reading further on this, there's a lot of information on the “Courtaud” wolf attacks, and the full history is fascinating.)

There's also a story about German and Russian troops in The First World War, entering a temporary truce in the Vilnius-Minsk region (around the modern border between Lithuania and Belarus), to deal with an unusually aggressive, starving wolf population that was preying upon both side's soldiers.

Hunting wolves seems to have been a more ad hoc arrangement, finding ways to lure out, and eliminate the animals. Most of the wolf hunts that I find were either in cases where packs had become especially problematic, or with specific individuals.

As for hunting lions, I'm not familiar with that process at all. At least, not in a pre-modern context. I was under the impression that African lions weren't particularly prone to hunting humans, but, it appears I was mistaken. I'm seeing news articles as recently as last year talking about lion attacks on humans. Though, some of the interviews make this sound like it may be a modern side effect of the lions becoming acclimated to humans. With an estimated 20k remaining African Lions in the wild, and that number has been rapidly dropping, it's a bit of a messy situation.

There's an interesting side note in those news articles, one mentions that African shepherds used to carry (and may still carry) swords to deal with potential lion attacks. This is literally the only time I've ever seen someone mention using a sword to deal with a wild animal as the preferred weapon. This may relate to the specific circumstances where the shepherd is likely to encounter the lion, at relatively close ranges. Usually, the sword is undesirable, because it puts you in strike range of the animal, which is why I assume it's for close range encounters.

On a slightly more disturbing bent, there is a correlation between hunting animals and stalking and killing humans. Hunting most animals depends heavily on the hunter's ability to track the animal, predict and manipulate its behavior, and these techniques can be easily applied to tracking humans. Of course, humans are far more unpredictable, especially if they realize they're being tracked. Humans are harder to manipulate (though there plenty of examples of individuals setting traps by playing on “normal” human behavior.)

(I'm just going to add, when I say, “humans are harder to manipulate,” that could, absolutely, be self-delusion. I'm fully aware how easy it is to manipulate another person, especially with effectively baited traps, so I'm not completely sure we are more resistant to them than animals.)

So, a soldier will have a completely different skillset from a hunter. It's possible for someone to be both (for example, a soldier who learned to hunt before joining the military.) Scouts, and other irregular forces that operate away from the front lines. Maybe even ex-soldiers who've turned to banditry. However, the methods of hunting, are very different from fighting. Hunting humans can be applied even in military situations, just, not in open combat.

On that note, there is one hilarious historical footnote, where Australia attempted to go to war against the Emus in 1932. The Australians lost.

So, no, when you hunt an animal (human or not), that is entirely different from how you fight another human.

-Starke

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[cmyknoise]

i am almost 19, i live in the united states, and i can not emphasize how much i wish there was a ‘highschool 2′ 

i dont want to go to college just yet but i still want to learn things. and going to college wouldnt fix my yearn to learn, because truly i dont think i’d be learning in the way i’m talking about. 

because, at least all the colleges i’m familiar with and stuff, you go to college to learn how to apply knowledge for a career. you major in a field that can be applied to a job. but i dont want to learn that. 

i want to have a highschool 2 where i can chose the subjects. i can choose history or english or geography and instead of focusing on necessities like math or english, i get to focus on the subjects i like. 

i take a semester long course in history not for a job, but because i want to learn more about a country’s history or the world’s history or history about a certain era. 

i take a semester long course in biology, not because i want to go into a field to study it scientifically or medically, but because i just want to know how things work simply because it’s cool. 

i don’t want to go to school to take tests and exams and finals just to pass with something that would help me in a job. and like, i get that’s what college is for. but i really wish there was something like, as i called it, highschool too. 

where you can sit in classes like you do in highschool and just learn shit, except you get to chose what classes you want to take. 

i would love to learn about astronomy, herbology, human & animal biology, history, geology, literature, etc etc without it having the catch of ‘you will use this information to get a job or to teach other people this information’. 

i just want to know to know, and i try really hard to learn stuff by just researching fun topics because i like doing that! but i learned things so much better when i was being taught by people who were passionate about a subject. 

i would pay to go to a college-esk place where you can just learn to learn without being pressured into taking tests and exams and using what you learn to get a job. 

i plan to go to college eventually, either when i’m more financially stable to do so or when i move to a place where it’s not a lifetime loan level cost to do 4 years of school. i want to do something job wise with art of course but. 

i would still love to just, learn other things, simply because i can, and i love doing it, and i genuinely feel like that is something that just isn’t available or a thing anymore. when you go to school after highschool it’s expected to be used for a job. major in something you want to do for the rest of your life. 

but i want to learn about planets and the earth and history from all over the world and literature from all over the world and i’d like to learn various sciences and i’d like to learn how to do things like sewing or cooking or how to take care of animals or plants or basic medical stuff or just know about the human body because its cool or how evolution in animals and plants work. i just want to know things to know them but simply reading wikipedia articles and looking at various articles isn’t enough. i miss highschool because i miss learning in that setting and i wish it was an option to continue doing without the expectation to get a job. 

