#also my german skills fucking SUCK. like. I can understand it well

[spghtrbry]

yeah sorry for venting here again but im so fucking stressed out because of school

[samwilsonshandsandass]

I Think I'm Seeing Triple

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Sam Wilson x Sam Wilson x reader x Bucky Barnes x Bucky Barnes x Bucky Barnes Summary: You just want to get settled in in your hotel room for a weekend conference, when your room is also given to two other attendees of the conference. And then something happens no one can explain and four surprise guests are also in the room Warnings: Smut, oral (f and m receiving), spanking, choking Word count: 3240 A/N: @keanureevesisbae were suffering together because of a post with four pictures each of Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan and then I had a thought and got some inspiration.

You went up to your hotel room after the first getting to know each other event at the weekend conference you had to go to. You hadn’t even put your shoes near the door when it opened and in came two other attendees. You knew who they were, had seen them all over the newspapers and also columns. Sam Wilson aka Cap and Bucky Barnes aka… he wasn’t the Winter Soldier anymore and you didn’t know if he wanted to claim that title to morph it into something good or if he was called something else. So, Bucky Barnes.

Before you could ask them what they did in your room, and how they got a key card when it was clearly booked, and before they stopped their bickering about who was the blanket hog, there were two flashes of golden light and from each flash tumbled a pair of men identical to the pair of men who just walked into your room. Just their clothing separated them from each other.

“Who are you?”

Sam Wilson asked and looked at someone who seemed to be his friend. Although that friend had entered the room beside him.

“I’m Bucky” The one spoken to, said.

“No, I’m Bucky!” A third version of the man said.

“And you?” The one who seemed to be the actual Sam, wanted to know.

“Sam.”

“Who am I then?”

“My less attractive twin?”

“Ha-ha.”

“So, There’s three Sams. And three Buckys. That’s not weirder than other things we were confronted with. And you are?” The Bucky who had entered the room with the first Sam questioned and looked at you.

“Y/N” You answered slowly. “And why are all of you in my hotel room?”

“We’re here because the person at the reception told us this room was available. We’re last minute additions to this weekend conference” That was one of the Buckys. He gestured to himself and one of the Sams.

“O- kay. And you four?” You looked at the seemingly identical versions of the Sam and Bucky who were supposed to be here.

“There was a flash, everything went cold and now we’re here” The third Bucky replied.

“We had something similar happening” The Sam in the middle said.

“Alright. Okay. Cool. I’ll just be blunt and say I wouldn’t have been opposed to one Sam and Bucky being in the same room for an entire weekend” You mumbled after you looked shortly to the heavens.

“You do know we’re supposed to actually attend meetings and workshops and networking events, don’t you?” The Bucky you dubbed “Bucky number one” asked you.

“Stickler for principles…” Sam number one grinned. “I know you. You��d do anything to get out of at least the networking events.”

“Of course I would! Still doesn’t change the fact networking just means getting drunk and fucking someone just for the sake of fucking someone. I’m not for that. And I can’t get drunk.”

You saw the other two Bucky’s nod in agreement.

“So, that’s the defining trait of the different Bucky’s” Sam number two smiled.

“As if you like what comes out of these events” Bucky (you couldn’t say which) grinned back.

“No, I’d cook for someone first. Be a gentleman.”

“See. And I’d take her dancing.”

You cleared your throat.

“I still don’t understand all this” You stated.

“Me neither” Bucky number three. “Maybe we could each explain the basics of yourselves.”

“Good idea. So. In this universe, my universe, you” You sat back on the bed and pointed at Sam number one, “were a para rescue and then used what you learned during that time to save the world. And you” You looked down at Bucky number one who was laying on your belly, “were a P.O.W. during World War II and then basically got turned into a human weapon and got frozen to keep your body the way they needed it to be. You were found and then, a year later in probably the technologically most advanced country on earth you finally got freed for good from it all and now use your skills for good as well. With him as your partner.” You pointed at Sam number one again.

“Wait. You had a second World War? We only had one. You know, the one from 1914 to 1918?” Bucky number two asked. “What happened in your universe?”

“The Germans thought the cure for their humiliation in Versailles could only be coped with by committing genocide and reaching for world domination.” Bucky number one explained. “And my best friend got quite big and muscle-y because of that. Why didn’t the Germans do in your universe what they did in mine?”

“Some Germans had their heads on straight. Fought back when the political landscape of 1920s Germany was close to morphing into street terror and they succeeded. They stayed a democratic country and that was that.”

“My Steve got all the muscles as well.” Bucky number three smiled. Then it fell from his face. “We actually served together, after he changed like that. When the Germans and their allies were defeated, Steve went on to train new recruits back home and I went to Korea.”

“So, you aged normally. How come you’re here now with a body like back then? And why are you also looking like that, when there even wasn’t a second world war and in theory you should’ve lived a long live and, no offence, be long underground?” You wondered and looked between Bucky number two and three.

Bucky number two snorted. “I know what you mean. After school, I actually got a scholarship, one of the few back then, for Teachers College, which is a part of Columbia University. I became a Math and Physics teacher. After some years, the university offered a few places in an experimental study about nitrogen and cryogenesis.”

“And I suspect you accepted one?” Sam number three asked.

“Yep. Wanted to see what progress the future made in science and to have the body and age and mind to enjoy it all fully.”

“That takes being a nerd to a whole new level. I thought the Bucky I know was flexing!” Sam number one exclaimed.

“Just because I could read the Hobbit when it came out and you couldn’t?” Bucky number one shot back.

“You read that, too?” Bucky number two and three exclaimed.

“No matter the universe, they’re nerds” Sam number two mumbled.

“And you two? What happened with you in your universes?” You looked at Sam number two and three.

“My and Sarah’s parents died quite a few years ago. My nephews were little, and yet, I thought I’d help my family more if I went off to the air force. Sarah wouldn’t have that and then the community got wind of my plans and they kept me there” Sam number two smiled. “I took over more of the workload to keep our fishing business afloat so Sarah could focus more on the kids when they were really little. When they got bigger, we shared the workload more equally and still do that now. Haven’t regretted not moving away one day.”

“I also didn’t move away. Well, not entirely to Washington, after our parents died. I worked my ass off to get into an undergraduate program for social work and now I’m working as a counselor for families in tight spots in St. Bernard” Sam number three told.

“Okay. This is quite much, but I can work with that. Or at least understand more. Want to know something about me?” You looked around at the six men around you.

“Isn’t that confusing for you?” Bucky wanted to know.

“On every level, yes. So, I’ll just concentrate on the fact there’s six handsome and hot guys and just one of me.”

“That’s certainly something” Sam smiled.

“Yeah” You laughed quietly and took his hand.

You felt him stroke the back of your hand and move towards you. With a half smile and half lidded eyes, he pecked your lips. He moved back slowly. You cradled his head in your hand and pulled him in again, scratching his head all the while and earning a moan. You moved your lips against Sam’s, sucking his tongue into your mouth. He chuckled against your lips and moved back again. This time just enough to be able to bite your lips and then move his tongue against your lips again.

When he allowed you to breathe, another Sam asked: “You gonna hog her all for yourself or let us have a piece, too?”

“As if I’d deny myself the joy and pleasure of all of you…” You simpered.

“Well then” He pulled you up to stand and walked you to the middle of the big, fluffy rug in front of the bed.

Sam stood in front of you. With a faint smile, he unbuttoned button for button on the top of your dress. At the same time Bucky knelt behind you and let his hands wander from your ankles to the hem of your panties. He pulled them down slowly, until they caught on the hem of your stockings. Bucky pulled them down as well and put them on the ever growing pile of clothes near the foot of the bed.

“Would you look at this body!” Came from the direction of the bed, where the other two Buckys sat when the Sam before you let your dress fall from your body.

“God” That drawn out moan came from the loveseat with two Sams on it.

You smiled and opened your eyes, looking around to see the four men naked and teasingly stroke their cocks.

“C’mere baby” Sam purred.

The two men who had just undressed you went over to the bed. You stood in front of the loveseat.

“And where am I sitting?”

“Laying” Sam smiled and pulled you down.

Your torso laid across the legs of the Sam sitting left and your thighs across the Sam on the right. You wiggled your ass jokingly until you felt a gentle spank on the right cheek.

“We’ll be the ones to make you move, baby. You just relax and take it” Bucky said from the bed. You had no idea which one.

“Although that doesn’t mean we’ll be soft” Another Bucky said. You could hear the smile in his voice.

“I don’t think she wants us to be soft. Well, maybe a little?” The Sam who had your torso laying on his legs, questioned.

You looked up at him and opened your mouth to answer but before you could, he slipped two fingers into it. His other hand wandered to the nape of your neck. He started massaging it, and with a guttural moan, you spread your legs.

The Sam with your legs on his thighs now kneaded your butt, lulling you into a sense of security and comfort.

Then came the first spank. Pretty light, on the left butt cheek. You squeaked in surprise.

Before you could say anything, he landed a slightly harder spank on the right one. You whimpered.

The third spank was even harder, on the left cheek again.

The fourth spank made your ass cheek jiggle and yourself moan.

Sam continued in that tempo and alternated the cheeks with every other spank. The other Sam moved his fingers in and out of your mouth at a different pace, not giving you a chance to get used to just one rhythm.

From the couch pants and moans could be heard. Sam didn’t let you move your head, squeezing instead of massaging your neck each time you wanted to look in the direction of the bed.

“No looking, baby. You just feel and hear.”

You nodded as best as you could and felt a visceral need in your core. You tried to alleviate it, humping the side of Sam’s thigh.

“You need something more, baby?”

You mumbled around the other Sam’s fingers.

“I’d say that’s a yes” The Bucky in the middle of the bed grinned.

“C’mere baby.” Both Sam’s helped you up and got you in front of the bed.

You looked up at Bucky and he petted your cheek.

“Ready?”

You nodded and knelt in front of Bucky and another Bucky pushed your head down to make you take everything until you gagged. They both gave you short periods of reprieve when one of them pulled a little back until they made you gag again. With each gagging noise you made, you felt yourself getting wetter.

Suddenly you felt the tip of a cock between your ass cheeks. With a sigh, a sigh as if he came home, the man behind you penetrated you slowly, making you feel every inch. Bucky pushed you down quickly. The pace made your eyes water and a tear fall but that didn’t keep you from recognizing that beautiful brown skin in the corner of your left eye.

“We’re so good, we make you cry?” Sam grinned, showing his canines.

You nodded once when you heard a growl above you. Suddenly your mouth was empty and not a second later long ropes of cum hit your face.

You opened your eyes just in time to see Sam’s hand rubbing your clit as he pulled your back close to his chest. You felt the warmth of his chest and his accelerated heartbeat at your back. He bent forward to caress your neck. Sam kissed your neck and bit every spot he had just caressed. You bucked against him, trying to get him moving deeper into you. You felt him smile against your neck where he had just sucked. He pressed his index and middle finger to your clit. He tapped it and with two further movements, you felt him squeeze your neck and with a long whine you came.

You wrapped your hands around Sam’s left wrist and that did it for him. You felt him spurt into your core and your legs trembled a little with the aftershocks.

“God…” He moaned into your neck and kissed it.

“J- just me” You mumbled in a haze with a grin.

You heard several chuckles from the bed. Someone pulled you slowly up and put you on the bed. Several people stroked your body and kissed you softly. You, in turn, caressed Sam’s face and could almost hear him purr under your touch.

When you felt like you were in the here and now again, you laid on back on the bed, the head in the lap of one Bucky with one Sam kissing the life out of you. He had his hand wrapped around your throat and squeezed now and then. You were moaning and whimpering continuously but you didn’t know why exactly. Maybe it was because Bucky massaged your head. Maybe it was because Sam choked and kissed you so beautifully.

And maybe it was because what happened between your legs. Looking down your body, spread out like a feast, you saw one brown haired head. Two strains had escaped the low bun and stuck to his face with his spit and your slick. Next to Bucky, there was Sam. This was the Sam with longer curls. Perfect to rake your fingers through and pull him even closer to you.

Both of them licked, nibbled and sucked on your private parts and on the tighter rim a little below. Occasionally they bumped heads and shoulders, chuckling each time. Each chuckle sent vibrations through you and made you pull their hair. Every time you did that, they moaned. Even more vibrations went to your clit. A vicious cycle.

Until they stopped everything.

Although you wanted to form words of protest, nothing articulated came out of your mouth.

You saw the two grinning at each other and they rammed three fingers each in you. Three in your pussy and three in your ass. You could only moan and your back arched up.

Bucky attacked your g spot right away and Sam hammered into your ass. With the contrast of that to the kissing of the other Sam and the head massage by the other Bucky, you couldn’t focus on anything, just letting it happen. Out of the blue, you sensed something warm and wet and occasionally sharp on your nipples and your neck. You could only guess that was because of the other two.

With one more come hither motion of Bucky, you screamed into Sam’s mouth and came. You felt your walls spasm and spasm and spasm. Yet, Bucky didn’t stop. Each time your pussy let up, there was another come hither motion and Sam hadn’t stopped fingering your ass once.

Sam and Bucky bit your nipples until they were swollen and the Sam who still had his hand around your neck, squeezed.

Your body, that hadn’t ceased moving since your scream, spasmed as a whole and then everything went black.

---

As you came to again, one pair of Sam and Bucky were grinning up at you and two pairs were grinning down at you.

“There she is again” Bucky smiled.

“I take it you’re satisfied?” Another Bucky asked you cockily.

You nodded, panting.

You were maneuvered until you laid on a mountain of pillows. From that position you could see all six men gripping their erections. Your body was sweaty, spit from six men clung to it, your face was painted with the cum from one of the Bucky’s and between your legs there was a mess of the cum of one of the Sam’s and yours. Still, you wanted more. And you knew how to get it.

You made grabby hands, decidedly close to the men’s cocks. They grinned and moved closer to you.

“Please?” You made puppy dog eyes at them.

“How can you say no to this very beautiful and very naughty girl?” One of the Sam’s mumbled to himself.

“You don’t, never!” Bucky answered and started jerking faster.

You licked your lips and sat up a bit. You didn’t want to miss one second of this show. Their hands went over their cocks, faster and faster until the six faces contorted in pleasure and you saw your belly and breasts be painted by their cum. It was accompanied by several growls and whimpers.

