#but im not driving 3+ hours

[djarinova]

the vamps tickets sold out so fast and i have no signal at my boyfriends parents house so i couldn't even use the old trick of buying the tickets from axs using 3g :'( I'm evil

[sapphofrog]

so normal abt academy thoschei rn ‼️

[dustykneed]

i just think spock has great mom friend potential tbh. strong contender for the cutest thing i've ever drawn

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

Big trucks to me are like herbivorous megafauna. They're not out to GET you, but large herbivores tend to be deadlier than most carnivores due to their large size and defensive nature.

If you give them space to do their thing they're generally harmless. However if one is acting aggressively it is my firm opinion it should be hunted for sport

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 259

haha :)

[blueskittlesart]

finally started my character design final and it's a 3-phase video game boss and protagonist so of course i had to go BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE. here's my first pass stay tuned for more bc this is like a 5 week assignment

[not-equippedforthis]

really wish we got a 30 minute special episode montage of john and arthur trying to figure out how to drive. bonus: parallel parking.

[raineandsky]

If you're taking requests, could I request a hero x villain thing where the villain wakes up in the hero's house, totally confused, and he tries to ambush her when she arrives with food? (She has telekinetic abilities, which helps with a lot. I imagine her house would look like the Burrow from Harry Potter - a bunch of things fixing themselves and all that.) But if you aren't taking requests, feel free to ignore this. I've got plenty of your lovely stuff to read. :)

im sorry this is so late!! thank you for the request, i enjoyed this one :)

When the villain finally regains consciousness, the first thing he notices is the scratchy blanket thrown over him. The second thing he notices, when he opens his eyes, is that the blanket is not his. Nor is the house he’s in.

It’s a world away from his home downtown—a low coffee table sits next to the little sofa he’s on, decorated with thick books that have clearly never been read and a blue vase that’s collecting more dust than flowers. The low afternoon sun streams in through wide windows and envelopes the table and chairs in the corner in a warm orange, the speckled colours of a light catcher draping over the woollen rug nearby. The villain wishes he lived in a place like this, but he’d never dream of being civilian enough to need it.

He has no recollection of getting here. Where was he last? Did he get entangled with a civilian somewhere? What the hell did he do to end up here?

The villain is so caught up in scraping his memory for a clue that he doesn’t hear the door squeaking open behind him. What he does hear is the gentle “oh, good, you’re—”

Now, panic is not a good look on a villain. But frankly, waking up in an unfamiliar home and being faced with a stranger that is approaching from behind gives the villain some instincts that’ve probably saved his life more than once.

He lurches up from the sofa with a snarl, earning a rather startled yelp from the newcomer and toppling the coffee table vase to the floor. The blanket he’d attempted to throw off in his attack has curled itself around him like a snake, and he gets no further than the back of the sofa before it trips him over.

“Oh, sorry!” the person says lightly. “That was a little more intense than I intended, but I suppose I wasn’t expecting you to leap at me either.”

The villain, trying not to let onto his embarrassment at this turn of events, glances up. A hero, one he kind of recognises, is holding a tray upside-down and looking back at him. No, actually, the tray isn’t upside-down. The villain is just on the floor.

“That won’t help you heal,” she continues with a short laugh. “Come on, lets get you back on the sofa.”

The villain goes to throw himself at her with nothing but his nails, but the blanket is wrapped around him unnaturally tight. The hero settles on the armchair opposite as it curls around his shoulders, hefting him to his feet before shoving him back onto the sofa.

“What the hell is going on?” is all the villain can think to say.

The hero smiles brightly, unbothered, and sets her tray on the coffee table between them before turning her attention to her shattered vase. “You were a little worse for wear by the time I got to you,” she offers unhelpfully. “Honestly, I was a little worried. You’ve been out for some time.”

The villain watches blankly as the vase picks itself up off the floor, hovering a few inches off the ground to meticulously piece itself back together. None of it would’ve clicked if he didn’t clock the hero staring at it like it’ll disappear the moment she looks away.

“You’re telekinetic,” he says flatly.

The hero turns back to him as the vase sets itself back on the coffee table. Its perfect presentation slips as the hero lets go of it, several pieces sliding out of formation and dropping to the table. “Maybe.”

She gives him a coy smile. The blanket still has a tight hold of him, keeping him sat on the much too comfortable sofa. The sun is moving, throwing some of her face into wild yellows that brighten her face more than a hero deserves. God, the villain hates all of this.