[theothin]

Exactly. If you ask someone about the commonality of something in a language they speak, and it's not something they've tracked or something where they've already heard the answer, they can't reliably give the right answer, but they'll probably have a gut feeling about some answers being more plausible than others. And all feelings are rooted in subconscious statistical analysis, regardless of the quality of the statistics and analysis.

Now, how do statistics factor into learning facts from a Wikipedia article? For one thing, if you're forming a strong belief that a thing is true because you read it on Wikipedia, you form that belief because you trust Wikipedia to provide reliable information on that topic. What does it mean to trust something? Trusting a source to provide reliable information is rooted in predicting that information it reports is highly likely to be true. Our brains form those predictions through statistical analysis, and they express those predictions through the feeling that a given source is (or is not) trustworthy.

Those predictions are, of course, not always correct. We can get bad data, by getting incorrect information on whether or not something a source reported was in fact true, or we can do bad analysis on the data we do have. If someone sees five claims from a source, and ultimately learns five of those claims to be true and five of them to be false, but they spend five hours thinking about the true claims and only five minutes thinking about the false claims, they could end up giving their brain 60 times as many thoughts associated with the true claims as with the false claims, and end up with the feeling that the source is significantly more likely to provide true claims than false ones despite that not being the case. But as flawed as it is, that is statistical analysis.

Brain-time ties nicely into another point where statistical analysis plays into learning a fact from a Wikipedia article: the act of reading. When we look at a set of words in front of us, what we're doing is taking in visual input data and assessing that the shapes we're looking at are likely to correspond to the words we interpret them. Sometimes, those words are very familiar shapes that we can assess with extremely high confidence. But we can also guess with less confidence about the words represented by unfamiliar fonts, handwriting, or spelling.

Now, when we look at that sentence...

Herbert S. Zim, in his classic introductory cryptography text Codes and Secret Writing, gives the English letter frequency sequence as "ETAON RISHD LFCMU GYPWB VKJXZQ"... different ways of counting can produce somewhat different orders.

...we don't give our brain just one data point represented. The human eye sees about 75 frames per second, so if you look at the sentence for one second, you're getting about 75 frames worth of visual data on it. Is that enough to memorize all the relevant information? Probably not. But the more you look at it, the more memory data you get. You can train your brain to predict that a thought of "the most common letters" will be followed by E, then T, then A, then O, then N, for however many you focus on teaching yourself. Personally I found it easier for the sections that look more like words, sequences where my brain attaches greater likelihood to subsequent letters following ones before it. ETAON? Sure. RISHD? Tougher, but manageable. LFCMU? What the hell is that?

It's all statistical analysis, so many layers of it. It's not always good statistical analysis, but bad statistical analysis is still statistical analysis.

I read a post about AI about how "oh it's just doing statistics on patterns so it's not really intelligent, look at this type of error it makes" and I thought it would be rude to reblog directly so I'm making my own post:

AI makes mistakes in the ways humans do. The way humans, like, create abstract thoughts, and weird bias and prejudice get into those thoughts, and this is why AI training needs to be very careful to not replicate human bias and frequently stumbles in this pursuit.

Like, yes it doesn't do everything humans do but it does some of the things, and isn't that wild? That we can create a machine that can create abstractions like humans can? That's incredible to me, like we have figured out how to make abstraction machines, and what is thinking if not abstracting!

This kind of error, of assuming that "object A must belong in category X because it is seen in the same kinds of contexts that I have learned things in category X belong in" is a very human mistake! AI falls for optical illusions, it often makes mistakes similar to the ones freshmen get wrong in exams, it is able to capture vibes and that's unsettling and weird and wonderful!

We have a machine that can probe a form of human pattern recognition that we've never been able to see before! And humans are masters of pattern recognition, it's our greatest quality. And we're being crept on by computers in this one aspect, like we were in so many others at different points in history.