You smiled tiredly, when the six collapsed around you. You pulled them closer, reveling in their warmth.

“Gimme some minutes, doll” Bucky whispered into your ear.

After some time, he went and got several warm wet washcloths. He and another Bucky cleaned you up softly. Only after that, did the men clean up themselves. You turned on your side, tired and sated. Sam pulled you into his chest, Bucky molded himself to your back and put his legs over yours. The other four cuddled up to you three in the middle, making you a tangle of seven people in the middle.

“Does one of you know when the first meeting of tomorrow starts?” You yawned.

“At nine” The Bucky of this universe mumbled.”

“The cyborg strikes again” A mix of a yawn and smile was audible in his voice. “Do we have to attend that?”

“I think so.”

“Ugh. And what about the four not from here?” Sam wriggled his arm free and hugged one Bucky and one Sam to his back.

“No idea” The Sam hugged by Sam shook his head.

“Let’s sleep for now. We can worry about that tomorrow” The Bucky between the two Sam’s said.

[oddlyunadventurous]

BOOK REPORT 2020

I’ve always been a sparse reader but 2018 and 19 had me accelerate my reading habits to the point that I think I’ve read the most books this year that I ever had. I suppose I’ll count them all here, just to make sure!! I said something or other about the Moomin books at the end of last year’s Inkt*b*r so, this being the month of traditions, let’s make a new one by tallying up my literary “yays” and “nays” at the end of the season.

Video game text boxes don’t count, online publication articles don’t count, psych/aesthetic papers and 1000 page biosemiotic textbooks don’t count, but they have sure pursued me in my sleep during the year as well. This list is really mostly for my benefit (and no I won’t get a Goodreads account tyvm), so under the cut you’ll find a list of titles in roughly the order I read them, along with short notes. I’ve done longer reviews of these books elsewhere and I need not bore you with them here. 

K. Stanislavski - An Actor Prepares (1936) I started reading this book in 2012, then dropped it because I couldn’t understand it at the time. Kostya attends acting school and gets lessons from The Director. He learns to sleep like his cat.

K. Stanislavski - Building a Character (1949) Supposed to have been published along the first one in a single volume. Kostya continues his lessons. A lot of thoughts on walking, gaits, eloquent speech, phrasing, etc. Both these books are wonderful looks into the author’s artistic life. It’s very heartfelt and down to earth, considering it’s quasi-fiction made to edutain. Very inspiring.

M. Polanyi - The Tacit Dimension (1966)  A book on the origin of knowledge, the integrated performance of skills, the emergence of life and other phenomena in the universe, marginal control between levels of reality, the moral death of the communist regime caused by the unbridled lucidity of the Enlightenment, the responsibilities of science, and thoughts about open societies of the future. This is one of the two shortest books I’ve read in the list, it covers all of this under 130 pages and manages to do it well.

B. Rainov - Eros and Thanatos (1971) A communist propaganda book attacking western mass media and escapist culture. It gets no points for being correct, as the author mostly swiped the truths from french philosophers. Very variable in its intellectual prowess, almost as if it picks its arguments in order to push an agenda. Informative but also infuriating. Also expectedly homophobic.

J. Hoffmeyer - Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1997) A somewhat pop-sciency book about biosemiotics. Forgettable but also humbly written and explicative.

A. Noë - Varieties of Presence (2012) An unimpressive book about sensory perception. Noë’s theory on sensorimotor action is worth considering but the book is poorly edited and mostly spent arguing with peers.

E. Fudge - Quick Cattle & Dying Wishes (2018) A look into a registry of last wills and testaments from the period 1630 - 1650 in Essex. The book is about early modern people’s relationship to their animals and what they meant to them in life, as well as in death. Fudge’s argumentation is sharp and her style is modern. Being a scholarly book it is really overwhelming with the footnotes sometimes, but otherwise satisfying. One gets beautiful glimpses of family relationships, thoughts and feelings that people now dead for 400 years once held.

G. Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) The Buendia family get all their sons killed. The Banana Company sucks. People love each other. A lot happens, generally. It is a hundred years, after all. The upper class sucks.

K. Polanyi - The Great Transformation (1944) The Industrial Revolution sucked. England sucks. It reduced all its workers to subhuman wretches. Every single decision made after the empiricists made labour and land fictional commodities has been a band-aid to the essential contradiction that the market economy wants to annihilate its human host. Laissez-faire sucks. It caused WW1. Fuck everything. Fun book.

R. Coyne - Peirce of Architects (2019) Talks about architecture and the ideas of logician/father of pragmatism Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Informative about both. Brisk and not very in-depth, but to its benefit rather than its detriment.

R. Williams - Culture and Society (1958) A survey of the 18th and 19th century England, and the emergence of the concept of “culture” as defence against the horrors that the Industrial Revolution inflicted upon society. Consists of some two dozen outlines of contributors to the romanticist tradition, from Adam Smith, through Ruskin, to Orwell, their beliefs, contributions and literary works. Very eloquent and interesting.

E. Fudge -  Brutal Reasoning (2006) A fantastic book about much: early modern views of the difference between a human and an animal, the Christian discourse of reason, the logical fallacies that lead to its implosion, the advantageous use of dehumanisation by imperialists in other to genocide natives, Montague and Shakespeare, and the ethical hell of animal murder that led Descartes to deem animals as machines so as to allow his buddies to perform live vivisections on dogs without feeling guilty about it (this is the real reason, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise). There is even space for an entire chapter about an intelligent horse who could tell a virgin from a whore and learned Latin at Oxford. This is my favorite book I read this year, so it gets an extra long review.

R. Williams - The Long Revolution (1961) A sequel to Culture and Society that’s worse. The start and end are brilliant but the middle sags. It contains some historical reviews of English cultural elements, like the newspaper industry, the Standard English vernacular and the realist novel of the 19th century, but honestly if the book was just about about the creative state (intro) and Marxism (outro) it would’ve been fine, if not better.

P. Klee - The Thinking Eye (1956 & 1964) Bauhaus boy in 1920s Germany! Love you Klee, xoxo. You really have to read his thoughts to understand his work imho. You can appreciate it just fine on the surface level, but his completely eccentric (though very self-consistently logical and sharp) views on art creation open a new outlook into his primitive approach.

F D.K. Ching - Architecture: Form, Space & Order (1979)  A staple book for architecture students. Or so I hear. Steeped in gestalt psychology. Very good, though not necessarily stuff I don’t know already. Very nice looking pencil illustrations, Ching looks to be an accomplished technical draughtsman.

H. Wölfflin - Principles of Art History (1915) A strong contender for second place in the tier list. The book examines the transition between Classical to Baroque in Italy and Germany (and all the Germany clones, like the Netherlands). It is a systematic, precise aesthetic treatise that reveals much by conceptualizing and grouping characteristic art features in which the two styles differ, then explaining their bearing on their decorative content as well as the outlook on life that they embody. Lovely.

M. Porter -  Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (2005) A historiographical treatise about early modern views on physiognomy. The book deals mainly with the extant literature on the subject and tries to gleam what it could mean for the customs at the time - palmistry reading, occultism, persecution of the “gypsies” and the Christian scientific project of attaining meaning. Macro- and microcosms, as above so below, hermeticism, that sort of stuff. It’s an interesting read but it’s too long, the quality of writing varies greatly from chapter to chapter, and it is far too expensive. Wouldn’t recommend it.

S. C.Figueiredo -  Inventing Comics: A New Translation of Rodolphe Töpffer's Reflections on Graphic Storytelling, Media Rhetorics, & Aesthetic Practice (2017) This is the shortest book I read, mainly translating Töpffer’s 1845 "Essay on Physiognomy" along with giving his biography and some other paraphernalia. It’s not worth the price for the content contained within, but  Töpffer is the father of the modern comic book, so I thought I’d learn what his philosophy was. On that front, at least, very interesting! If only I knew French I’d save myself the trouble and read the original, which is now public domain.

D. Bayles - Art & Fear (1985) A useless self-help book. Not entirely bullshit but completely banal from all angles. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I did read it, so...

I. Allende - The House of the Spirits (1982) A child rapist gets a redemption arc. Well, kind of. All women are queens. Men are awful. The poor are wretches and it’s their fault. Oh no, the communists are going to take our land! Pinochet’s concentration camps sucked. Overall a better magical realism book than 100 Years of Solitude, to be honest. Very well written characters.

R. Arnheim -To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six Essays (1992) What it says on the tin. Wide range of subjects, from art appreciation, to schizophrenic and autistic child art, to gestalt psychology, to philosophy of science, to Picasso’s Guernica and the fate of abstract art, to reflections on the 20th century and the writer’s life in pre-nazi Germany and America. I love Arnheim, I’ve read many of his books and I’m glad I picked this one up.

R. Arnheim - Film as Art (1957) A book about cinematography, one of his earliest, actually, mostly a personal translation from an original German book he published in 1933. Somewhat outdated, but foundational. Not as informative to me but I don’t regret reading it.

G. E. Lessing - Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) A book by a greekaboo about a fucking dumb poem and a statue of a naked dad and his two sons getting fucked by snakes. It’s misogynistic and authoritarian in several places, and altogether awfully full of itself. 100 pages of interesting observations stretched over 400 pages of boring Greco-Roman literary discourse.

L. Tolstoy - Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852, 1854, 1856) One story serialized in a magazine then later collated in three separate books. Aristocrat boy grows up in pre-revolution Russia. A very, very relatable coming-of-age story. Tolstoy is a lovely writer.

F. Dostoevsky - Poor Folk (1846) An epistolary novel consisting of letters between literally Dobby from Harry Potter and his maybe-niece, whom he wants to fuck. Starts bad, gets better by the end. A bit rough and tumble for Dostoevsky’s first, so I forgive him for wasting my time a little bit. A decent character study of the middle/lower classes, at least.

L. Tolstoy - Family Happiness (1859) An amazing romance novel for the skill employed in writing it. It is very short yet delivers so much emotion. Rather simple narrative at its core, but executed with such bravado one cannot help but be impressed.

F. Dostoevsky - The Double (1846) In which the Author starts swinging. A pathetic, neurodivergent old man gets used and abused by the people around him and nobody cares. Satirical and biting, better than his first.

A. Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking (1945) I last read this when I was 6 years old so I thought I’d refresh my memory. I remember disliking the book then and I can see why. Pippi’s kind of an asshole. Still very enjoyable to read. I know it’s meant for a younger audience’s reading level yet I cannot help comparing it with Tove Jansson’s books and how much better the prose in there is. Sorry.

***

I think that about rounds them up! That’s about 30 books, give or take. For next year I’m hoping to:

Finish Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s bibliographies

Read more econ and marxist writing (low personal priority but i have to, in THIS economy *rolls eyes*)

Finish the Tintin and Moomin comics, as well as Jhonen Vasquez’s collection of edgy humor

Read more about botany and biology in general

Get started on Faulkner’s and William Golding’s bibliographies

Read more children’s books

Search for more Latin American fiction from the Boom

Read more psych/aesthetics/pedagogy literature, which seems to have become my main area of interest

Thanks for sticking till the end of the list, hope you’ve learned something and maybe you’ll pick one of these up if it took your interest. I don’t have to be a philistine just because I’m drawing video game fanart! Bye now!

[atomicwizardyouth]

Getting diagnosed with ASD as an adult

 Okay so I need to get some stuff off of my chest.

So I’ve only recently (~2 years ago) been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD/Autism) and I got that diagnosis at age 22. Now how did I get this diagnosis you ask? Great question! I didn’t want to get tested for anything, I just needed someone to vent to so I could get rid of the fucking suicidal idealisation.

Oh but OP, it can’t be that bad? Fuck off. I went through hell in my teenage years with people dying every. Single. Fucking. Year. after I turned 13. It’s a long story, it usually takes 30-60 minutes to give people the short version so I’m gonna skip that for now.

So here’s what I figured out that sucks about autism:

- I don’t feel stress, I just feel headaches and muscle pains and then I need to figure out if it’s because of a whole list of reasons or just cuz of stress

- Apparently I am more sensitive to sounds, visual stimuli, light and smells than a regular person which causes me to be stressed out a lot quicker than a NT human. Yeah this is fucking great when you can’t feel the stress build up!

- I have low empathy and seriously struggle with the entire ‘putting myself into someone else’s position’ because I just can’t understand what it’s like for them (please don’t ever cry near me, PLEASE)

- My world is very easy: predictable = good, good = healthy schedules & taking care of myself. Unpredictable/changes = bad, bad = no energy, no structure & I basically ignore all of my bodily signals. That’s bad! (won’t eat and stuff like that)

- Logic is my standard reaction, if logic doesn’t work it’s immediate anger. Yeah it fucking sucks, I know, but I can’t fucking control it any more than I already do. What is a ‘minor inconvenience’ for a NT person can be a “PRESS THE BIG RED BUTTON FOR RAGE” for me and then I need to throw something, or break something because otherwise my head gets stuck in a feedback loop of anger, resentment & regret and then it gets WORSE. 

- I am always doing something with my fingers, hands or legs because otherwise something is wrong

- If someone messes with my schedule it can ruin my day and if it’s a big thing it can ruin a week or MORE and there’s NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. If you want me to do anything give me ~24 hour warning and I’ll be 100% fine. If you tell me at 8pm that my 9pm plans need to be changed? Be prepared to deal with stressed/anxious/angry me!

- I am afraid of what people might think of me now I’m labelled with something that’s this permanent and uncurable, so I am constantly anxious (working on that with therapy tho)

- People that break very clear rules around me make me FURIOUS, this is especially relevant during the pandemic. People that wear masks under their noses and people that don’t keep 1.5m distance suck a lot! People that don’t follow traffic laws (A RED LIGHT MEANS YOU STOP YOU FUCKHEADS) and it’s very rough to figure out that other people don’t see it like this and that I’m the ‘weirdo’ in this case. 

And now here are the good things!:

- I have a very strong long term memory where I can clearly recall details from conversations, things I learned or from random things if my brain deemed them important enough at the time. I can still vividly remember things I learned in elementary school and once that memory gets triggered I can recite that knowledge like I’d just read it (but it ONLY works if the memory gets ‘properly’ triggered)

- My logic & reasoning skills are very good!