“You got a bad wound in your battle.” The hero gestures to her side vaguely. “You need time to recover, so I would suggest you stay here until you’re better.”

“I’d much rather be at home than trapped here with you,” the villain snaps.

“Oh.” The hero tilts her head in a way that the villain knows isn’t genuine. “Well, you shouldn’t move around too much. Do you have someone at home who can look after you?”

The bitter silence that follows brings another smug smile to her lips. “Then you’ll stay here,” she says after a moment. “My house will make sure of it.”

“Can you tell your house to lay off? Your blanket is trying to strangle me.”

The hero laughs brightly, and as she does the blanket’s vice-like grip loosens slightly. “I brought you some breakfast, by the way.” She gestures to the tray, which the villain now notices has a bowl of soup and several pieces of bread on it. “It’s proven difficult to feed someone that’s unconscious, so please do make sure you eat something.”

She gets to her feet before the villain can think of anything to dispute her. “I’m just going to clean up in the kitchen. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” She points to the tray. “I expect that to have gone down when I get back.”

With one last smile she turns on her heel and lets herself out.

The villain stares at the closed door for a moment before turning his gaze back to the steaming bowl in front of him. For god’s sake, it does smell good. He takes it in his lap, nabbing a piece of bread with him and dunking it into the soup.

The vase is slowly disintegrating, pieces dropping out of place every-so-often. The villain watches it like entertainment as he eats, but eventually it starts to get on his nerves. A quick scavenge of the hero’s drawers finds him a tiny tube of glue.

All of this is a pain in the ass. At least this gives him something to do with his hands.

[todayisafridaynight]

journalists underestimate the magnitude of my addiction and how far i'll go for the bit

[thesarcasticism]

no fuck you don't tell me the first time shinjiro calls kotone by her first name is in THIS fucking scene

[faunandfloraas]

i hope whatever weird thing thats wrong with me is resolved by the concert next month bc if its not im really not seeing how i'll be able to go

[neo-shitty]

knuckle-deep — h.hj

description. you never thought a weekday movie night would end up with hyunjin leaning back against the couch and you bouncing on his dick not even 30 minutes into the movie.

pairings. hwang hyunjin x female reader

genre. smut, pwp, fuck buddy!au (minors, please dni)

warnings. swearing, unprotected sex, slight breast play (?), mc has a praise kink me thinks, and mc likes hyunjin’s hands..,.,.. hence, fingering.

word count. 1.5k

notes. inspired by a clip i saw on twitter, i lost the link but it’s forever preserved in the form of this fic. enjoy 🤍

You never thought a weekday movie night would end up with Hyunjin leaning back against the couch and you bouncing on his dick not even 30 minutes into the movie. It was a sight to behold, watching you tower over him on his lap with his legs caged in between yours. The movie on the TV had long blurred into figures in the background, the story not even worth a speck of his attention, not while you’re right in front of him.

His mind was in a frenzy, overwhelmed by the thought of you flicking from one end of the spectrum to the other. You looked cute dressed in nothing but his sweater, drowning in the enormity of it. your hands barely peeking out of the holes of the sleeves and the hem reaching halfway down your thighs. But he thought it looked better hiked up your leg, bunched up by your waist just enough to give him a view of his shaft disappearing into you every time you sank back down onto him. At this point, he no longer wanted to ask for it back.

“Look at you go,” he mutters between jagged breaths, at awe at how adamant you were at keeping up with him today. His fingers dug into your skin when you rolled your hips, his lips parting as groans escaped past them. It’s taking all of his self-control to let you have your way with him, so he tries to loosen his hold as much as he can. He lets his hands roam, down your thighs then up your torso, occasionally wandering beneath your sweater to grope your breasts. He pulls you to him, pressing chaste kisses when he could catch you. 

No matter how he tried to keep it in, his body betrayed him too easily and you’re too smart to miss the signs. He lets one groan out and you respond almost immediately, keeping the rolls slow before picking up the speed when he’s least expecting it.

You’ve taken him countless times now but you’re still just as tight when you first started. It never takes long for him to lose it to you, drunk in the way your walls clench around him—always so accommodating to what he needs.

“Fuck, keep going baby. I’m close.”