[pumpkinpaix]

It was only when starting MDZS that I came across the terms “seme” and “uke.” To me these categories seemed too rigid and simplistic compared to actual gay dynamics I have observed. I wanted to ask whether such categorisation is truly reflected in the way gay Chinese people behave or is it just a stereotype?

okay so -- there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ve been sitting on this ask for months at this point but let’s give it a shot. to forewarn you, I found this ask really upsetting for a number of reasons, and I am. really kind of at the end of my patience with this fandom, so this is going to be harsh. please bear with me if you are in a space to do so.

so. seme and uke are japanese terms that come with their own genre conventions and such, even though they roughly mean top and bottom. you can read a little bit about it here under the “seme and uke” section on the yaoi wikipedia page.

the equivalent chinese terms are 攻 (gong1) and 受 (shou4). you might notice that the hanzi/kanji used are the same as seme and uke because i’m fairly sure the chinese terms were derived from the japanese ones. there’s a lot of cultural crossover in ACGN (anime, comics, games, novels) fandoms.

the use of seme/uke vs gong/shou does matter when it comes to anglophone spaces. because one of the facets of anti-asian racism in anglophone spaces is the way that people treat all (east) asians as interchangeable, the choice of which language to use for which media is important, even if the terms are linguistically equivalent.

it's a small thing, but even just saying gong/shou instead of seme/uke in this ask would have softened the blow a little. all of this information is easily obtained with a quick google search of "seme and uke" and "chinese version of seme and uke" and a little bit of analytical thinking. before you ask a random stranger on the internet to dispense cultural information, please do the minimum of research on your own.

with regards to the actual question:

I know this ask is old so maybe a lot has changed for you anon, but regarding this ask specifically, I’m going to ask you to think very hard about what you’re asking, who you're asking, and why you're asking it next time. for a start, I am not a gay chinese man. i have been very clear that I am abc, and i live and grew up in the states. That's not equivalent to "a chinese person who happens to be fluent in english". we are very culturally distinct, and there is absolutely no way that my background gives me any inherently privileged insight into the lives and culture of gay chinese men in china. why are you asking me to speak for them? why are you asking me to tell you about them? gay chinese men behave like individual humans. i am not your convenient tour guide into all things chinese just because I speak english. moreover, please remember that your experience, like mine, is limited. whatever observed "actual gay dynamics" you're talking about are a product of your specific position, location, age, culture etc. and it would be absurd to extrapolate your observations to generalize how all gay people interact with one another even in your specific culture.

I will be very honest: the tone of this ask evokes purity wank bait because of the wider context of the question. there has been a Lot of discourse surrounding the “roles” in danmei in anglophone fandom that essentially boils down to fujoshi discourse redux, which often has a lot of racist underpinnings and comes from an extremely white, western, misogynist, and identity politics-heavy perspective. i put links and such about fujoshi discourse in this ask if you aren't familiar, but I want you to understand that, regardless of your intent, my initial impression of this question (because of the context of these discussions) was uncomfortably close to "I'm better than those oppressive, uneducated straight chinese women who unrealistically fetishize gay men, right?" I am choosing to believe that this wasn't what you meant, but. to draw an analogy: would you ask me this question about twinks and bears in US gay culture? would you ask me if those labels/roles/categories were representative of the way US gay men behaved? what about top/bottom? if not, then why are you asking me about chinese gay men as if they're a different species?

if you can understand that top/bottom or bear/twink are not representative categorizations (though there are, of course, people who happily fall into them, self-identify as them, label themselves as such etc), why are you holding gong/shou to a higher standard?

I get that we're all in different places re: our cultural knowledge, but just. look, if you're coming to me with a question like this, the least you could do me is the courtesy of ten minutes of googling before you hit me with a racist microaggression right out the gate on a sensitive topic. As I said, I don't think you meant harm, but please try to be more aware in the future, okay?

(please do not dogpile anon in the notes, it's not constructive, thanks)

if you are curious about the lives of queer folk in china, there is plenty of interesting information out there in english as well. here's an article to get you started.

[enneamage]

do you think there’s a reason tubbo seems to be so ignorant beyond his privileged upbringing? like does his personality factor into his lack of knowledge/research about certain topics? it’s fairly hard to grow up as a teenager in this day and age and be completely unknowledgeable about certain world issues yet he is. is he just stubborn? does he just not care enough to look into it/does he not know of the right resources to look into things? is it some other reason entirely?

So, there’s layers to this one.

I'm actually not familiar with what “world issues” he seems to struggle with, other than the things that lead to the Tory allegations. Since I'm not a regular viewer I won't be able to give specific examples, but it looks like he falls into a broader pattern so I'll have a guess at that.

The question of how he hasn’t passively gained information because of his time on the internet might have something to do with his dyslexia. While there are more social video and audio platforms than there used to be, the majority of the internet is still written text, and when I think back on how I learned about “World Issues” and the general attitudes people had about them, it was 99% scrolling and reading.

Now I’m not saying he can’t read, but reading things is going to be more of a struggle for him than a simple, passive scroll on whatever the website he’s on, so he’s going to be more selective with what he pays attention to. In general, he may be someone who's learning style / way he needs to be taught is different from the post format of the kinds of websites that talk about these things. This leaves him at the mercy of his social circle and the people who make regular contact with him, making it easier to get caught in a bubble. This assumes that he’s even following the kind of people who post about “world issues” to begin with, the social justice movement is big online but it isn’t as hard to find a niche that doesn’t hold those beliefs / talk about them as one might think from the inside. From there, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, so he can’t be proactive about it.