- Languages are easy to pick up (apart from French, fuck French) since you just kind of learn the rules and then follow them and then you have a functioning language! (I’m fluent in Dutch & English, I’m passable in German and currently studying Danish because I want to)

- I’m great at finance & law! Rules rules rules rules rules they are SO NICE and it’s great to be able to follow rules to help people make sense of the insanity that law & finance is. I’m able to see minute details that are off (11 euros in a 10 million budget and that intuition of “something is OFF HERE” whenever I just look through finances and calculations. Also please play boardgames with me but GIVE ME THE MANUAL, PLEAAAASE. I absolutely love reading through them and then remembering all the rules and then I can explain them to everyone!!!!!!!!

- Hyperfixation on fun projects and stuff!!!! I absolutely love being able to just close myself off from the entire world to do something that my brain thinks is great to do at that time! That can sometimes be videogames (looking at you, civ 5 sessions that last 12+ hours for a few days in a row), something creative or even reading! I love to just jump into another world (especially magic!!!!) and just live through those books for a few days/weeks at a time

And just some general things:

- It’s great to see that talking about mental health has become more accepted in the online communities and it’s becoming better irl as well! I feel absolutely validated by some of the stories people have shared here on tumblr, but also on reddit and it makes me feel accepted and it makes me feel like I still belong in this world!

- Suddenly a lot of the stuff I did as a kid is now easily explained by “ah I was being an autistic kid at times” instead of trying to figure out why I did things differently or had more problems with certain things (seriously, fuck any art class that made me make an ‘original’ product, I can only IMITATE STUFF)

- Life is too short to be scared of your own disorders, so learn about them and try to deal with some of your shit and (hopefully) your life becomes a bit better :D

It’s tough for me to see the good instead of the bad (human brain being fucky and a bit depresso) but I hope some of you can relate to this or find this and figure out that you’re not alone!

[smol-and-grumpy]

With All My Heart - P.02

This is the epilogue to Dear Dean.

Grant that I shall never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, or to be loved as to love, with all my heart.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x OFC (Jamie Blum)

Warnings: Flangst

WC: 3430

A/N: A second epilogue is here! As always, thank you @themoonandotherslikeit​​ <3

You don’t think life could be any more miserable? Dig a hole in your backyard while it is raining. Sit in the hole while the water climbs up around your ankles. Pour cold mud down your shirt collar. Sit there for 48 hours. And so there is no danger of your dozing off, imagine that a guy is sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head or set your house on fire. Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase full of rocks, pick it up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and walk on the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every few minutes, as you imagine big meteors streaking down to sock you. If you repeat this performance every three days, for several months, you may begin to understand why an infantryman gets out of breath, but you still won’t understand how he feels when things get tough. 

— Bill Mauldin, NM, cartoonist & writer for war newspaper Stars and Stripes

May 18th, 1946

Jamie’s fingers intertwined with his. She squeezed once, twice — a form of reassurance, Dean knew. His gaze was fixed in front of him, trying to pinpoint a dot in the distance, but the waves kept crashing in. His chest heaved as he took a deep breath too quickly.

It was a nice spring day. It was too warm for the season, and Jamie needed to get out of the house after last weekend when they celebrated Hope’s birthday. They had people coming around all the time and it made Dean uneasy. It was all new to him. He was still surprised that people cared about their daughter — their family — at all. He wasn’t used to it because he didn’t think that anyone ever cared about him at all except for Sammy. 

Jamie had suggested that they’d go to the beach. A month earlier, she came home with some fancy swimming trunks in hand, the kind that are skin tight with a belt around the hip and what not. They were apparently popular but what did he know? She assured him that they wouldn’t be going swimming anytime soon because she wouldn’t fit in her two-piece suit even if she tried, but she wanted him to have one when the time came. Dean was okay with that.

Yet, there they were, standing on a freaking beach, and Dean’s heart was thumping out of his chest. Jamie wanted to get away, to see the beach again even though she knew that Dean probably wanted to get as far away from any beaches, if he had a say in it. He also knew that he had to face it eventually, since Jamie loved the beach. 

“Ready when you are,” a soft voice whispered next to him, and he knew that she smiled up at him. He was just too lost in thought to even move his head to meet her eyes. His hands were sweating, too.

“Yeah,” Dean replied eventually. He tilted his head, looking down at her. 

Jamie wore a maternity dress, and he had his pants rolled up to his knees. They could hear Jameson playing peek-a-boo with Hope who sat on her uncles’ stomach some feet behind them. 

“Da-Da.” Dean could hear Hope say.

“Yes Hope, that’s Da-Da. We give them some time alone, huh? Where’s Hope? Where is my little Hope?” Jameson’s soothing voice faint in his ears. 

“Da-Da,” Hope said again.

Dean smiled. 

Hope was so attached to him. Maybe because she could feel that Jamie was pregnant and wanted more of his attention, which of course, Dean gave her. How could he ever say no to his little girl?

Dean turned the voices off because he really wanted to do this. Really wanted to be able to stand on a fucking beach and not freak the fuck out every damn time. Maybe not shit his pants, in the near future. Summer’s nearing and while he had an excuse last summer, with his legs still not healed enough, he knew that this summer, he had no excuses at all, except that he couldn’t fucking swim. 

Their toes dug in the sand. The fresh salty air breezed through their hair, and Dean thought that it was really fucking nice to be out in this weather, if his heart could stop beating out of his chest, that’d be fucking grand.

Dean closed his eyes, and Jamie tugged his hand back a little. He knew that she didn’t want to pressure him, probably even would tell him that they could blow it off, but he didn’t want to. He’d come this far. 

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes again.

*

The letter that was handed to Dean by Captain Mills read: “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.”

They were on deck of the ship crossing the channel. Dean read it carefully. Maybe, because he was itching to have something else to do other than to wait for a damn order to get off the cramped ship into a more cramped landing craft. Maybe, because it was a sign from home, something for him and his men to cling on. Maybe, he wanted to believe that he was doing something meaningful — if going into war and killing people can count as such. 

“In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.”

Dean snorted. Yeah, right. He knew that he is all that too or at least he could be, and his men are not far off. He was about willing to do anything that would get him back on American soil. The war has only started for him but already he was so sick of it.

“But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

Dean’s not a believer. Never been. If there has been a God, God sure as hell wouldn’t have taken their mother away from them. Sure as hell wouldn’t have let them grow up like they did. Eisenhower’s last words in the letter meant nothing to Dean. Still, he knew that some of his men were believers and when they sat down to pray together, Dean would find himself amongst them. He would do anything to make his men feel comfortable, to keep their morale up even if it meant for him to pray to a God that doesn’t exist in his eyes.

He sat back and fished out his cigarette tin from the pocket and lit one before he looked up at the sky. There were no stars and he wondered how Sammy’s holding up. He hoped that his brother was somewhere safe. 

He smoked one after another, before someone barked that they are going in. Dean popped in the last chewing gum he had with him before he climbed down the rope ladder into the LCV.

They were cramped in the LCV, soldiers almost sitting on top of each other, there were only enough space for two platoons and he was thankful that it was Cas’. They were sitting side by side, their backs resting against the cold metal of the LCV as it drove over waves. Dean chewed on the last gum he’d packed before he left for the channel crossing. Right about now he wished that he had packed more. Soldiers were getting sea sick, some were throwing up which then in turn triggered some kind of a puking chain. He chewed more aggressively, trying to suck in the minty fresh feeling of the gum and push the stretch of puke out of his taste buds. 

“You think the boys from Phase Two did a good job?” Cas asked him.

“I hope so,” Dean answered. 

Truth was, he didn’t know. The planes were to bombard the coastal strongholds, dropping bombs on the beach, creating craters for them to hide in. Yeah, Dean sure as hell hoped that they did their job.

“We’re here!” The pilot of the LCV shouted and Cas’ got up to talk to his men in the front. 

Dean looked around. “We’re too far from the beach!”

“Can’t go in any further!” The man shouted and when Dean looked again, he knew why.

It was madness. LCV were sinking further in the front, probably grazing some obstacles in the water. Soldiers were floating face down around them. The smell of gunpowder and explosives were penetrating. People were screaming, shells hissing around them. Soldiers that were still alive were calling out from the water and Dean shouted that they should help them, but his request was denied. “We are not allowed,” the pilot of the craft just said as he pushed the button for the deck to lower. Dean wanted to start an argument right then and there, but Cas put a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head. Dean shrugged it off, fucking angry at everybody and everything as he bit on his tongue.

“Good luck boys!” The pilot said, lowering the landing deck. Dean looked at Cas, nodding at his friend who visibly paled, and Dean didn’t think he looked any different. 

As soon as the door were dropped low enough for the soldiers to get off, the machine guns began to tear them apart.

“Cas! Climb over the side, they’re shooting at us!” Dean called on the top of his lungs. “Everyone, get off the side!”

-

“Where the fuck are we?” Cas pressed into him as they found a hiding place behind an iron obstacle. 

Dean doesn’t know but there’s one thing he knew for sure. The bombers did nothing on this fucking beach. There was no crater, no fucking sign of a dropped shell. Nothing. 

Before Dean could answer, Mills was next to him too and upon realizing that Dean doesn’t even have a rifle because he abandoned his at the bottom of the sea, Mills ordered Dean to go get a new one. He climbed over dead bodies, the water underneath his hands was red and thick.

He somehow assembled half of his platoon, or what he assumed was half because he lost track of the number a long time ago. “Get the fuck off the beach! Move inland! Get off the beach! We’re getting murdered here!”

With their uniforms still wet, they fought their way inland and only after they defeated the Krauts in their coastal pill boxes, did they allow themselves to stop and breathe. It felt like Dean had been holding his breath for the whole time since they got off the LCV.

*

Dean took another deep breath and exhaled. Tears were in his eyes. He sniffed, before he opened his eyes again. His cheeks were wet and he brushed it away with the back of his hand that was not holding Jamie’s.

He didn’t have to look at her to know that she wasn’t looking up. He knew that she always found it hard to look at him whenever he cried. She told him once that she felt like her heart broke every time, and Dean couldn’t say that he didn’t feel the same way when he saw her tears. Instead she squeezed his hand. It was to let him know that she was there. Dean knew that, too.

There’s another inhale before he started to say something.

“Okay.” And then again with a sigh. “Okay.”

He took a step forward and dragged Jamie with him. 

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Stop.

He inhaled and exhaled. “I’m okay,” he said, to nobody in particular. Mostly to himself.

Jamie replied with a squeeze of his hand. 

Dean took another step. 

Another one and another. 

Until the waves crawled up the sand just below their toes. 

It was wet and sticky around their feet.

They stood there in silence, until the water reached around their toes, making them sink in lower into the sand. 

Dean chuckled, and when Jamie looked up at him, he was full on smiling down at her. “Thank you, Bambi.” 

June 1st, 1946

Hi Sammy,

Jamie’s having her last week at the nursing school, and I just put Hope to bed. There’s not much I can do, since Jameson went out for a date, so I thought I’d sit down to write to you. 

Jamie’s almost finished with her school. She has to drop out earlier because of her gigantic tummy (don’t tell her I said that, alright?) but they granted her a BSN degree anyway, because she apparently excelled in her studies. 

I accompanied her to her graduation last weekend and I can’t say that I wasn’t proud of my girl. Jamie would maybe tell you that I shed a tear, but there was just really something in my eye, I swear!

She introduced me to some of her classmates. The majority of them had loved ones in the war. I mean, that was no surprise, since we were so fucking many over there! One of the girls was there with her boyfriend. He asked me where I was stationed overseas, and I told him I was with the 116th Regiment, 29th Infantry Division and was fighting in Normandy.

“My brother was with the 29th too,” the guy said.

I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to know if I would have known him because I knew what would follow. 

“He didn’t make it back.” The man looked me up and down, as if he’s checking to see if I had scratches, scars or a missing limb from the war. “You were in the same Division. Yet, you are here and he’s not…. Huh.” 

I could see the tears welling up in his eyes, Sammy. I swallowed hard and suddenly, it felt too hard to breathe. There’s someone standing across from me who questioned my existence. As if I’m not doing enough of it on my own already. I could hear it in his voice, even if he didn’t say it. Something that sounded like “Why do you think you deserve to be here while my brother gave his life for this country.” Of course he didn’t say it like that, and I seriously couldn’t say anything else than “I’m sorry. I’m sure your brother fought bravely.” Jamie came along and dragged me away before it could get any more awkward.

Anyway, I try not to think about it too much. I’ve signed up for a business program, by the way. My boss at the garage was thinking that maybe I could take over one day. He’s a real great guy, Sam. He’d lost his son, who was fighting on Peleliu. Said I remind him of his son. I’m so thankful for the offer and yes, soon I’ll be studying Business on the GI Bill. I’m grateful for it, because I don’t know if we could cover the cost with our growing family.

Sam, Jamie took me to the beach. Can you imagine? I was terrified, not gonna lie, but it was good. I had to get over the fear eventually. It took me longer than I thought it would, though. All the while Jamie just waited, my hand in hers. I closed my eyes for a minute, thinking about what happened the last time I was at a beach, almost two years ago. I drowned out the voices and noises in my head, and when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was the beauty of the beach. The sand between my toes, the salt tinted breeze, the calmness of the waves. It was great. I think I finally made my peace with it. Took me fucking long enough.

Jamie bought me swimming trunks, by the way. Honestly, I wouldn’t even like to be caught dead in them, but I guess that’s what people wear nowadays, huh? Her dream would be that we could all go swimming one day, but you know that I can’t swim, right? Anyway, I really wanna be able to do that for her but she’s too big to teach me, so Jameson is giving me swimming lessons down by the lake. We always say that we’re going to the bar downtown, and I don’t think she really believes us but she never presses any further.

*

“Hi”, Jamie leaned against the door to the study in her flowery maternity dress, and her hair up into a bun. She smiled when Dean turned his attention to her.

“Hi.” He returned her smile.

“Sam?” 

“Yeah.” Dean nods. “I’ll be right with you.” 

