what the fuck the novel was his dream and his dream was the novel and he used it to escape his life except he never bothered to dream himself into a happy ending. except the novel was just her desperate, half-conscious attempts to save him, to keep him alive for just one more day so he could read the next chapter she wrote. except it wasn’t ever just a novel at all because it was the millennia-long attempt of one person to finally meet the being that so desperately wanted a person with no history and no past to have a perfect future, a happy ending.
except that novel! was never actually the point! it was just the vehicle some version of themselves all used to get everyone to the start of the story that actually mattered, the story that wasn’t pre-ordained, the story where characters became companions and the reader became the protagonist and the dream of a happy ending for all of them was possible. all of them were there - the reader, the writer, the protagonist… but the reader was just the reader, the writer was a plagiarist, and the protagonist was only at the start of his journey. this story, the real story, the story that hadn’t been written yet, was about how when the world fell to ruin, the only person with the instruction manual on how to survive decided to sacrifice himself over, and over, and over, and… and they made it. they got to their happy ending. but before they did, they learned about the dream. his escape that became a reality. and he didn’t know, he didn’t understand what it was, and so he stepped back, and watched them walk away. because it was the story written for him that caused this much damage, and he had to atone.
but the people who he saved, who he walked with to the end, who turned from characters on his screen to friends and companions who fought beside him, cried when he was gone, screamed at him when he came back, laughed with him, loved him, lived through hell with him, survived because of him… they knew that the story that defined him was not the story that saved him, that he escaped to when it was all too much, but his own story, the story he forged himself. and so dozens of them chose to dive back into hell just to forcefully turn his attempt at an ending, a sentence that ended in a period, into a promise of more to come, a clause that ended in a comma.
and then? the plagiarist who was never a plagiarist at all, but the author who saved him, she sat down and wrote his story. the one he made by their side. they compiled their memories - the memories of the author and the protagonist and heroes and villains and gods and angels and demons and dragons and prophets - into a new novel. and they sent that novel out to the stars to be told, a literal shout into the void to tell him that he was LOVED. that he deserved HAPPINESS. that it was okay for him to REST. that they were waiting for him to come HOME. and they hoped that this story would reach him just as the first had. that he would find it, and he would read it, and it would be the thing that saved him, that kept him alive, and that eventually brought him back to them.
he had promised, after all, to be the first reader of her next novel.
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How to study languages without studying
Whether you're just starting out and have had bad experiences with textbook learning in the past or are getting burnt out from prepping for the next proficiency test, it's never a bad idea to put the textbooks away for a time and just enjoy your target language. If you're new to the world of immersion, here are a few ways to get you started.
Follow along with the lyrics of a song. Spotify's not-so-new-anymore lyrics feature is great for this, especially since it has timed lyrics, but it doesn't have every song.
Expert mode: Write out the lyrics and underline/highlight/make note of all the words and grammar structures you don't know. Learn these unknowns until you can understand the whole song!
Extra challenge: Translate a song from your target language. I usually tend to stay away from translations in my study, but for those of you who aspire to be translators (or already are!), the poetic nature of song lyrics can be a fun challenge.
Watch a show or movie. Netflix has now introduced a feature where you can sort by language! If there's nothing made in your language that you're interested in, it also gives the option to sort by shows and movies that have the audio or subtitles available. Internet Archive also tends to have lots of foreign films that I'm looking for.
Easy mode: Watch with English or your native language subtitles. When doing this, try to still listen to what's being said and pick up on words and phrases that you know, or match new words with their translation in the subtitles. Note: reading one language and listening to another is a skill in and of itself! Don't be discouraged if you can't do both at the same time yet, you're brain is still making the connections in intonation and cadence of the language.
Hard mode: Watch with captions in your target language. This helps you connect listening and reading, especially in languages where the spelling isn't exactly phonetic, or it uses a different alphabet than what you're used to.
Expert mode: No captions or subtitles! But who knows, maybe you're better at listening comprehension than I am. Make sure you're getting comprehensible input here; some shows and movies are much harder than others. But above all else, watch what keeps your interest. A movie where you can catch half the dialogue but is super engaging is better for you than an "easy" movie that you're going to spend your time ignoring.
Polyglot mode?: Watch something in your target language with subtitles in a different target language. This adds just one too many layers of obfuscation for me, but if you're into the challenge, more power to you.
Watch YouTube. You can change your language preference on YouTube, and with that, the Explore section will give you recommendations in your target language. Going into the trending tab with your target language can give you a good idea about what people are interested in in the countries where your target language is spoken.
Read something. It can be a book, it can be a comic. There are plenty of webcomics out there in a number of languages! There's also probably an English language listicle with recommendations of easier to understand webcomics for learners, too.
If you're just getting started in immersion, you can choose whether you focus on intensive reading or extensive reading (this actually goes for all kinds of immersion, but is easiest to control with reading since it happens at your own pace). Intensive reading is reading with the goal of understanding everything 100%. If you don't understand a word, or a grammar point, or the reading of a character, look it up. Extensive reading is reading just to get the gist of things. Look up words and grammar points only if they stop you from understanding the general meaning of the sentence or section. And of course, the more you immerse, the less you'll have to look things up, but remember that difficulty varies between materials, even within books of the same age range, genre, and medium.
A small digression: If you decide that you never want to open a textbook on your language learning journey, more power to you! It can be done and I know people who have gotten to proficient levels of their target language without textbooks. If you want this to be you, extensive immersion is your best friend. You also might want to get comfortable with the flashcard program anki, because, if this is your goal, all those unknown grammar points and words will probably end up there. But at the end of the day, language learning is an intensely personal journey, and what works for others won't necessarily work for you. Finding what works for you is just part of learning a language.
Play a game. Lots of games are region locked (hint: Pokemon Sun/Moon isn't! If you start a new game, you can choose which language you want to play it in), but there are plenty of free online games still lurking in the corners of the internet. With a bit of googling, you can probably find something in your target language. Just the other day, I went out to find one of those hidden item games in Japanese and ended up finding an entire site dedicated to user made browser games.
If you're learning Japanese or Korean, picrew might be fun to look through as well. I noticed that plenty of picrews have basic anatomy vocabulary. I'm not super familiar with picrew myself, but the ones I've seen tend to be in Korean and Japanese
And lastly, don't fully give up on textbooks before trying them out. Don't be discouraged if textbooks truly aren't your thing, but studying a language on your own time can feel much different than studying for school. Don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun with your language. Additionally, if you'd rather learn in a video format, many languages have full courses uploaded to YouTube for you to try. Finding these can be difficult for some languages though, so don't hesitate to reach out to other learners and see what they recommend!
Got your materials ready? Great! Now go forth and immerse!
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