If the question is 'why is he so abrasive/indelicate when he doesn’t understand something and it makes him uncomfortable', that we can blame on the heavy Eight wing and being raised an English boy. It may be possible for him to take a ‘can’t be bothered’ stance on certain issues because of his nature. He wants to be a nice, caring person, but from his perspective he may not see the point in emotionally / intellectually investing in things that don’t involve him if they cause him grief.

Tubbo seems to lean towards interrogating ideas when he encounters them. While this might come off as rejecting or combative, it might not necessarily be the case. From what I’ve seen of him, he likes to take ideas apart and stress-test them to see if they make sense before he accepts them into his existing worldview; he's exploring. While this probably has a nails-on-a-chalkboard effect for people who are more aware of how sensitive handing topics like that in public is, it’s an effort to give the concept a fair shake. From there he can sometimes get stuck on a detail and struggle with being re-directed, but chat-on-streamer conversations lack nuance by their nature, so that just digs the hole deeper.

I know people say ‘go google it,’ but honestly it’s not that easy to google things and find the best in-depth resources. Goggle can give you the facts, but it won’t always give you the broader social context or the attitudes or a good idea of how many people think one way or the other. Usually being around to witness the bigger social media conversation is a part of how people get this passive knowledge that it feels like ‘everyone knows’, because everyone in your circle is talking about it. If he’s got that removal from the cultural stew, a Wikipedia article isn’t going to be able to properly catch him up.

[happy-quack]

The fabled punctuation rant

Alright so I gotta preface this with the fact that I'm not an expert - just some lowly fool who got too invested in Wikipedia articles. I don't do this stuff for a living and I sure as hell can't absorb everything a wikipedia article is saying. That being said lets launch into the random ass things I've learned from my journeys online. this one's a real long one so to protect your dash I'll give a list of topics here and leave you to decide if you want to keep reading.

Copyleft

Pilcrow

Ordinal Indicators

Ampersand

(something really special)

lets start with something small

Copyleft

So if you've looked at anything online under the Creative Commons License or the GNU General Public License, there's a good chance you've seen this symbol. What you may not have known is that this is called. It's call the copyleft symbol. Because. Because the copyright symbol has the C facing to the right and. and this one has it facing to the left. Absolutely abhorrent, except for the fact that the first use of this term was in 1976 when a free version of BASIC was developed and the developer left "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in the code. So if you see this symbol think alternative piracy

anyways let's get to something spicy

Pilcrow

Yeah that's what this paragraph symbol is called. A fuckin pilcrow. Apparently its because people got worse and worse at pronouncing the greek paragraphos. Which is funny because that's literally almost the word we call it today because nobody cares about a word like pilcrow. What's worse is how this symbol even exists

So back in ancient greece if you wanted to divide sentences into groups what you'd do is write a little horizontal line in the left margin between the lines that you wanted to separate. which you know is kinda okay but a little crowded, eventually they switch it to a capital gamma (Γ), and finally somebody gets the bright idea of making the first letter of a section REALLY BIG. In terms of visually separating groups, what a snazzy way of getting that done. So snazzy that a lot of you are probably aware that's a style that a lot of authors brought back at some point.

But then. oh god and then. and then people really liked using latin abbreviations. You see, people saw the latin word for head, "kaput", and started using the letter K in the margin to mark the head of a new section. AbhORRENT. but it got WORSE because if there's anything people like more than using latin words is using LONGER latin words. enter "capitulum" meaning little head. An even dumber word that they decided to switch to and everybody starts using the letter C instead of the letter K.

Eventually people got bored of this and started putting lines through it and/or filling it in. Look at this utter shit

see where this is going?

wait go back go back what the hell was that

no I'm not talking about that damn ampersand yet. Let's take a quick pit stop at

Ordinal indicators

Okay so real quick. There's numbers called cardinal numbers, to denote size (like 174 spiders), and there's numbers called ordinal numbers, to denote order (like spider number 175). But how do you know if a number is ordinal or cardinal just by looking at it?

mmm okay so basically they took the last two letters of the word "fourth" and threw it up in the corner. I'm sure you're all familiar with this. but what I learned is that since other (gendered) languages have different words they naturally do different things. observe:

Which y'know is actually pretty cool! Except for the fact that in spanish, in front of singular masculine nouns you gotta say "primer" and "tercer" for the numbers 1 and 3, so you just throw an "er" up there instead.

It's time for the main event. The one you've all been waiting for.

What the hell is an

Ampersand

This one's a doozy.

So basically it starts with latin because why not. Y'know how when kids grow up learning the latin alphabet they have to recite the alphabet and memorize the order? Apparently back in the day it was hip to add "per se X" after any letter X that could exist by itself in a sentence - like A, I, and O (because that was a word back then). So the alphabet chant would start with "A per se A, B, C, ... " and do the same thing for I and O.