She frowned. “No you won’t.” Jamie walked into the room and stood beside him so Dean could place his arm around her waist, his cheek rested against her belly as she cradled his cheek, one hand stroking the short hair at the back of his neck. “You take your time. I’m going to check on Hope and take a shower.”

He kissed her belly. “Okay, I’ll see you in bed.” 

She smiled before she walked out.

*

Jamie just came home, Sammy. I think I’ll draw a line here, too. My fingers are starting to hurt. I am thankful for the notebook. I really am. I think it’s easier for me to put my thoughts into words — to have an outlet for all the things that I have in my head. Even if I have people around me who had been through the same, they still didn’t go through what I went through. Jamie wasn’t a prisoner, and I am fucking thankful that she went home before shit got serious. I don’t even want to imagine what they would have done to her if they would have found her with me. I don’t even want to think of all the horrors, because it would only make me angry. 

You know, they have psychiatrists working for the Army. I tried it once, but they only said “Try to act normal then you will begin to think normal, too.” That’s like an hour of my life that I will never get back. Try acting normal. The fuck does that mean anyway?

Ah, I shouldn’t work myself up now. I need to calm down and honestly, I can’t wait to slip into the bed next to Jamie, maybe listen to what she has to say about her day, I like that. Like to listen to her everyday life, it makes me think that sometimes the world isn’t so cruel to me after all. Honestly I still don’t know how I deserve all this. Deserve to come home, have kids, be with my girl… I wish you could be here, Sam.

I miss you very much.

Good night.

Dean

*

Dean closes his notebook and walked into the bathroom as Jamie brushed her teeth. He took a toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste on it before he brushed his own teeth, eyes Jamie through the little mirror screwed to the wall. He thought that she looked exhausted, more so tonight than on any other night. He’s worried about her. She needed to rest. Maybe he’d whisk her away the coming weekend and go somewhere just the two of them. 

“Stop staring,” Jamie said, spitting out toothpaste. She rinsed her brush, a playful frown on her face.

“I’m not.” He laughed when Jamie sent him a gaze with her lips curved into a grin before she walked out.

June 2nd, 1946

SAMMY THEY ARE COMING!

..To Be Continued.

@dean-winchesters-bacon​​ @beautifulbowleggedangel​​ @flamencodiva​​ @weepingwillowphoenix​​ @adoptdontshoppets​​ @fangirl-and-medstudent-help​​ @mrswhozeewhatsis​​ @katehuntington​ @mariekoukie6661​

[stories-tales-myths]

Fairytale: König Drosselbart / King Thrushbeard

A German fairytale that I grew up with. It's supposed to teach a lesson, but it's actually really fucked up.

.characters: Princess [vain], King [her father], suitors [various], King Thrushbeard, Beggar

---

1. Enter beautiful young Princess. [Let's face it, she is a teenager. There are different versions with her age 14-18] King wants to marry her off.

2. King invites suitors [really just an assortment of inbred creepy old guys with titles and money] and because he is soo kind and progressive and loves his daughter soo much, he wants to let her choose who to marry

3. Suitors line up, Princess judges. [It's supposed to feel like that scene from "The Emporers new groove", but Princess actually has some good points] 'You are like four times my age' 'You smell as if you have never taken a bath in your life and I'm supposed to touch you?' 'I think you killed your last wife because she only had daughters. Did I hear that rumor right?' 'You look like a pig.' 'You're drunk.' 'Your parents were siblings and you only want to marry me because you don't have any sisters.' 'You live several weeks away and I don't want to leave my family and home like this:' [Add to your heart's content. Some good points, some shallow points. Seriously. The tale always gets told with shallow and reasonable criticisms, but the audience is always supposed to feel as if all points are shallow. I told you it's creepy. I have never heard a version without at least the age-thing and some reference to alcohol. But SURE, Princess just needs to suck it up. ] and finally: 'You have a funny beard. You look like a thrush. I shall call you King Thrushbeard.'

[This is a thrush. What a cute little birdie.]:

4. Somehow, this pisses the King of. [Maybe he used to sport this style in his youth]

The King throws a tantrum:

'You, my beloved daughter, are an ungrateful brat. You refuse to marry any of these wonderful suitors, these noble noblemen that would actually be perfect for you. And now you make fun of this handsome fella.

Obviously, I [mis]understand you perfectly: You don't want to marry a nobleman, so I guess you don't want to be a princess anymore. And you embarrass me in front of my old friends and drinking buddies, so I guess you don't want to be my daughter either.

You shall get your wish: The next beggar I see shall be your husband. You won't ever see this castle or me ever again.

Now go to your room, I will have a drink or two with these WONDERFUL men.'

5. Princess does not believe her father. Nevertheless, the next morning comes. There is a beggar. The beggar asks for a few coins. Instead, he gets a 14-year-old [or whatever age you picked] child bride [Child, yes. Even if she's 18, he's like twice her age at least] They have a very small wedding and then leave the castle. Princess cries the entire time. [reminder. The story usually gets told with the emphasis that Princess deserves this and is just being an ungrateful brat right now]

6. Beggar and Princess on their journey. Because she is now severely dehydrated, she stops crying. And she fucking scared. [Because her father just GIFTED her to a strange man without her consent and even went so far as to tell her, that whatever happens, she CANNOT come back and ask for his help. And she has no idea where the strange man lives or what he will do to her.

To clarify: The 'noble' suitors would have been pretty bad too. But she would still be a princess and have at least some protection. There would be a court and she would never be completely isolated. There would never be even a risk of her being forced into prostitution or sacrificed to some heathen god or many being eaten alive.

Most of that does not happen, but she can't know that for sure. Just imagine how you would feel in her situation. ]

To distract herself she starts to make light conversation:

"Who does that pretty meadow belong to?"

> "Oh that. It belongs to King Thrushbeard."

"Who does this lush forest belong to?"

> "Oh that. It belongs to King Thrushbeard."

...

[She always asks about something rich or pretty and it always belongs to King Thrushbeard. It's a day-long journey, so just do as many repetitions as you'd like. ]

7. They arrive at a really small, sad little hut.

Princess: "Who does that shabby hut belong to?"

Beggar: "That belongs to me. And because you are my wife now, it's your home as well. I expect you to cook and clean for me and tend to the garden, and I expect you to do well because I don't have time for a lazy wife.

[EWW]

[8. She probably gets raped. This part is never explicit because today's versions of any fairytale for children are rather tame. And the older versions don't NEED to say anything, because they originate in a time when OF COURSE you just casually raped your wife, especially on your wedding night.]

9. Princess has to deal with chores and fails, because of course she does. And Beggar is pissed and yells at her a lot. [He might also hit her.] But at least he is only at home at night, although she has no idea where he goes every day.

Options include

-basket weaving (She has bloody hands after this)

-pottery

-cooking (she doesn't actually fail at this, the soup is just a little bland. Beggar yells at her anyway.)

-cleaning

-laundry (almost drowns in a river)

-selling things at the market (she fails by being run over by a horse in this one.)

10. Beggar is fed up with his permanently 'mopey' [traumatized] and useless 'wife' [underaged slave]. So he sends her away to work at the castle as a kitchen girl.

Nobody recognizes her. [There are several possible reasons as to Why That Is. One worse than the next:

a) King may have ordered everybody to pretend to not know her. Just to make her feel miserable.

b) Princess is now malnourished and possibly sleep-deprived. Possibly her trauma manifests in severe nightmares. She isn't clean, her hair is different, she may have lost weight. Possibly her demeanor has changed too. Gone is the confident and playful girl. This girl speaks quietly, walks quietly and hunched over, and flinches at sudden movements.

c) Princess might be older now. We have no idea how long she lived in the hut with Beggar. A week? A year? Five Years? Who knows?]

11. She is actually relatively happy. She makes friends, learns skills from the other servants (who are actually patient and don't just yell at her). Maybe she gets to say hello to her horse again.

And Princess gets to steal small pieces of the exquisite food her father eats. [don't worry everybody does it] She picks these pieces up and puts them in a small pot under her skirt to eat them later. [Don't ask me about the logistics here. This is one of the big mysteries of my childhood. Why a pot? That must be uncomfortable. How inconspicuous can it be to do this? What if the King eats soup? ]

12. One day, there's a big banquette. King Thrushbeard is there, spots Princess, and says something like 'What a pretty girl. I don't care that she's working right now. My dick says I wanna dance with her, so I'm gonna.'

[In other versions he only notices her because the weird pot shatters and THEN decides to dance with her.]

13. Up-close, Princess realizes something:

King Thrushbeard IS the Beggar

14. King Thrushbeard officially introduces his wife to the world, Princess reconciles with her father. There is a second wedding, big this time.

[In some versions the King knew all along, in other versions he doesn't and just finds this hilarious.

In all versions this counts as a happy ending btw.]

---

Now the lesson here is that girls should always be kind and just do what their dads say. I guess. It's a terrible lesson.

[funginerd]

                             remember my thanksgiving list? this one is gonna be worse. yes you read right, im attempting this and i hope whoever sees this has a nice day and happy holidays. star tr.ek in more ways than i care to admit has shaped my life so to write paul and get back into the fandom felt like a fresh breeze while simultaneously it felt like coming home and i’m incredibly happy to be here again with such cool and kind folks like you all.                             basically, because german’s celebrate christmas on the 24th and we open our presents the same evening this might come as a pre-present to some of you but whatever. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, guys, under the cut is a long ass list from me to you to express just how grateful i am for you all to be here. i tried my best to include as many people as i could but of course, i sadly don't have the capacity to find kind words for all of my beauty followers but please be aware - and i might repeat myself but it doesn't make it less true - i love you all and im thankful you’re here with me.

in no particular order bc fuck me that's too much work (also wow jelly told me it was stupid to keep my conversations in tabs but tbh never really closing them really helped me here)

@infiinitepossibilities : im glad we started talking more. before i just knew you as this amazing multimuse writer who had all their muses down perfectly but now im getting to know you as an amazing person as well and that's just incredibly cool

@hcndlehim : adam, my dear boy adam. i love you. through many fandoms and over the course of many blogs we have stayed together and i can honestly say that is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. you’re such a delight to talk to and your writing has such a nice flow, so having you as my friend and writing partner for so long has just ?? made my a lot happier than you know

@culberr  / @disciipled : i have time and time again told you i love your writing and i have no idea if oyu think im kidding when i say i show it off but some of my friends can confirm i did actually send stuff to them and i do gush about our amazing writing because i cannot get enough of your style (and oyu bc i lub u). your way of telling things just has such a nice and easy flow that it makes me want to never stop reading your things and we’re lvl 5 friends so when i say i hate how much i love everything you do im not lying. you are amazing and talented and such a nice guy like im still stocked to be able to call you that and not weird you out with that. i just ?? adore you

@stamcts : some people say my aesthetic is on point but they obviously have never seen your blog bc arthur? i love every single post you make. i have seen your ic posts, they’re great and your writing is beyond amazing so ?? let it be known i adore you and im jealous of your skills to dig up cool things on the internet. and ur writing skill, fuck you for that.

@lifedeathpeacewar : leo my boi, my friend,i just cannot tell you how easily i fall in love with people who stan the same people i stan and lets be honest i think you love him more than i do but that's okay bc this way i can focus some of my love on you. im one of the people that say i love duplicates but then only follow two idk why im just that weird but i know you’re doing great with my son and i know you’re doing even  better with mark and lets be honest i already know you’re gonna be great with lucas as well bc you’re great with everything that you put your mind to and i envy you for that.

@orbinglight : i tried for your birthday already to express how much i love you but in no language the world has to offer there are enough words to really make it known just how much you really mean to me. im not as poetic as you are when it comes to praising and finding the right way to phrase things for you, so i just have to hope that you know - through all my clumsy attempts of telling you - just how near and dear to my heart you are. at this point you’re truly the person with the most beautiful soul i have ever met online or irl and i just cannot stand the thought of one day maybe not having you anymore because damn you’re gorgeous and amazing and talented and in so many ways the best thing that has happened to me on this blue hellsite

@selflessdoctor : i kinda wanna say see above bc for you too i feel all these things even though i dont always tell them as outright as i list them for artie but you’re important to me, having found you and somehow forced you into talking to me and becoming my friend was one of the best ideas i ever had and ? im so glad you let me - this odd girl you never met before - stick around and harras you. not really you know what i mean but like ?? i love you and i know i don't say that often enough but just let it be known you’re fucking perfect okay.

@turrissomnia  : three god damn blog changes and you know what ? i still love you, im still impressed by your TOS knowledge and im still absolutely adoring your portrayals. now its just even more muses you’re nailing its really cool to watch tbh.

@bellicaptivus : i honestly dont understand your fascination with strudel but im here for it and im here for your absolute magnificent portrayal of this boi so stay awesome, stay here with us and ?? don’t change bc i absolutely adore you

@adheretologic : i probably mentioned this before but you were the first disco blog i ever followed, like i think you came before adam and i still very much love seeing you on my dash

@kelpiencomplexities : i wish we knew each other better, i wish i would see your writing but man, i just love you in general idk you just are such a delight, like you introduced yourself with a pun thats always a plus in my book im just ?? very happy to have you around friend you’e really cool

@georgiov : im extremely thankful for your patience, you somehow have managed to explain the basics of SW to me without losing your mind and all that while running an amazing disco blog? you’re and im running out of positive words but like you’re the best and i love you okay

@starxbcrn : you are so iconic its unfair, like look at you having all of this creativity and talent and somehow you always come back to your golden boi, i just ?? cannot not tell you how much you inspire me and how much i love seeing you around without having to use the thesaurus

@astromed : you aesthetic: on point. your mccoy: on point. your writing: unfairly amazing. i’ll be honest i like looking at your posts, i like reading your posts, i like just having you on my dash and from the few interactions we had i know you’re a cute bean. i said it before you got recommended to me by a friend and i cannot ever regret following you

@neverarhyme : call me a nerd but i love you and im very grateful we’ve managed to stick together through me ignoring your messages and you being you for two years already but you’ve somehow become one of my best friends on this website and i don't hate you for it. in fact im time and time again amazed at how oyu handle things, at how developed ver is and how you still manage to surprise me even tho so much time ahas passed.

