#I'm someone who Really Can't Learn Languages outside of a (well-structured well-taught) class

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Watched all of Rubius’ r/place videos while pounding a bottle of wine I’ve been trying to get rid of for ages and MAN. MANNNN. I really love Rubius. r/place was such an incredible experience, and watching his videos reminded me of just how hype and fun the r/place phenomenon was

[canmom]

it's a bit of a pipe dream to think i would be well known one day, but i would hate to become known as a 'british animator' or 'british writer' whose work reflected on the vibrant culture of this shithole of a dead empire. if my work doesn't say on some level "this country is an unmitigated evil in the world and all its institutions and traditions must be violently overthrown" I'm doing something wrong! this seems to be true of e.g. most of the interesting british comics writers. being british should be seen as an unfortunate fact about my background, like, 'oh this explains a lot about how depressing her work is' lmao

anyway this makes me kind of think... obviously i am into a lot of japanese animation and games, and i certainly don't want to make some silly claim that every anime creator i like is some badass radical because that's obviously not true, but also like, promoting an image of 'cool japan' is a literal policy of their seemingly eternal far right government and i don't really want to enable that! i would hate to sort of shackle someone to a nationalist project they don't uphold in appreciative critical writing.

a couple weeks ago i saw an fairly big name webgen animator on an animator discord expressing resentment about being held up as an up and coming filipino animator when, in his eyes, he had seen no support from his country and taught himself everything through the internet. he saw his community as international web animators. and while i don't want to be idealistic, his attitude appealed to me. i feel much more comfortable thinking of myself as a creature of the internet, with all the flaws that entails... i can't really remember a time where i didn't spend much more time reading and talking to people in other countries (mostly Americans, but also a lot of people from other European countries on the old Blender forums) and i guess that played a huge part in my particular path of 'socialisation'.

one thing I've found quite striking since getting more involved in the like, 'indie animator subculture' is that there the balance of countries ppl are from is much more south american and southeast asian, much less USian, than most online communities I've been in, which is honestly a p welcome change. it's a bit of a cliché but i do feel like the internet really is demonstrating its potential to create certain kinds of international connections not mediated through mass media localisation in the way of the last hundred years of capitalism, and as much as corporate near-monopoly media production - The Industry - still dominates the landscape in so many ways, it's still really exciting to see what sort of art movements are going to grow in this ecosystem...

but of course, i realise this feeling of being part of a cosmopolitan international culture or w/e is such a class thing. the UK, by virtue of its place in the world economy and the last few centuries of colonial plunder gets both the most modern comms infrastructure and the benefits of its language being widely considered the path to wealth and privilege, a structure which perpetuates itself long after the period of direct rule... especially since its immediate successor as "top dog empire" also uses English. the people i talk to are either from other rich countries, or often the comparatively well-off people of colonised countries who are coming to speak to me in my language rather than the other way round. there's not much i can immediately do about the distribution of power in this situation, but i don't want to have illusions about it. and if i can figure out the right, sustainable means of motivation, it would be really good to learn to visit the non-English-speaking parts of the web.

what is to be done about all this? idk. just mulling this one over. i very much admire someone like @anarcha-catgirlism who seems to pick up languages as easy as breathing out of an intrinsic love of it (i'm sure she finds it harder than it looks from the outside lol), but I've never had that facility and comfort with language learning the way i did with, say, maths.

it's very hard to figure out how to get a proper habit of practice going the way i have with drawing and animation lately. what happens is, i think one day, oh no, not done this in a while, let's make an effort to get back into practicing kanji, knock a couple hundred off my wanikani queue, and then it won't occur to me to do it again for like, weeks. other languages I've tried i have fared even worse; at best i get a period of hyperfocus and then it collapses, or the excuses for language classes you get in british schools. i don't know how to summon the determination that keeps me coming back to draw even when I'm unsatisfied with my skills. I'm certain it's possible to learn languages even with unmedicated 'adhd', but i haven't figured out the trick of it and continue to be an embarrassing monoglot...

anyway, enough moping. time to draw.