Now this is all fine and dandy unless you count the word "and" as a letter in the alphabet, which by then some people definitely did, and used the "&" symbol we know and love. I'll get into how that symbol came to be in a sec. Anyways, when kids finished reciting their alphabet, they'd end it "X, Y, Z, and per se and" which is a ridiculous combination of sounds to make, and eventually got slurred to "ampersand." That's literall y it. That's why we call it that - a clusterfuck of an infatuation of latin

oh but you don't even know the HALF of it

You see, the latin word for "and" was "et" and as we all know, one of the things humans are the worst at is consistently writing small words the same way every time. Let's take a look at the ampersand in the font Trebuchet MS.

I swear to god.

This enTIRE time this ampersand thingy exists because people got bored of writing an e and a t as seperate letters and created a monstrosity nobody knows how to write anymore. seriously 5 minutes from now try writing an ampersand from memory and look at how bad it is. If they're gonna combine letters into a new symbol they might as well do it HELPFULLY.

Ugh

Anyways it's time for a special treat, and this won't disappoint.

Mystery Surprise

So some of you may have noticed back during the pilcrow section that the greek/latin writing systems didn't exactly have the whole separating sections of text thing figured out yet. Eventually they found their own systems, but what if you wanted to seperate groups of sections? Like if you're splitting a chapter of your book into different scenes? Some people decided to do this by using asterisms "⁂" between sections of text, others used fluerons "❧", and the list of symbols goes on. But guess what the hell they called these kinds of symbols.

I swear you're not ready.

They called it

They called it a dinkus

A

DINKUS

sure according to this blog it comes from the german root "ding" meaning "thing" but oh my god

Anytime you're reading a book and they have a stylized page break you have to look at that for me and please look at it and remember that it's called a dinkus

That's all I've got in me for now. maybe if you bother me enough I'll find something else to rant about in list format. Thanks for reading and don't forget about dinkuses

[write-baby-write]

Do Your Research!

Writing fanfiction can be fun, but it also can be tough. As I’ve said before in previous posts, it takes time and a lot of work to write a good story. Which brings us to today’s topic: researching.

If you’re obsessed with researching in general (like me 😅), I bet you didn’t imagine yourself researching about things you had zero interest about before writing fanfic and you probably have made a joke about the Google / Facebook / Instagram spy assigned to lurk into your account. But one thing you know for sure is how important it is to make a research about the themes you write about.

If you’re not so fond of the idea of researching, let me give you a few reasons to reconsider your opinion about it.

The Perfect Characterization

Anyone who ever read fanfiction knows there is a huge difference between fanworks in which characterization follows canon and OOC. Though it’s understandable when a character is written out of character to fit an alternate universe, a fanwork with poorly written characters can be a reason why readers avoid your work.

The solution to fix it? Research. Observing a character’s body language, personality, demeanor and backstory, making notes while reading/watching/playing, saving screencaps, reading the character’s fandom wikia and even filling out your own character sheet can make a significant improvement on how you write a character. If you manage to write the characters in a way the reader can easily recognize who says each line of a dialogue, they will get sucked into the world you created and wish to never leave.

Characters from countries and cultures you don’t know demand more through research, otherwise other fans (specially the ones from that specific ethnicity) will eye roll at your story and scroll past it. The best option is talk to someone from the culture/country you're writing about. If you don't know anyone and you're too shy to socialize (I feel you, hun), you can always consume any series, movies and books created by people from that culture/country.

When it comes to giving a new characterization to your MC or writing an OC, the best solution are character sheets (1, 2) and OC questionnaires (1, 2). Those will be your guide whenever you need to describe anything related to them.

Realistic Setting

Whether you’re writing a Regency Era romance, Renaissance adventure or modern day royalty, do your research! It’s crucial to take some time to research to make your story more realistic to your reader. A well written story with a dose of realism is the key to captivate new readers. We have easy access to various sources about food, fashion, art, economy and culture in different periods of time (movies, tv series, books, online articles, documentaries, etc) and that means you have no excuses to simply rely on Wikipedia and move on.

This also applies to stories set in a specific place related to cultures or professions you’re not familiar with. The same way you might need some basic knowledge on eighteenth century vocabulary, society and clothing in Europe, you can’t write a story set in a hospital without eventual researches about medical procedures and diseases or write your OTP honeymoon at the Maldives without adding some information about the place.

Make Your Fantasy/Supernatural Stories More Compelling

This is probably the genre that I find stories with the most grotesque mistakes. Novice (and cocky) writers have a tendency to assume that just because they’re writing fantasy or supernatural stories, anything can happen. They’re not entirely wrong, but it’s not that simple.