@theharricr : lizzie, lizzie, lizzie, you are my light sometimes, i just ? i just absolutely love you, no strings attached i love talking to you, i love watching things with you just ?? being able to call you a friend is honestly making me so happy time and time again

@jaylahofussfranklin : you’re one of the people who sometimes pop up and sometimes vanish without a trace and honestly every time you  come back to me im very happy about it. like - you’re cool, you’re one of my oldest friends here, probably the only german i want to talk to on this website and idk if i ever told you but your jaylah and your sarah are just fucking perfect.

@friendoftheood : honestly every time we talk you’re just the cutest bean and your grasp on rose is absolutely admirable. i have no idea why you think im worthy of having you follow me but im so grateful to have you around you can’t imagine

@cadetxtilly : you are honestly a bucket of sunshine and your tilly just absolutely makes me happy. she is very on point, she is very adorable and you convey every single aspect of her perfectly. your headcanons and ic posts about her just ?? make it really worth following you

@atomiism : would still 10/10 drop my man for you but real talk? when i rp’ed as ray and saw you and your blog and your writing i was ready to just completely give this boy over to you and what you have done with him since then is magical, i cannot believe someone as talented as you is here and likes me. even after so mayn months im still blown away by having met you, by knowing the face behind the brain that knows all these pretty words and can string them together like damn my darling dear you are perfect in every single way <3

@burnedlegend : you truly are a very special specimen. obv not in a bad way i mean i fucking love you but in a way that you’re so unique even though you’re sometimes a mess i can honestly say im looking forward to seeing you grow and be happy in your life bc already you have a fantastic personality and a kind soul and you’re so refreshing to talk to (when u fucking answer) idk if i have told you lately, probably not bc lets face it i suck as well, but i adore you and i value your friendship and i’ll always be here if you need me. you’re great no matter what anyone says, bc you’re you and i love that man that i have come to know over the course of this year bc he is such a passionate disaster and i wouldn’t want you to stop being you for anything in the world.

@revivedlegend : you’re an absolute dear, you have been there for me in tough times and you’ve given me so many great advice i honestly don't know what i would do without you. i know life is hard and i know people say it gets better but sometimes it doesn’t look that way? listen, you’re perfect and you deserve good things and im absolutely positive that you’ll reach great things, that life will be beautiful for you but until then im here for you and i love you with all of my heart and some that i borrowed from gabe. you are amazingly creative even if you dont see that right know but i have always loved your portrayals, your writing and your devotion to the things you love. christina you’re fantastic, okay. <3

@warsighted  : i love you, i hate your penname but i love everything else about you. listen, from the way you approach characters to the way your characterise them and the way you plot and the way you get excited about things. i love all of that. you’re incredible and so nice on top of being stupidly talented. its honestly unfair thank god you’re balancing that out with a weird penname xD

@outlawiism : how can i make this list and not say something nice about you? kinda not an option tbh bc you’re this amazing ball of positivity even when times are rough its just magical to see you on my dash and now that we talk again its just making me want to be the best version of myself so i can spread just as much positivity and make people happy and honestly? all that aside your love and devotion to peter is one of a kind, your writing is flawless and i just hope ?? one day you’re gonna archive your dreams and do the things you want and tbh you deserve cool things happening to you. so knock on wood for that!

@srenity & @courtesn : sorry im throwing you both together like this but liten, i’ve loved your inara before and im incredibly happy you’re back and now seeing the both of you play this otp out is something i hadn’t known i needed bc you’re not just beautifully on point but you’re both carrying the fandom with your fantastic writing its just making me love firefly so much more thanks to you two <3

@snowinabottle : you’re cute, your girl is cute, your blog is cute, your aesthetic is cute idk maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't but im not the best with words i just ? don't know how i should tell you but i like having you around and i like seeing you on my dash and i just like you in general okay? okay

@stellaexlacrima : im always weak for ocs even tho sometimes it takes me a while to get to know them and im sorry we didnt start talking sooner bc now that i know you i cannot believe i was so blind to your genius for so long. honestly? i love you, i loved plotting with you, i loved talking to you and im absolutely positive i will love writing with yoou no matter how slow i am. im absolutely excited for our thread, im excited for orange people and weird caves and wicked plant sutff bc i a excited to let paul have this adventure with anika

@multamusae : you are one of the people on this website who somehow manage to be very productive and as much as it sometimes makes me feel funny very often i look at your blog and im just astonished by the sheer amount of work and effort you put into everything. you are incredible, you’re so cool and your ocs give me all the life, i originally followed you for your mycroft and im still here it feels like years have passed and you’re still this amazingly talented writer from so long ago please don't ever change in that way.

@childzerozeronine : we don’t talk often enough and that is partially my fault and partially yours but let it be known im very happy that we did eventually started talking after so long of just loving artie together. nine is one of the best stranger thangs ocs i have ever seen and we both know for a while you couldn't look anywhere without them but she is amazing and i love her and i love you and im sorry im not the best chat partner

@derbefehl : we honestly have never talked but i feel very much drawn towards you for you have shown a great taste in muse, a great taste in ivan and you’re just all around ? really cool to have on my dash? i really like your writing like damn that's some good stuff you have right there

@chosemypain : i know we never talked but jelly is really loving your portrayal and honestly that’s good enough for me, you have shown great taste in show and muse and im all here for your brilliance tbh 

@espressovixen / @brokenspy : vicky my dear, im sorry im not on jayne so it might be confusing but it is i, your local disappointment: dottie. can i just take a moment and tell you: you’re probably one of my favourite writers? like idk if you can tell but i have seen so many people, i’ve seen so many different writings styles and yours is just ? outstanding to me. your love and passion for your girls is magical, your personality is so sweet and kind and i ? cannot believe how lucky i am to call you a friend, i’ve literally been in love with your writing like four blogs ago already.

@fasciinating : you are probably one of the first spocks i EVER found and honestly i can’t believe i got so lucky that you follow me back, i swear whenever i see you on my dash im just blown away by your talent and portrayal 

@methodcop : over different blogs and fandoms neither of us is in im very glad we seem to keep finding each other over and over again. you truly are one of these people that you just ?? don't feel right not having on the dash, skye you’re amazing and i love you okay? okay

@rendczvous : fish, im sorry you’re last on this list and i wasn’t sure if i should even say something but honestly i just kind of have to. you are so cute and jelly loves you so much i sorta have to be thankful that you put up with her when im not around and honestly that in itself is a feat already but then you write and its just like woah you’re not just cute but also talented and honestly i find that unfair and i would like to file a complaint

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST EVEN MORE AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE AND I LOVE YOU ALL EVEN THO WE NEVER TALKED THE AMOUNT OF TALENT ON THIS LIST IS OVERWHELMING TURNING CAPSLOCK OFF IS IMPOSSIBLE BC I FEEL VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THIS:

@newaldera / @sunworn / @noprodigalson (ur a cutie and i feel like i had to mention that here) / @selfsaving / @stellarumwomen / @monstrousmade / @resistancehistorian / @astradie / @chpls / @seeheroic / @livesinnarrative / @hopefired / @danversiism / @dancerdoc /  @acepilct / @starshipxcaptain / @starfleets1stmutineer / @pcrsonae / @spacemarincr / @saevio / @starjourney / @theholisticdetective / @paramounticebound / @ichorcrowncd / @abscntee / @boywonderish & @needanswers (im convinced you two are just the real deal and the hsow never ended like you two really are that good) / @boldlylogical / @aprettygooddetective / @amcrist / @enhanc / @mysticwiitch / @coneyislandcastaway / @daredbetter / @atlantisking / @164 / @zooomies / @xenobridge / @thistimefeelsnew / @chaxswalking / @hisgenius / @verycivilofyou / @five-guns-days / @interstel / @superiorambition / @thedestrcyer / @astrcphobia / @admiralsdontfly / @addsalsa / @sempitern / @heroheart / @thexjoinedxsurgeon / @xaedificare / @quietresistance / @falsepsychiic / @gcdlikc / @makeshistory / @positronicminds / @honoredsouls / @zherka / @samenkomen / @spaceforkirk / @definiibus / @captainussdiscovery / @mavxricks <3 / @ofstarrynights /  @1stofficerspock / @humanandvulcan / @nxtasidekick / @dutyandcompassion

wow. ehm happy holidays guys and im so sorry if i have missed anyone i truly tired my best.

[sundial-girl]

amber, grey, claret, coral, emerald, mauve, porcelain, gold, honey, wine, amethyst, mint, prussian blue, onyx

prussian blue: what's your first choice at the vending machine oH jeebie thats a lot of colors, here tho lemme try and answer them all!! so long post ahead qwq

amber: what's saved as your phone's lockscreen?

fujimoto from ponyo ahkjdjhgjkhdskg,,, 

its not a screencap though, its like someone’s art of him and i am trying to find it but i cannOT hhhdhsg,,,, later i’ll see if i can add it to this since its saved on my phone but not on my computer

grey: how many languages do you speak? do you want to learn any more?

I speak English and (Peruvian) Spanish p fluently, though my spelling + grammar is ass sometimes and I am learning German in school, though I have tried to teach myself Czech and Portuguese on my own. Honestly if I could I would learn to speak every language humanly possible, but my brain might lowkey implode from that knowledge qwq

I would want to learn at least one Asian language (tried Korean but only got as far as somewhat understanding the hanggul), but I think my dumb latin-wired brain is having strokes in understanding the differences,, like even slavic languages are making more sense to me than that,, maybe im just dumb tho qwq

claret: do you play an instrument? do you want to learn to play any?

what color is claret???

oooF learned to play violin since like elementary but?? quit this year because it was really detrimental on my mental health and causing more stress than it should T - T i still lowkey feel bad about it cause i’m probably a disappointment to my paternal grandfather, who was really excited about me playing violin, but hhhhhhhhh

if i could i would learn to play the hammered dulcimer since it sounds really pretty, but there’s a few reasons why i cant:

those shits cost like OVER $4,000!! I KNOW INSTRMENTS EXPENSIVE BUT WHAT THE TUFKC

they’re kinda big so you can’t easily take them places

literally like nobody’s ever heard of hammered dulcimers

because i suck ass with coordination my hands would have strokes trying to be doing two different stuff at once (this is why i could never learn piano)

coral: an animal you wish hadn't gone extinct

hmmmmmmmmm this is an interesting question,,, there’s like a lot of cool extinct species,,,

i think i’ll have to say the dodo bird? i know its basic but like... big fluffy lads... they seem like they would’ve been fun to pet/hold, just like chickens... sad that there still would probably be like a huge trade in them for food or something :/

emerald: if you had the option, would you choose to move and live in another country? which one?

well the u.s. is a hell country LMAO so i am probably going to try and leave when i get the chance but hmmmm???

i mean plan-wise i have been thinking of studying abroad in Germany, cause there’s a lot of benefits

UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE BABEY

practicing my german skills

other countries like czech republic are nearby so i can go visit friendos ;0

only things that might fuck me over are currency conversions because i suck ass with math and the timezone shift, but i’ll be fine maybe

peru doesn’t count as an option for this because i’ve technically lived there for a while?? when i was like 6,, and also i feel like that’s cheating since i already know the language and stuff there better too, so its like almost as familiar as the u.s.

mauve: any unpopular opinions?

i think you’d have to be more specific on this like, regarding a specific topic hksjdghk, i can’t think good rn

and also i might get hounded if i say anything so yea

porcelain: an tv show you used to love

i barely watch tv lmaooooo buT when i was younger i did watch more,, there’s like a few childhood shows i remember really well?? 

might have to say zooboomafoo though,,, lemur boyE,,, and the kratt brothers, anima stuff, i was feral for that show

gold: do you wear your socks mismatched?

when i can’t find the pair, or dont have time to find the pair yes lmao

my socks are mismatched rn!! they look very similar in that they’re both pink, but one has white stitching at the ends 

mom gets very mad at me kdsjghksjg

honey: your thoughts on magic- does it exist?

mmmmmmmm i mean?? i would like to think there are at least some forms of it that exist :0

like sadly i dont think i can cast “fuck off” on someone and make them drop dead instantly (guns don’t count) but like,,, do emoji spells count?? i reblog a lot of those qwq

and just think fun stuff like charms and such are cool for luck, i have a lot of four-leaf clovers preserved

wine: do you have a 'type'

i’m aroace, so

BUT i mean i do definitely think i have like, specific types when it comes to character design and stuff that make me go feral because a loT OF MY favorite characters are startlingly similar in some cases, but that’s a different case

amethyst: do you collect anything?

i mean?? i still have a bunch of monster high dolls and littlest pet shops from when i was younger because i refuse to give them away but like, i dont think those count cause i’m not a dedicated toy collector

i would collect snails if i could fiND more but i dont think that counts either cause its more like,,, my small children

i collect ideas in my head i guess, keep them in there, rarely write them down so that’s why i lose a few of them kghskg but i’m constantly thinking. its hell

mint: favourite flavour of gum?

MINT FLAVORED GUM LMAO, the ask name predicted it

sorry but fruit flavored gum is disgusting. im sorry i cant stand it

bubblegum is nice too but depends on the brand

prussian blue: what's your first choice at the vending machine

like the food/drink vending machines or the tiny ones that had toys?? cause for the toy ones DEF would be the sqwishland toys... i loved those discount squinkies, dont have too many though cause mom did not approve of me getting them, also the only vending machines for them were in an a&p that closed down years ago

for the food/drink though depends on what’s in there... i mean drinkwise i like only drink water so, no soda, but food it dependssssss what im feeling at the moment

onyx: do you still play Minecraft?

i would play the version i have on my brother’s xbox 360 more if it woRKED PROPERLY

KEEPS FUSCKIGN READING AS A DVD NO ITS MINECRAFT!!!!1 PLEASE

[rubiatinctorum]

I highkey disagree with the arts should do STEM sentiment, mostly because i fucking sucked at STEM subjects in high school and idk how something like that would do any more than fuck people up some more if they’re bad at something. For context, I pulled through high school with mostly 90%+ grades (which i forced myself to for a scholarship because fuck if i can afford school), and I struggled like hell through science and math courses. I had one computer tech course that I did well on just because it was a lot of copying down what was written on a sheet (and the prof already knew me from history the year before, which i did well in). Currently, I’m in my second term of my second university year, and I have already:

Pulled a 58% in an English course. I am an English major, if that adds anything.