You shift in front of him, one hand on the couch’s back for support and the other cupped over your mouth to muffle your whimpers. But there’s a look he can’t quite put his finger on, something he can’t think of as he feels the coils tighten in his stomach. He’s too drunk in the way you looked fucked out in front of him, the tiredness evident in the way your eyes drooped, the sweat trickling down the side of your face. All of this effort put out just to make him cum was almost too overwhelming. 

His hands find their way to your hips, finally taking control. You feel him thrusting into you, his mouth ajar as he tries to chase his high. It comes down to one thrust and the knot in his stomach uncoils. His release shoots out of him and into the warmth of your walls deep inside you. his hold on you loosens, yet still guiding you on him as he rides out his high—pads of his fingers rubbing against your waist.

“That’s my good girl,” he coos, bringing you closer to him to press his lips against your temple. You sink into him, legs finally giving out after holding you up for so long. He reaches up to cup your face, his hands warm against your cheeks as he puckers you up for a kiss.

As if the silence on your part went unnoticed until his head finally cleared, it’s only then that Hyunjin notices what was off. You looked spent but not satisfied, no radiance beaming off you. You’re still sitting on his lap, his shaft still buried in you, occasionally twitching. 

“You didn’t...” He trails off. “I’m sorry I got too caught up on my own. Is there anything I can do?”

“It wasn’t you!” you say, cutting him off just after he apologized. “I just want...”

He eyes you but you’ve already looked away, sweater-sleeved arms raised in an attempt to block his gaze.  “Don’t be shy, speak up.”

But the words don’t come so you’re hoping your actions would carry out what your mouth couldn’t. You run your hand down his arm, tangling your fingers with his. Oh, heavenly fingers that were nothing like yours. Long thick digits, looped with metal bands on the hilt. Just the thought of having them buried deep in you made you dizzy.

“Fingers? You want my fingers?” Hyunjin asks, his tone laced with a tinge of malice—teasing. “Why didn’t you just say so? We could’ve started there.” 

Hyunjin guides you off him, tucking his dick back into his shorts before turning his attention back to you. He turned you around so you had your back against him, sitting you on the floor between his legs. There’s a part of him that wants to hear you beg for it, but you were looking up at him—soft eyes already tired out, but anxiously waiting. He runs his hand down your thigh and you pull them apart for him. Traces of white had smeared onto the inside of your thighs, his release still dripping from your hole. What a mess he’s made on you. Inside the confines of his boxers, he feels his member stir at the sight.

His hand finds its way to your folds, pressing down with the lightest pressure just enough to make you shift and hum. You respond to his touch, aroused enough by the slow simulation to make his fingers glisten with its coating. 

“Hyunjin,” you breathe.

“Patience, baby. I’ll make you feel good soon, I promise.”

Hyunjin runs his fingers down your folds, digits slicked with sticky substance. Your arousal dripped out your cunt, mixed with his release and spilling onto the floor. He presses down a little harder, rubbing in slow drawn out hypnotizing circles. Your nerves come alive, your release beginning to coil in the pits of your stomach. Your head falls back onto Hyunjin’s thigh, leaning back as you let him do what he pleases. 

The slip in is almost too easy, slick-coated digits disappearing into you until he was knuckle-deep inside. His strokes begin slow, dragging against your walls as he pulls out only just to push back in. He feels your body arching off the floor, thrusting up to meet his slow pumps. You’re desperate, clawing at his skin with the unrest between your hips.

So he picks up the pace, both his fingers pumping in and out of you without bottoming out to push back in. Between your breaths a moan falls out of your mouth, the pleasure finally blinding as you feel your release build up. Hyunjin leans down to you, brushing your hair from your ear to whisper, “Do you want them to come in here with another noise complaint again?” 

But he couldn’t care less if they heard you, he loved hearing you fall apart because of him, loved seeing you dig your teeth into your bottom lips to stop yourself from whimpering aloud. Everything about you was just amusing to see and he couldn’t get enough of it.

His thrusts are blinding now, your whimpers turning into moans you couldn’t contain. Hyunjin keeps his fingers pumping at the same pace and he showed no signs of stopping. Your breathing picks up, black spots dotting your vision as it all becomes too much. Your legs have taken a mind of their own, both trying to scurry away and meet Hyunjin at the same time. 

His name stumbles out of your mouth like a prayer, the only thing you can mutter as you feel the onset of your orgasm on the tip of his fingers. Alas the heavens hear you, and your walls spasm with each adding thrust, clenching around extremities as your release rolls over you. The long drawn out pleasure crashing down on you in a wave of exhaustion.