We all know a little something about mythical beings from books, series, films and TV because most of these stories follow a pattern. Though every author is allowed to take creative liberties while writing, there are mythologies about any supernatural creature you can think of. And when a writer diverges too much from what we know about the mythology of those fictional beings, their work can be seen as lazy and even dumb.

Let’s take vampire mythology as an example. Many authors have different opinions about the existence of fangs, what can kill a vampire and if they can reproduce or not, which is fine. However, not many people thought Stephanie Meyer’s idea of why vampires can’t step into the sun was good.

Supernatural/fantasy stories are part of a completely different niche, with their own notions of time, space, culture and society and some fans can be pretty vocal about inaccuracies. Which is why I believe a good research goes a long way for fanfic writers.

Writing Specific Subjects

There are certain themes in fanfiction which the author must pay extra attention. Stories involving mental health, disabilities, racism, LGBTphobia, xenophobia, sexism and acts of violence demand more than a few clicks on your favorite search engine page. Because those themes are part of many people’s lives (including your readers, mutuals, fellow writers), it’s really important to know how to write them and if you ever receive any criticism, to understand where it’s coming from.

To write those subjects, I recommend talking to people who deal with them in real life, read or watch testimonials. Why? Because it’ll give you a notion of what these people go through everyday and it’ll motivate you to write a good story not just for the notifications and praise. But also to honor those people.

Also, as a person who has worked with mental health, I need to make a request: when writing about suicide, for love of whatever is sacred to you, read WHO Media Guidelines before going all 13 Reasons Why on your readers. You cannot be too careful about this subject.

Know When To Stop Researching

I know this topic seems a little obvious, but if you’re into researching as much I am, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s quite common for a writer to spend hours, sometimes days making endless researches about a subject and not finding what you want. It doesn’t matter if you change search engines, the keywords, read as many articles or watch as many documentaries about it. Before you know it, you wasted too much time falling into internet rabbit holes that led you nowhere. You simply procrastinated, you end up frustrated and even think about giving up on writing that piece to write something you’re more familiar with.

If you reached that point on your research, maybe it’s time for you to think how relevant that information is to your story. Does this information make a significant impact on your piece? If you don’t add that information you’ve been searching for, would you have to edit or rewrite anything on your fic or make big changes on your plot?

This usually happens when you’re getting too attached to details of your story, which is not a bad thing, but it can be exhausting. It’s important to figure it out before you get to the frustrating part. Otherwise, the research will fail to achieve its goal to help you write.

Did I miss any topics? Do you have any suggestions? Let me know by commenting, reblogging or sending me a message/ask.

Happy writing/reading!

[snackhobi]

Hi! I read your fic “catch your drift” a while ago and I absolutely adored it! One thing that really stuck out to me was the way you really seemed to know what you were talking about, the amount of research you probably did was insane!

I was wondering, with a niche subject like that, how did you do your research for that? What kind of media did you watch/read to learn more about it? I’ve been thinking of writing a story like that myself, but I have no idea where to start. It’s writers like you that inspire me to put extra care into my stories, because it always shows at the end! You’re an amazing writer, I can’t wait to see what else you put out in the future <3

hi lovely! okay, first of all, I want to say thank you so much for enjoying cyd but also for noticing all the details!! I did do quite a bit of research (I fell down a rabbit hole, really) and it’s nice to know that it makes the world feel realistic/makes it seem that I knew what I was talking about 💕

for me, when it comes to doing research for subjects I’m not familiar with, I sort of have two overarching segments: 1) the technical details, and 2) the visual details. I’ll break down exactly what I mean by those, using examples from cyd (though I wrote the story over a year ago so I might miss some bits and pieces, hopefully it should help to give you an idea 🥰) (under a cut because WHOO did I go on for a bit) -

1) the technical details

I’m not a drift racer, so honestly, I did a lot of googling and digging around for things! my first stop was wikipedia, which gave me a general idea of what drifting was like/involved, and then I delved deeper from there (because it only really talks about the official drifting competitions, which is obviously different to an underground community). I found articles from car magazines that spoke about the underground tweaking/drifting community in south korea and japan, so I knew they were reputable sources (or that they at least knew what they were talking about!). that’s how I got my details on the types of car they use in that community, on what it’s like to be a drifter over there. I found websites that broke down drifting jargon so I had a dictionary to refer to. I also watched youtube videos of people who’d visited the underground meets, so I got a feel of what it was like/they would often talk about the specs of each car, which helped as well.