Barely passed my first history course with a 50%. That’s quite a difference from the 90+ grades I made in high school.

Failed the midterm and most of the assignments in German 1001, and had to drop the course. I’m actually p good at German, from the term before with 1000 and retaking 1001 now. 

Cannot even start certain Geography assignments this term, because I have to use spreadsheets and data for it that I do not understand. I know the concepts, but adding the technology and math makes it impossible for me.

I will do the required stats courses or average courses or whatever I’ll need for the upcoming education degree, but quite frankly, I do not think I should have to ruin my already problem-causing grades. My brain does not fucking do math or science very well, and struggles with technology to the point of being unable to find the battery notification settings on my own goddamn computer without googling it. My basic math skills have degraded significantly from trying to remember bullshit I haven’t needed since and never will. I’ll never need to know how to do a logarithm. I would sincerely bet that. 

If STEM courses are imperative for arts and humanities students, they should be provided outside of a graded system, but telling people that they should have to do something that will probably cause them to fail school and waste the money they’re already too poor to afford to waste is bullshit. And likewise, there are probably plenty of STEM students who nearly failed their arts courses and struggled with that all through high school, who will not want to hear that they need to read Frankenstein to understand the ethics of science (Also arts doesn’t need to teach you ethics of science or whatever when the science department should literally teach that since it’s science???? but whatever)

Frankly, anyone who is old enough to have to buy their own school probably has the common sense to know what fields aren’t meant for them; they’ve already had years of training on that from grade school. It’s not like these people have never taken a STEM/arts course. They took it in high school because they had to and Gee! It’s almost as if everyone can’t like and be good at everything! Also, what role does the high school classroom play if not to teach these subjects? An English teacher in high school isn’t any less of an arts teacher than an English uni prof, and a Chemistry teacher in high school isn’t teaching any less science than a Chemistry prof. It’s just at different difficulties.

Also, if one wants to learn as a brain work out or for curiosity, they don’t need a university credit to learn something??? It’s literally possible to learn things in local classes, or on the internet, or whatever? 

So pretty much, high school is supposed to be generalized and uni/college is supposed to be specialized, there are ways to learn outside of uni, some things just aren’t worth learning in a graded environment if they’ll just set someone up for failure, and the sense of elitism that surrounds a uni/college credit is bullshit and someone’s learning of a subject shouldn’t be devalued if it didn’t come from a uni/college course that conflicts with their degree path.

If the high school education in generalized areas isn’t enough for you, I’d like to hear what you’d say to someone who could only have school as far as high school.

And yeah. For people like CEOs or whatever maybe some knowledge of how to be a decent fucking person is the bare minimum one could do but as a arts/humanities student, i’ve observed that arts/humanities students can be stuck so far up their own asses thinking that people need to take the exact same expensive courses as they do to be a good person. None of the courses I’ve taken in uni have taught me how to be a good person, they’ve taught me how to write essays and analyse books and while that can be used to comment on things like ethics and morality, it’s not gonna magically give ethics to someone who has made it this far thinking it’s cool to exploit people. Reading George Orwell one (1) time isn’t gonna make someone like Bezos go “wow oppression bad”

Also it’s not all about not comprehending the value of a subject beyond mkaing them money sometimes it’s “I’m never going to need to know fucking calculus and I’m not failing school over it”

Also: I don’t know the OP in the twitter post, I don’t care to know the OP in the twitter post.

[just-shaladin-things]

I really wanna learn German or sign language but I'm having troubles staying concentrated on actually learning how can I keep up with learning a different language help

okay i’m really shitty at self motivation too so i feel you on this... once i decided i was gonna learn italian then i forgot i was learning italian like 2 days later anyway i fucking suck at doing things on my own

i know that duolingo is a really good resource for learning languages! i’m pretty sure it works on a reward-based system so it’s good for providing external motivation

another really good thing to do is to find things that force you to interact with the language. like when i was taking asl classes, i watched a lot of asl music videos (produced by Deaf people, not hearing, there’s absolutely a difference) because i liked the music, so it was easier to cross that Motivation Bridge to get the practice i needed (try looking at D-PAN!! they make awesome stuff)

i’ve also used fanfiction to help me, but that’s more of a fluency thing and not useful for learning core linguistic mechanics

if you can set up and maintain an external reward system, that’s a really good way to help you stay motivated to learn! if that doesn’t work well, you can try finding a friend to hold you accountable. if you know any bilingual friends who speak your target language, that’s even more helpful because you can ask to practice with them!

and idk shit about german, but i do know a lot of online asl learning tools so :o

this set of playlists is a list of most of the vocabulary from the textbook series signing naturally, which is a really popular textbook that i’ve personally used! the vocab is clearly signed and super useful too

honestly everything bill vicars makes is amazing. here’s his youtube channel!

and here’s his website, lifeprint, which serves as an asl dictionary while also providing a lot of information on grammatical structures of asl!

here’s the website for the georgia tech CATS program, which is intended for Deaf children to learn reading skills but is also a really great tool for learning to sign!

here’s another really great youtube channel :D

ABC stories are really good for learning how to conceptualize language outside of words. here are a few: x | x | x

i’ve never used these resources myself, but startASL and ASLpro are supposedly really good for learning asl :o

and here’s one of the more famous asl stories! it’s called The Ball, and i’ve had to sign it for one of my classes before :D it’s really fun and good with visual cues, so it’s easy to understand what’s happening (if you watch it a few times slkdfj)

anyway i’m rooting for you and i wish you really good luck in learning your target language because!!!!! languages are so cool!!!

[olmopress]

Episode III: The Return of Manovich

week 11: Vincent Miller, “Key Elements of Digital Media” / Lev Manovich, “The Language of New Media”, Principles of New Media: 2. Modularity, 4. Variability, 5. Transcoding

Today I am very Happy. Even if yesterday night AS Roma lost to some unpronounceable and unspellable German team. You know why? No, it’s not because I am going out why someone I like. And neither because I decided I want to try and go to a rage room once. None of these romantics things.

NO

It’s because today, Hideo Kojima’s long-awaited and frankly strange-looking new game Death Stranding is out!

This is me being happy with the copy of the game I just bought from this pedantic guy at GameStop who really wanted to sell me their useless (and of course expensive) fidelity card. I do not fidelize. I do not permanently associate with the revolting logics of media capitalism. Btw yes that in the background is Patti Smith’s Horses signed by herself. I am so cool, I know. What can you do.

ANYWAYS

Why is this relevant? Well, for a number of reasons. First of all because a videogame is a digital object, a digital medium. So it’s important to us. Secondly, because the themes of this game are SOOOOOOO damn interesting and appropriate for what we are doing in this class.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY

Because I decided to have yet another theme-based post. So Ladies, Gentlment, and all the other 7456 genders out there in the wide wild world, let me introduce you to this week’s issue of my blog, which will be entirely

VIDEOGAME-THEMED

Yes, I will. Sorry not sorry.

OK so as it is now customary I will skip Miller because I don’t like riassunti and synthesis and also I want to continue my honeymoon with Manovich.

Here’s me with my boy Lev.

Today we deal with the last three of Manovich’s Principles of New Media. Today I also want to be reader-friendly so I tell all of you from the start that I am going to explain briefly the principle and then pick an example, of course from some videogame. OK fellas? Ready to go.

Principle No. 2: Modularity

Well, modularity is quite easy. Manovich uses it to explain how digital objects are assembled through independent parts, which working on their own constitute the totality of the aforementioned object. A good example from videogames is the phenomenon of pop-up textures: that thing that happens when you’re playing a game in 3D graphics which uses real-time rendering, but optimization hasn’t been done well enough (or you’re just pushing the graphics beyond your hardware capabilities) and so you get some textures to be rendered with a delay. And this sucks because, well, it’s not very realistic and it makes you realize you’re just playing a videogame.

:( this is extreme tho. Sometimes it’s just OK.

[Btw pop-up textures are essentially what Manovich is referring to at page 39 when he writes about “distancing” and “level of detail”]

Manovich refers to this also as the “fractal structure” of digital media, which very cool and very LSD-like. So, yeah, cool.

BUT EVEN COOLER THAN THIS

is how this made me think of Aristotle. Your friendly neighborhood Western-culture-generator philosopher loved to talk about how the whole of something is more than the sole value of its components. Which, in some ways, doesn’t really seem to apply completely to digital media.

SOMETHING TO REFLECT UPON

Oh. And I was also thinking that maybe, MAYBE

MAYBE

all this modularity in our daily lives is also affecting the way our minds work. Like we now struggle to create coherent, consistent (“hardwired” Manovich would say) arguments or chains of reasoning, but instead rely completely on modular frames of understanding. Like we now tend to see things as separate and independent from each other, and we have trouble in looking at the bigger picture.

“OF COURSE YOU MUST BE WRONG, WE’RE AS CAPABLE AS EVER IN UNDERSTANDING ISSUES IN THEIR TOTALITY. BUT NO KID CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT REAL BECAUSE ADMITTING IT WOULD MEAN RECONSIDER THE PRIVILEGES I GREW UP AS EXPRESSIONS OF A POST-INDUSTRIAL COLONIAL SYSTEM OF EXPLOITATION  YESTERDAY SNOWED IN BERGAMO SO NO TROUBLE”

But let us not be distracted by such irrelevant issues.

Principle No. 4: Variability

Now this is obvious but still so cool. However, the question of variability is so multifaceted and complex that is difficult to pin it down to a single definition. I’ll try my best, though. I would say that

the concept of variability refers to all the ways in which digital objects can be modified, altered, or updated at the source of their distribution.

That is, without having to physically change anything. The only thing that variability needs is some form of the refresh button. It is a sort of physically invisible mutation, a “liquid” transformation, as Manovich says. And of course this has to do with Numerical Representation, Modularity, and Automation.

Before getting into the real interesting stuff about variability, Manovich makes seven examples. A couple of them will help grasp the concept better. So yeah, example three reads like this:

“Information about the user can be used by a computer program to customize automatically the media composition as well as to create elements themselves” (37)

In that unfortunately incomplete masterpiece that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is, you get to play as badass Venom Snake aka (sort of...) Big Boss, a super amazing and incredibly skilled soldier who has to infiltrate military compounds and all sorts of other infiltrable things between Afghanistan and Zaire around the mid-80s. In this game, you can decide what kind of equipment to bring with you, and approach the mission the way you like best. You can bring big-ass noisy weapons and just have a crazy battles, you can use assault rifles of sniper guns with silencers and be very quiet, and you can also use guns with tranquilizers so that you don’t kill anybody. You just put them to sleep.

Now, the cool thing about it is that the more you progress in the game, the more enemy soldiers will adjust to your playing stile. For instance, I remember using only tranquilizers with pistols and sniper rifles. So I would get lots of headshots, because when you headshot someone, he instantly falls asleep. After a few missions, most of my enemies adapted and started wearing helmets! So it was much harder for me to get those headshots.

See? This is an example of automation and variability.

There is also of course example number six. The one about periodical updates. Again, for anybody who ever played a videogame online, this is usual business.

I remember I once was thirteen. Yeah I know that’s hard to imagine, but for a moment just please bear with me. When I was thirteen I was very much into multiplayer FPSs. At that time particular, me and my friends would spend entire days on Call of Duty: Black Ops. Now, the online multiplayer was constantly updated and amended, so that if someone discovered that a certain build for a weapon made that weapon totally over-powered and impossible to play against, the guys at Activision would correct the flaw and balanced the game again. But variability in the game also occurred when DLCs were released: new maps, new weapons, new elements would ‘enter’ the world of the online game and of course alter it. It was cool, really. Cause the game evolved throughout the season. But the you had to buy the new one and spend other money and start back again and… really, can we just say fuck capitalism? That game could have lasted decades. Damn.

ANYWAY

By far the most interesting thing to me came at page 40, when Manovich discusses variability in terms of interactivity and hypermedia. In particular, he distinguishes between two ‘versions’ of interactivity.

Open interactivity: an interactive object “in which both the elements and the structure of the whole object are either modified or generated on the fly in response to the user’s interaction with a program.” (40)

Closed interactivity: an interactive object “that uses fixed elements arranged in a fixed braching structure” (40) and therefore on which users have only ‘liberty of order’. That is, they can only choose in which order to interact with the elements.

Now, try to follow me for a second. I think this distinction opens up one possibility of categorizing videogames. But we need to add one more category. We have

Linear games (Super Mario, the first Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 4…) which display a ‘limited’, ‘scripted’ interactivity. That is: you have to follow the path that has been chosen for you by the developers. You cannot decide in which order to do things. You go ahead with the game – interact with it, sure, but you basically witness the story unfold in front of your eyes passively.

Open world games (GTA, Spiderman, Pokémon games…), which essentially function on a principle of closed interactivity. You’re free to roam around and do whatever you want, to choose your own ‘order of interaction’ with the elements on the map, but you cannot act on the storyline, which is still linear and scripted for you. The story doesn’t change, no matter what you do inside or outside of the main missions.

pure RPGs (Fallout 4, Final Fantasy, Skyrim, Mass Effect…) which instead function on a principle of open interactivity. Your choices inform the way in which the game unfolds in terms of story, world, and sometimes even gameplay. The interaction is open because it allows to be formed in response to what the player does.

I should totally write a narratology of videogames.

I’ve already written a lot and I want to get to the last principle, but

I NEED

to point out something that comes around the end of page 41. Ready? So Manovich writes:

“The principle of variability exemplifies how, historically, changes in media technologies are correlated with social change. If the logic of old media corresponded to the logic of industrial mass society, the logic of new media fits the logic of the postindustrial society, which values individuality over conformity. […] In this way new media technology acts as the most perfect realization of the utopia of an ideal society composed of unique individuals. New media objects assure users that their choices—and therefore, their underlying thoughts and desires—are unique, rather than preprogrammed and shared with others.” (41-2)

Now, I am not sure precisely where Manovich stands on this argument, but this definitely rang a bell for me.

HEY LEV, EVER HEARD OF A LAD CALLED PASOLINI?

Because yeah, digital media gave us this fantastic possibility of escaping omologation because anybody can see, read, do whatever they want without any authority providing them with univocal content.