I remember I got details of the area around seoul/the main drifting areas from the articles I mentioned, but I also looked at a map and did some googling for areas that seemed to work for what I already had in mind (like the meet in yongsan, which has a US military base, hence why the driver there had a mustang - another american car).

stuff like this does take time to research but I like to write about subjects I enjoy/find interesting so it’s fun to read up on it!!

the reason why I think of these as the technical details is because they’re facts related to the subject I’m talking about (drifting/life in south korea/the car community there etc). it’s the nitty gritty stuff. not only do I try to find relevant terminology, I also try to read around the subject enough to know how that terminology is then used; if I’m not sure, then I avoid using it. (it’s sort of like in movies when you see someone playing a video game, and they’re using the wrong controller for the wrong console and the game on screen doesn’t match up with what the person is doing - it’s like you have all the relevant parts, but when you put them together, it’s clear that you don’t know what you’re talking about. you know? if in doubt, leave it out.)

the visual details are a bit different.

2) the visual details

this is a bit more of a vague thing and I might not describe it very well, but visual details are usually visual references/things that give me an idea of how to describe how something looks/feels, rather than the actual moving parts inside it. I’ve never watched fast and furious or need for speed, BUT I already knew that they existed, so I looked up videos of races in them for an idea of how everything looked/felt. (sort of related to the videos I mentioned above of the car meets, but, yes.) I also watched other drifting videos from competitions, and I looked up images/videos of the cars I mentioned in the story, so I could describe them in a way that would feel accessible but also interesting? for example the sentence “2007 Solstice GXP” probably doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t know about cars, but if you then describe it being shorter than other cars and how it drifts around corners, that’s the focal point of the scene. it’s all in the visual description vs the technical name. a visual detail is immediately accessible because you’re describing what someone can see, which doesn’t require any foreknowledge of the subject.

obviously a lot of this will vary dependant on what your personal style is like, but if I drop in specific terminology that I think a reader might not know, I’ll then explain it, too. so it’s mixing the visual with the technical. here’s an example: “he throws you off when he slings himself out of a turn and slides into a choku-dori, the zig-zagging motion of his car catching you off guard” - choku-dori is the name of a specific drifting move, but I don’t expect people to know that, which is why I then describe the zig-zagging motion; it relates a visual detail (accessible) to a technical one (probably not as accessible).

(pinterest can be fantastic for reference pictures, dependent on your topic. I’ll save visual references for quick refs if I find ones I like!)

so, for me, with any subject, it’s about researching what you need to know about the topic you’re writing about, and researching how to then make it come across in your story in a way that’s interesting, and accessible, and makes sense. honestly, a lot of my research is googling, and reading, and learning key terms from that reading, which then means I can research more effectively, which is an ongoing cycle for each story I have going on. sometimes you’ll do far more research than comes up in the final product, but it’s better to have too much than not enough! I know it can feel daunting to start with, coming at a subject that you might not know anything about, but for the most part googling things is enough to trick people into thinking you’re an expert 🤭 (although if there are any drifting experts out there who are laughing at my newbie slip ups or whatever then I apologise and also you will be forever cooler than me 🤧)

one other source of references which I think might not occur to people is other fanfic. obviously don’t plagiarise, but if you wanted to write a drifting story, you could use places/terminology/cars from catch your drift as a springboard for your own research, for example! (you said you’ve been thinking about “writing a story like that” and if you mean a drifting one, feel free to drop me another message because I’ve still saved a bunch of the links I used to reference from! I didn’t save all of them bc I’m a clown but I have at least enough to give you an idea of what it’s like ✨)

I hope that made sense!! and if you need me to clarify something or explain it in a way that’s not garbled and rambly, honestly please drop into my inbox any time! good luck!

[guzhuangheaven]

hi! so i’ve been reading up on chinese history and mostly going down wikipedia rabbit holes but i came across your posts about qing dynasty hairstyles. just curious, where did you actually find these information? do you have any tips on researching more niche topics like this? i’m having a hard time with it and i’m not able to find solid info with references or are credible :/ maybe my chinese isn’t that good but I find that searching questions in chinese also doesn’t yield a lot of results. Maybe because i’m using google and not whatever is allowed in China? thanks for the tips !! have a good day :>

Honestly the information on the Qing hairstyles posts I’ve been gathering and holding on for so long and it’s all gathered in bits and pieces so I can’t really list individual sources anymore. It’s hard for me to talk about my process of researching information because 1) it’s totally chaotic and 2) it’s usually not born out of like an inherently academic interest but a more practical need. I write Huan Zhu Ge Ge fanfiction, so everything I have ever looked up about the Qing dynasty is because I needed to know these things to write my fics.

I’m not even sure if any tip for searching for information in Chinese I can give is going to be useful for anyone, mostly because the method is very specific to me as a Vietnamese person.  

(tl;dr: use Chinese search engines and search using Chinese characters not pinyin.)