But are we really sure this is the triumph of individuality? Couldn’t this be just a new, and much more subtle and devilish form of conformity?

My bro and spiritual-granddaddy PPP believed so. And you, he was writing in the early seventies – not long before being brutally killed by neo fascists with the complacency of the State a Roman kid in Ostia – and virtually all of his predictions are becoming a terrible reality. Because Pier Paolo believed the (back then) new consumer society (which let’s face it gave birth to digital media the way we know it today) was only a new, horrible, de-humanizing form of fascism.

This is for anybody who understands a little italian and loves tragic heroes talking about the horrors of late capitalism on winter beaches.

BUT WE HAVE TO COME TO AN END, DON’T WE?

Principle No. 5: Transcoding

I’ll be very brief, this is easy. Manovich defines transcoding starting from the difference between the “cultural layer” (pretty much the visual, the interface) and the “computer layer” (basically code) of digital media. Using the example of videogames again, the cultural layer of a videogame is all that you see happening on the screen, while the computer layer is the code ‘behind’ it that makes it all happen in that way.

Fine, cool. Transcoding, Manovich says, happens everytime these two layers—these two languages, really—start to mix and mesh with each other.

The best example that I can come up with right now—and I am sorry if I can’t think of anything better but you know I have a graceful lady waiting for me, his date—has to do again with open world videogames.

SO HERE’S THE THING, I THINK

Open world videogames emerged and became the next big thing of gaming when the internet was already a big thing. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because the structure of an open world mimics, in many ways, that of the WWW.

THINK ABOUT IT

An open world is somewhere were you can roam around (I want to say navigate so badly!) pretty much everywhere you want. Most of the times you can jump from one places to another, sometimes using a nice menu/database of possible locations (reminds you of anything? Hyperlinking? Search engines, anybody?). You can’t really create much, but you can see everything. Well, that to me sounds like WWW.

COULD IT BE LOVE? TRANSCODING?

I think it is, baby.

We’re sadly at the end of our ride

:(

But don’t be afraid!

THERE’S STILL ROOM FOR MUSIC AND VISUAL ARTS

Today we celebrate videogames, so what’s better than a collection of some classics in videogame music history? Enjoy.

As for visuals, I want to come full circle. Hideo Kojima’s game have always been blessed with amazing character design and illustrations by his bro Yoji Shinkawa. Death Stranding is no exception. Except that there is an exception, because these times the characters are actors! Great actors! Like beautiful Lea Seydoux who I hope one day to marry. Or at least to hookup with, come on. Anyways, that’s beyond my point. I just wanted to introduce this beautiful promotional picture for Death Stranding.

It really is beautiful.

до свидания!

Image Sources: Parade, Pure Nintendo, Tech in Asia, GIPHY, Know Your Meme

[cageofsteel]

Lead, Excel, Overcome. One more time.

I thought I’d pen down my thoughts here before I embark on a 3 week course at Officer Cadet School. It’s July and we are at the half way point of 2019.

I volunteered for this course. As an NSman, we are required to complete 10 cycles before we are deemed as MR (military reserves), at this point, having officially fulfilled our NS obligations and no more calls from the government. Last year was my 9th cycle and 2020 is supposed to be the 10th and last. This is a gap year.

Several reasons why I decided to go for this course as an upgrade: 1) To learn more (personal growth) 2) as a personal challenge and test (personal mastery) 3) An unexplained itch and innate sense of responsibility and obligation to continue serving the military if there is still something I can offer 4) To explore beyond life in an infantry battalion over the last 10 years. What lies ahead remains largely an unknown to me, I do not know what is going to unfold.

This year, I’ve toyed with new interests and pursuits. In recent days, I have been exploring the topic of existentialism and the works of Kierkegaard. One of the reasons was to understand more about life, human predicament, psychology and behavior. It answered some of the questions in my personal and working experiences that pervaded me and offered me some guidance. I had persisted with the interest of learning but wrote much lesser than I would have preferred to.

I have stumbled onto life in the kitchen; searing steaks and vegetables, making pastas, playing with different herbs and spices. I am more curious about learning the principles behind cooking because I believe that the mastery and understanding of the science behind is fundamental to the possibilities of menu and dish creation. The romanticism surrounding kitchens and chefs was seductive-- “Now, I can make glorious, beautiful food!” Cooking was also a release for me; it provided the outlet for exercising attention to detail and artistic expression. The whole cooking thing branched off from an early plan to explore the viability of starting a mobile F&B business with a cousin, a year ago. For many nights, we brainstormed over whisky under the company of his two affectionate poodles in his front yard, with much needed advice and clarification sought through a friend who was running several well-known establishments as a head chef. Eventually, I decided that it was better to take this idea alone, being the one who was taking initiative to progress with discussions and plans. Besides, solely covering the consultative and menu costs, formed the basis for me to believe that I could take this thing further on my own and evolve it further. 

In the last few weeks, due to the need for a speaker during work events, I ended up studying the basics of Japanese Sake and German Rieslings, though I suppose that a huge potential for improvement would be my presentation and public speaking skills, and developing the use of humor-- which I had consciously ignored but later decided to acknowledge it as part of the craft of a better than average speaker or ambassador. I have also consciously expanded on my knowledge on wines.

I have also been putting off yoga practice, which is a minus. I have gained weight and got out of shape due to the past few months of entertainment with clients and associates, in return for closer business and working relationships. I lament at the sight of myself in the mirror. I think that speaks for itself. I would need to intervene soon and adopt a more deliberate effort in managing my time for the 2.

A friend asked me for feedback about his flaws and strengths, which was a topic between them, but it was something that I couldn’t bring myself to be too honest. My experience with this person hasn’t been totally... positive. Still, I decided not to go there after weighing the risks and consequences; I’d probably shoot down more than necessary if I were to do so. Moreover, I am not perfect.

Giving solicited testimonies or appraisals to others is a very sensitive issue, no matter how close they are to you. For the larger part, a natural tendency lies in us to resist and reject other’s - especially negative - opinions of us. We’d like to believe that we conduct ourselves without error most of the time, that we are right, we know ourselves better than most and would be instinctive for us to cite that others do not understand or know us well enough to arrive at an unwelcomed conclusion-- which we believe are reasons that are none other than excuses we cushion ourselves from the uneasy truths.

Obtaining brutally honest feedback about our flaws isn’t impossible, if we try hard enough to convince them to, but there will always be blind spots where we can never openly accept, and will even bear grudge against our “judge” for being “ignorant” and “not knowing better”. 

They are imperfect anyway and they themselves, too, suck at that, so why should I accept what they had just said about me? In fact, I may hate them for saying such invalid and painful things, for they do not know better.

My friend was quick to ask about his strengths promptly after hearing two very succinct and concise, diplomatically-phrased points (no, I wasn’t thinking of going further as well, in fact, I very much was going to stop there), which may appear to be a sign for the need of assurance that overall, he was still majorly, a good character. I felt some degree of resistance of the ego’s need to hear something good about itself in the eyes of another and to “cushion” the bad stuff. It just shows how comfortable we are about such things.

I’m not to here to judge the merits or demerits or it, just putting it as it is, as it comes to me, on what it possibly reveals about us. It’s just my perspective and importantly, why it may not be a good idea to critique another, especially if the party has significant influence in our social and power dynamics landscape. 

Certainly, it will be more painful and difficult for those who are not used to hearing critiques about themselves, much less, evaluate and accept it. We, ourselves, too, have the inclination of avoiding uncomfortable situations, conflict and friction, hence we usually will refrain from giving criticism. Speaking of myself, I’d like to believe that I do not find it too difficult open my doors to poor judgments about myself (although I, too, notice resistance in the case of myself), for the fact that I am simply a self-critical and neurotic person, someone who has been afflicted by low-self esteem in his younger days, with the obsession of perfecting things later on, and repeatedly slamming myself in my own head. I would be quite interested to know about what are the bad stuff my boss and co-workers think of me because I have a deep fear and intolerance for incompetence and weakness in character, and I will fuck myself up for it.

Another sign of resistance, which I had happened to encounter lately, would be defensiveness, covering up of one’s shortcomings or mistakes, in attempt to not make themselves look so bad.

Offering someone an evaluation about their character or work will always remain a tough thing to do and is generally not advisable; not giving them any feedback about any likely legitimate faults and shortcomings will ensure the preservation of their ego and feelings, forever denied of the possibility to change or improvement.

Under this light, I find it a sweet dream and a death wish. And it is entirely up to our discretion on what we will do.

I am compelled to finish this post with my plans for the future, although it is becoming too lengthy. I will continue to build on what I have professionally and accumulate the resources for the future. I will continue to look deeper into what I really want and create the life I want to lead along the way and I hope I can arrive with a stronger affirmation and take action for it.

I would like to pursue a culinary career path or yoga, eventually and ideally.

[prussiasboxerbriefs]

language journey

thanks to @squeezieslangblr for tagging me and giving me an excuse to infodump about languages :D

rules: reblog, tag ten others and share your answers

1. what languages are you studying/have you studied?

- my dad is german, so he spoke and read books to me in german, and my german grandparents were the only ones who ever bought us dvds, so i grew up watching either pbs kids or the same couple sendung mit der maus and dubbed disney movies on dvd. i picked up a decent amount this way, but my grammar and spelling were abhorrent and i started studying it on my own in 8th grade, so now i can actually consider myself decently fluent (even though my grammar still sucks B) just reasonably less)

- obligatory spanish through 6th grade; i’ve picked it up and dropped it on-and-off over the years but at the moment it’s lower on my wishlist than a lot of other languages

- latin for two years in 7th and 8th grade, of which i remember almost nothing

- started learning french on duolingo at the end of 8th grade in preparation for switching to it in high school; i ended up skipping a year of french because american language education is fucking terrible

- the summer between 8th grade and high school i was emotionally unstable and started learning italian to cope (i’m not kidding) but i kind of trailed off with learning it last summer + haven’t picked it up since

- i was really excited about russian and i started learning that on duolingo as soon as the course came out (bc i still didn’t realize you could learn languages for free without duolingo) (i was in 9th grade, so late 2015 i think?). but i stopped, and then restarted last year, and i was sticking with it up until a couple months ago. i’ve been having kind of a rough time, so i lost my interest in a lot of things i love, but even once i get on meds i doubt i’ll have time for it come september :\ i love russian though, so hopefully i can keep it somewhat fresh

- i can read hangul and kana, and languages i was interested in and super focused on for like a week include korean, japanese, mandarin, hebrew, icelandic, swedish, and dutch

- tl;dr: i’m currently focusing on german and french, and i’ll be taking an online IB course in beginner’s mandarin junior + senior year!! in the past i’ve seriously studied russian, italian, and spanish, and i’ve dabbled in korean, japanese, hebrew, dutch, swedish, and icelandic

2. how long have you been studying?

i got really into languages in april-may of 2015 i think, so that would make it two years

3. did you learn through class or self study (or both)

spanish, latin, and french are all classes i have taken in school, but i go to an american school and language classes teach you nothing here :\ so i take french, but the way class worked last year, our teacher would write the name of the grammar topic we were studying on the board, and then i’d ignore him and research it myself on my computer. hopefully it’ll pick up this year now that i’m in a higher level, but idk. all other languages i’ve self-studied, and i’m self-studying french over the summer anyway 

4. why did you decide to learn this language?

- i want to major in animation for college, and the best animation colleges that don’t cost half your soul are mostly in france, so that’s my main motivation for getting to a decent level in french.

- german is my heritage language, and it’s one of my favorite languages because i grew up with it. (also, german college is free) 

- i decided to learn russian because cyrillic looked really cool to me, and i liked the way it sounded. also, it has a reputation for being “harsh” or “ugly”, like german does, which probably drew me to it as well (other reasons include the declension system, the challenge of learning a complicated grammar, matryoshka dolls, russian literature being super famous and esteemed, snow, how big the slavic language family is, and cheburashka).

- everybody says mandarin is really hard, which makes me want to study it. i’m curious about the tones, and i like the writing system. (also, if i can speak russian and mandarin, then i’ve got the languages of the three major hacking countries under my belt, so i could totally work for the CIA or be a spy or a hacker or something :P )

5. what was a major highlight/milestone in studying this language?

german: finally understanding the declension system of der/die/das

french: understanding how all the verb tenses work, which took approx. 2 years (and now they’re super easy for me!! it’s so cool!!!)

russian: realizing that i was starting to decline nouns + adjectives without even thinking about it (i think that was back in march or april, though, so i’m kind of rusty now)

6.what was the hardest thing about learning this language?

french i’ve found pretty easy because of all the cognates between it and english, and the verb tenses i struggled with until i learned english, and realized that a lot of tenses are either the same construction in both languages, or the reverse of each other in meaning

russian...it took me ages to get the case system, but that was because i didn’t study it enough tbh :P i’m still struggling with perfective/imperfective verbs + verbs of motion, but again i think that’s something that probably just requires rote memorization and discipline

7. what resources did you find most useful for studying this language?

i leaned super heavily on duolingo for a while, although i know better than to trust it for everything now. my personal favorite sites are dict.cc (german-english/french/russian/etc. dictionary), verb2verbe.com (french verb conjugation), lingolia (german + romance languages grammar guide), and russian-lessons.net (russian grammar). “german grammar drills” second edition is a really good grammar book that got me to finally stop butchering my heritage language and slurring my articles so native speakers wouldn’t realize i was incompetent B)))

8. any top tips for studying this language?

for languages in general, i would say make sure you understand your own language’s grammar first (especially if you’re an english speaker whose school never taught you grammar like mine). practice vocabulary and WRITE every day. practice active use of your TL, not just passive consumption. i am lazy and don’t do this and believe me, your skills will suffer.