Other than just cultural osmosis from dramas, most of my research for my fanfics come from these sources:

1. Wikipedia

I usually start with English Wikipedia mostly because I’m a third culture bilingual whose default internet language is English, but for topics on Chinese culture and history, Vietnamese Wikipedia can sometimes have full Wiki articles when the English version are just short stubs. If failing that, I sometimes wander into Chinese Wikipedia, but I don’t find Chinese-language Wikipedia articles are as helpful as the Chinese equivalent, Baidu Baike. More on that later.

2. Google searches

Sometimes, you do get some information from cultural blogs/tourism blogs/websites that tell you things about Chinese culture/history in general just through history search but as you can already tell, they tend to be very general.

3. Information already translated into Vietnamese by other people

So this is where in recent years the popularity of dramas such as Zhen Huan and Ruyi come in useful. There are Facebook groups for fans of these dramas where the people running the fan pages do know Chinese and they have translated a lot of information on Qing clothes, customs and historical records into Vietnamese. A lot of our series of posts on Qing dynasty costumes are retranslated from these Vietnamese sources. For the Qing dynasty costumes posts on this blog, I did do a cursory “reverse engineering”? fact check by putting the names of the different clothing articles etc. through Baidu Baike and running through Google-translated versions of those Baike articles, and if they more or less match what the Vietnamese translations were saying, I’m taking them as probably at least somewhat credible/not totally made up.  

(This is why you shouldn’t take everything we say on this blog as irrefutable.)

4. Baidu search engine, Baike and other Chinese sources

Ok, so the thing you need to know about me is that:

I’m Vietnamese

Since the mid-2000s, I have only ever watched Chinese dramas subtitled in Vietnamese (as opposed to dubbed). Watching subbed dramas helps a lot with listening comprehension but also recognition of common Chinese characters because all Chinese dramas come with Chinese subs as well. This does mean that while I can’t speak or write Chinese, I now can watch raw dramas and understand maybe about 40%? depending on how familiar I am with the tropes in the drama.  

In my bored uni days I used to moderate a forum on Chinese dramas, which required, among other things, searching for and translating Chinese entertainment news.

All this means is that over the years, I have developed certain tricks to search for information in Chinese as a Vietnamese person.

Firstly, it is always much easier to search things on the internet using Chinese characters instead of pinyin, which is usually pretty useless when conveying actual information because Chinese is full of homophones. I can’t actually type Chinese, but the thing about smartphone Chinese pinyin keyboards and Chinese search engines such as Baidu is that if you type in pinyin, it will auto-suggest Chinese characters for you. Of course you then need to be familiar with pinyin and able to read some Chinese characters to know that you’re searching for the right thing. This is where my years of watching Chinese dramas with subtitles come in as it means sometimes I can guess the pinyin by listening to the spoken Chinese and use that to search things and/or recognise the corresponding Chinese characters.

(When you see us use Chinese characters on this blog, I’ve basically just opened Baidu, typed in the pinyin in order to copy the Chinese characters. Yes it’s a whole process.)

The search engine Baidu pretty much works as Google does, and if you search a term, of the first things it will give you is the Baike page for that thing. Baike is probably about as reliable as Wikipedia on non-sensitive topics that would not be subject to censorship, which is good enough usually.

Baike is obviously in Chinese, so to understand that, I would Google translate it into either English or Vietnamese. These days, Google translate is surprisingly okay when translating Chinese-English that if I’m not too invested in the topic, I can make do with just getting the general idea through the Google English translation. However, if Chinese-English fails, and I translate it into Vietnamese. Google is usually better at translating Chinese-Vietnamese as Vietnamese does have Chinese roots and shares syntax and grammatical structures.

Sometimes, when Google doesn’t give me the information I need, I will also put bits of the text that Google can’t make sense of into a Han-Viet converter. Without going into the historical relationship between Vietnamese and literary written Chinese, what this essentially does is convert the Chinese text into Han-Viet words, which is the Vietnamese equivalent of probably Shakespeare English? or maybe Middle English. These Han Viet words are now also written in the modern Vietnamese roman alphabet, which means I can now read the words, and understand maybe 50-60% of it, as vocab used in modern formal written Vietnamese still borrows significantly from Chinese words/have Chinese roots. Han-Viet converters online also come with a dictionary, so the bits I don’t understand I can look up the Chinese characters and understand the information that way.  

Reading whole articles in Han-Viet is a pain in the ass and I would never do that, but bits of converted Han-Viet combined with Google translate usually gives me a pretty good understanding of simple Chinese text like Baike articles. 

Keywords

In terms of keywords, it can sometimes be tricky if you don’t already have a term that you’re searching specifically. If you have a more general question then I guess in that case you would either have to know some rudimentary Chinese to search on Chinese search engines, or resort to searching in English. But if you can form questions in Chinese, I would suggest using Baidu for your searches, instead of Google. 

Navigating Chinese internet as a person who doesn’t speak Chinese can be very daunting and I guess...it just takes time to get used to? I’m not sure if I have any advice other than that, to be honest. -h