9. what’s your next major language goal?

my next goal is probably to succeed in my german fluency exam and french and mandarin school exams senior year...after that i’ll have space to study new languages, so i want to get back into russian (if i don’t have time before then), and then maybe korean, thai, or hungarian?...there’s so many languages i want to learn, and it changes so often, i’ll probably study something totally different 2 years from now ;w;

10. anything we can do in the tumblr community to get you there?

i was thinking about starting my own langblr! but i still need to figure that out...also, the majority of my blogging is done on mobile, so i don’t know how much original content i would contribute, and i really want to focus on school and my college portfolio as much as possible. so we’ll see, but i’d love to join the langblr community from more than just my personal blog

i’m tagging @langloser and anyone w/ a special interest in languages who wants an excuse to talk about them (not that you need one tbh)

[putris-et-mulier]

Gold vs Blue – if you want to try X-Men and you need to read it now

This is the best opportunity to start reading X-Men because it's a whole relaunch and they are coming out NOW. Seriously, it's going to be a fresh start for all the law time X-Men fans as well because they are forming all new groups. I'm just going to cover the 2 main groups, Iceman, Generation X because I think those are the three new readers are going to be most interested in

If you really don't feel comfortable just jumping in you can pick up X-Men: Prime which will let new readers understand what's going on before we launch into the box

All you need to know is that all the mutants almost went extinct because of the Inhumans but they had a war and it's now over. Some people died and came back to life, some people died and will come back to life later. And I guess Emma Frost is the new big bad guy and everyone hates that but I'm excited

Okay, the last time X-Men was super huge was in the 90s and they had two separate books and teams in the comics, gold and blue, and they are bringing this back

First up, X-Men Gold

This should be called the bisexual book because the whole team is bisexual

Kitty Pryde, Jewish, is the Leader, Storm once a much needed vacation from being the leader. Kitty has extensive combat skills, and the ability to become immaterial and phase through matter. She's back from space dating the main guy from Gardens of the Galaxy, you know the guy who plays him on Parks and Recreation?

Colossus, Russian, super big super strong and can turn metal, is also on the team with Kitty and the two of them have one of the longest on-again off-again relationships so that's going to be a thing. Kitty also has a thing with his sister but they are also broken up right now. He's just coming back from the war with the Inhumans.

Rachel, probably of  Irish American, is also just back from the war. Rachel is the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Gray from an alternate future universe but she moved to the 616 in, like, the 80s. She pretty much can do what Jean Gray can do and she's a trained assassin. You'll see black marks on her face, those are kind of her facial scars but it's a psychic illusion over them. None of her face will be consistent, so don't let that bother you.

Nightcrawler, German, the only member with no passing privilege, he has the ability to teleport and he is super good with the sword because he wanted to be a pirate when he grew up. He is also just back from the war and actually he should probably be in a bad place because he just got thoroughly tortured which fractured his mind and his best friend/ex-boyfriend (current fuck buddies?) Wolverine died.

Speaking of Wolverine dying, we have Wolverine, generics white American. I really don't have to explain his powers. This Logan is "Old Man Logan" which is from an alternate future, different from Rachel's but pretty much as bad. He moved to 616 last year and shortly thereafter the 616 Wolverine was murdered. He is literally no different than the 616 Wolverine except that he looks older and you don't know the entirety of his relationships with all these people from his universe

This is the current regular Wolverine:

And Storm, Kenyan, I'm sure you know her to but just in case: she can control the weather and is one of the most powerful mutants ever born. She just led the X-Men in a war to stop yet another genocide. She is in charge of everything but she needs a vacation but the X-Men would fall apart without her so she agreed to become a regular team member instead of spending a year and a day spa like she deserves.

X-Men Blue: 

This is the original X-Men, all white. They became X-Men in the 70s when they were teenagers and because of science they got sent to the current future where it's suddenly 2017 and everything is a garbage fire. They've met their future selves and it went to varying degrees 

Cyclops freaked out, much to no one's surprise. He is also upset, also much to no one's surprise. Older Cyclops recently died in the war so he is the only Cyclops left on 616 and the general public is afraid of him because they are scared he might get tired of racism like the older version did

Jean Grey is pissed. Still no surprises. She was getting a crush on Cyclops and suddenly they are in the future and she psychically gets shown her whole future, the messy fated romance with Cyclops and her dying and dying again and the world being in a worse place than where she started

The Beasts kind of seem like two dogs that are circling each other. Beast has always been incredibly intelligent but his body is shaped to be more animalistic and the reason he is now covered in blue fur is because he tried to mess with his genetics so he could get passing privilege. Blue Beast has been in lab for 30 years messing with his own body and he keeps heading toward villainy. Young Beast seems to be deciding to study magic instead of science, given what science has done for him

Angel was the saddest one to come into the present time because for weeks he walked/flew around killing time and no one would tell him what happened to his future self and then he met him… Let me try to put this really simply: Angel is an incredibly wealthy and conventionally attractive guy with angelic wings but he is a fucking mess. He is sort of completely destroyed from deliberate torture consistently over the course of many years. The older Angel is referred to as Archangel and he's hidden away right now leading a group of displaced mutants who had their powers taken from them.

Iceman has ice powers and a boyfriend and TV is a lot better than it was in the 70s so he's doing okay… He is also going to have his own ongoing series

This is going to be really interesting. He has always been on the X-Men but he doesn't really get leadership roles. He is a happy guy and tries to break tension with humor and when everyone is upset he will give a good speech about love and everyone will feel better. That's pretty much all he's done for 30 years except for date a bunch of women and then for some reason they keep leaving him because they don't feel like he really wants to be with him.

So, Iceman from the 70s gets sent forward and it turns out he's gay but extremely closeted because it was the 70s and older Iceman is still in the closet because that's just been his life. The young Iceman is actually doing pretty okay even though his boyfriend was on the other side of the war because of genetics so maybe the Romeo and Juliet story will end but he forces his old himself out of the closet.

What is the older Iceman going to do? It'll be interesting to see. He just got outed by his younger self effectively in front of the world and he got home from war. It should be really interesting seeing what they do with him in the series.

Generation X

Written by Christina Strain with art by Amilcar Pinna

Oh my God, everyone is dying to read this.

A team of young mutants that aren't old young enough to be New Mutants and Jubilee is the leader. She also found a baby and kept it so she has a son that's usually strapped to her named Shogo

Jubilee, Chinese, had the power to create fireworks but it got taken away in a genocide. She is still a vampire though. That may not come up. It's usually just a "and also, Jubilee is a vampire"

Bling, unspecified black American, is a really tough lesbian literally made out of diamonds that no one will date for some reason but she and Jubilee have recently kissed so we have to see if that goes anywhere

Quentin Quire, looks super white but knows nothing about his ancestry: a fan favorite! I'm not sure how to explain him… Powers like Jean Gray and Rachel, also one of the most powerful mutants ever born and he's incredibly cynical and anti authority. He has tried very hard to become a villain just to spite people like Wolverine but he accidentally graduated high school

That's the thing with the X-Men schools, the curriculum sucks but everyone graduates eventually 

Eye Boy, white, is a boy covered with eyes. Sweet but socially awkward and tends to just do whatever Quentin Quire says

Nature Girl, Chinese, can commune with nature including animals and for some reason can also fly. Not really a major player until now and we've only seen her a few times as a secondary character

Benjamin Deeds, unspecified race, is a young man who has just come into his mutant powers and because of this his family disowned him (not sure if his being gay had anything to do with that) and he got kicked out of school so he has been living in the X-Men school. He has a pretty cool power, people tend to trust others look and sound like them so when he's talking to someone his body automatically takes on their traits as self-preservation mechanism and he could even use it to make people believe whatever he says.

Lastly, Nathaniel Carver is going to be new to all of us. All he really know is that he is half Korean because Christina Strain, the book's writer, wanted to make a character half Korean like herself

[callmehedonistic]

drxrameshxmahajan​:

It had been weeks.

At the hospital; at the grocery store; and now at HOME. For the SECOND TIME.

Ram should have been more upset that Jonah knew his address but at this point he wasn’t surprised. He officially had a stalker and a batshit crazy one at that.

He looked through the peek hole before unlocking the door.

“Alright, what more to I have to do — how much clearer can I be? The last time you were here you stood right there…” Ram pointed down the driveway, “— And a shot you in the balls with a pellet gun. I do not want to see you. I don’t want to hear you. I don’t want to THINK about you and you are making that very fucking difficult. Do you need me to translate it into another language? You understand Bengali. I can also do Italian, Latin, French or German. I don’t know sign language very well but if somehow that will get this through your thick skull I will learn. Take your pick.”

He knew that none of this would matter.

“What do you want from me, man??”

@callmehedonistic​ *~*

Jonah was just sitting on the porch, knees curled to his chest, back to the door. He rocked back and forth, sucking on his thumb, deep in scattered thought when Ram finally opened the door. He remembered the shot from the pellet gun - painful, but not something he couldn’t ignore. No, he’d been injured too many ways to have it matter anymore. Injuries weren’t deterrents anymore than they were inconveniences. 

Jonah didn’t turn around at first, still sitting with his thumb in his mouth. He was trying to pull his thoughts together, despite them dangling by a thread. Finally, he spoke. “You could try Latin, but my diction’s very rusty. It’s been a few hundred years. But you don’t mean that one, do you? Vatican Latin.” He wrinkled his nose. He could almost hear Rodrigo scolding him.  “I am a bad sire.” He said. “I should have stuck around to ensure your transition was easy. I should have considered more than my own hunger.” He paused. “But I didn’t, and now, you suffer for it.” He flinched, memory reaching up to try to pull him under. A glowing rod.  “I understand there’s no way for me to convince you but I would like to at least try to do as I should have and teach you - or at least, be a figure in your life to ask advice.” He paused, chewing on his thumb again. “You should be able to pick out smells, hone that skill to use in your practice. Pregnant women with fetuses in distress have a distinct smell. Cancer smells vaguely like rot, particularly when metastasized, but different cancer types have different smells. I’ve studied medicine long enough to know the difference, even if back then we had no words for what it was.”  Finally, he stood, turning to face the younger man. “You have much to learn. Would you like to speed run it?”

[dear-saxifrage]

let’s talk about failure. and waiting.

lately, i’ve been dreaming a lot about the beach. well, can you really call a recurring bliss-filled dream that becomes a terrifying collision a dream? usually, i’m presented with a gorgeous coast with lush greenery, something you’d see in thailand. then after i marvel at its beauty, the waves become turbulent and hungry. they strip away the sand, and from where i stand on a cliff overlooking all of this, the waves transforming the cove into a terraced hillside, i try to run. only then, i’m taken and am underwater and feel the weight of nothingness beneath me. it’s fucking terrifying. but at this point, i’ve felt this dream so many times that i become lucid at this point and force myself to wake up. usually i take a deep breath and wake up hyperventilating.

so how the fuck does this all relate to failing and waiting? well, i think that for me, my throat relates very closely to my emotions, my feelings, my ambitions, and psychological scotoma. 

(why is it so difficult for me to write? usually i can’t close my fucking mouth when it comes to my incessant neurotic ruminating. but maybe that is it. i’m not neurotic anymore. i never really was, i don’t think. i just think about my thoughts and i like to tease them apart and understand them. it’s a comfortable space for me.)

alright, let’s do this again. i’m here to talk about failure and waiting, and working desperately to not confuse patience for lack of will to seize the path that is yours. i have been failing for two years. academically, of course. and it has been really fucking tough. i value the most about myself my academic ability, my intelligence, ability to analyze and critically think and objectively assess. i have given up so many things for my academic growth: relationships (romantic and platonic), sleep, passion projects, and creative writing. so when i kept fucking failing, it was so disheartening. it made me think that nothing was worth it. that i had failed as an objective body and that i truly just fucking sucked at everything. and it was weirder still: i had a 4.0, excellent letters of recommendation, sublime extracurriculars, and tons of skills. yet rejection again and again: no funding for international studying abroad for my thesis, no NASA climate research, no prestigious master’s in archaeology at peking university, no phd at uc berkeley. no fellowship for my phd at stanford. failure again and again really made me feel like a complete and utter fucking failure. i was, for a bit, at least.

last summer, i had a single room to myself with gorgeous wooden floors and large mirror doors. i started to do barre workouts, and i remember one day in particular, i was practicing some ballet. and one phrase i kept thinking of was ‘bring it to me.’ bring what, exactly? i didn’t know. i just had a feeling of what i wanted. i wanted real relationality with people. i wanted more money. i wanted to be healthier and wanted to get into graduate school. i wanted clarity and direction, someone to rely on -- myself. i had graduated and turned down a stellar research opportunity at the prestigious berkeley geochronology center, turned down an insane job in finance back in phoenix, and had decided to not work in san francisco. i took this shit-tastic job where i was mistreated, underpaid, and swindled. but on my way to work one morning, i met my friend: jacob. he and i knew each other for years then finally became friends at graduation of geography, then we met again, exchanged numbers, and he then helped me apply to graduate school. it was him who pointed out harvard’s divinity program to me. (and look at me now). at the time, i didn’t think too much of it besides a potential romantic encounter that might fail instead of what it would come to be: me, meeting the person who would help point my life in a direction that would change everything. 

at que bottle, my company, the moment i stood up for myself, they told me to leave, so i did. i was unemployed for one week. i found a new job at boalt law school, where a new job was essentially written up for me, and i also started serving. i wanted to serve and bartend in case i would go to graduate school the following year; this way, i’d never be short of a job. and in harvard, there are so many german restaurants where i can easily apply and get a job. so i am thankful for this. for everything.

i guess the moral of the story is in waiting for your investments to pay you back. i waited for the graduate portal to open. i drafted and edited and cried. then i applied. then i waited more. i continued making more money, meeting amazing people: i dated a lot, and i learned how to conduct myself much better. i became more confident, started running and stretching and meditating more. i became better, myself. then i failed again: my relationship curly-cue fizzled out. i kept tormenting myself with thoughts of jacob. and then i went home for christmas break and was fucking reborn. i had sex with this amazing guy who i’ve known for ages, and then afterwards, decided that i didn’t want to be with him, in spite of how good it was to be with him. then i came back, started a tech job in san francisco. met an amazing, absolutely amazing guy in january. then i got rejected, phd after phd. i cried a little more, felt sad. sobered up completely, from october to now, feel a lot healthier. then i was invited to mexico with the guy. then i couldn’t go because i had no passport. i felt sad. my grandpi was diagnosed with cancer. then i got a full-ride to harvard.

and sometimes, that’s just how it fucking happens. it rolls out. slowly and painfully. and beautifully.