Hyunjin slows, but he doesn’t stop, fucking you through every pulse of your release. You pry your eyes open, looking up to see his image dotted with the spots just beginning to clear your vision. Your ears were still ringing, your breath still short. Hyunjin gazes down at you, eyes no longer clouded with the lust you could from earlier. He caresses the side of your face, brushing the hair sticking to your skin from the sweat. 

“Did it feel good?” he asks, his voice gentle as always. You manage to give him a nod, melting into his hand as it cups your cheek, his thumb brushing your skin as if to bring you back. He pulls his fingers out, noticing the way you’re instinctively trying to get away from him.

But he keeps the pads pressed against you, slowly ghosting circles by your clit. “You think you can take another one?”

© neo-shitty, 2022

[boygirlctommy]

3 YEARS SINCE CTOMMY DIED... GOOD LORD

[madwickedawesome]

figured id visualize something i said today

[rigelmejo]

'lazy' study activities

Yes, this is an extension of the big monster 'study plan' post I am working on. The big study plan post will link more tools and articles to use, this is more like a short suggestion of study activities you could try.

(Scroll to the bottom to see the SUMMARY)

If you already watch cdramas, continue to do so. Download Google Translate app on your phone (and Pleco, and any other translation app you like). Watch cdramas that have hard chinese subtitles on the videos - many youtube cdramas already are like this (you see chinese hanzi subs on the videos). Keep watching with english subtitles on too. Every 3-5 minutes, look up a word or phrase you're curious about. Google Translate allows you to type in words or phrases with pinyin, so if you see 小心 or 你放心 or 他死了 in the cdrama, you can type what you hear 'xiaoxin' or 'nifangxin' or 'tasile' to get the translation. If you don't hear the pronunciation clearly, or don't know pinyin letters-pronunciation well, then you can also do writing input and write in the hanzi you see on the hard chinese subtitles. I'm left handed and didn't know the stroke order as a beginner, my handwriting is usually incomprehensible to writing recognition software, and google translate still usually figured out which hanzi I was writing. So yeah, just watch what you'd normally watch and look up a word/phrase every 3-5 minutes as curious. This activity will ADD up. In a few months you might know a lot of words. If you are a beginner, maybe start with this activity and just keep doing it for a while. Eventually you'll start to pick up dozens of words, maybe even a few hundred. You'll probably eventually get curious about what grammar you're looking at, how to parse the sentences, how to remember hanzi better, and you can use that curiosity as motivation to push you to do some of the more 'intensive' study activities like learning about hanzi and grammar.

Not the laziest activity, because it does require reading an education material: but all you have to do is read it. You don't need to memorize, or study intensely, just read leisurely through it once. Read this dong-chinese pinyin guide, when you have decided you're a bit annoyed you can't figure out the pinyin to type the words you're trying to look up in cdramas. Or read it when you're eager to try typing with a chinese phone keyboard so you can type in hanzi instead of using writing-input, since typing the correct hanzi will make looking up new words easier. (To type hanzi you just type the pinyin, then pick from the hanzi suggested). Reading through this will take as little as 15 minutes, to as long as several days if you're just reading 1 section of it a day in 3-5 minutes. If you enjoy re-reading and reviewing, you might spend a few hours total on this pinyin guide. But if you're lazy? Just read through once, and know you can always come reference it again later if you're confused and want to clarify something. If you plan to learn zhuyin, you can check out the zhuyin guide at the top-right tab of the linked page.

Also not the laziest activity on here, as it will require reading educational material for 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on your reading speed and if you split it into different days and if you personally enjoy reviewing or not. Again, just read through these once when you have a few free minutes to spare. If you're a beginner, you'll appreciate the basic information about hanzi and how they work.

Part 1: Chinese characters in a nutshell

Part 2: Basic characters and character components

Part 3: Compound characters

Part 4: Learning and remembering compound characters

Part 5: Making sense of Chinese words

Part 6: Learning and remembering compound words

If you are a beginner and don't know much about tones, you may also want to spend 20 minutes to 2 hours on some days/weeks you have free on these informational things on tones:

Four Tones Explanation (great explanation video)

Tone Combination Practice (with some useful notes in it)

When Do Chinese Tones Change (good explanation, helpful 3rd tone explanation)

Accent Lab Mandarin Tone Pairs (I recommend this tool for listening practice, and later in your study to check on increasing your listening skills)

And finally, 2 textbook explanations of tones that I've found useful here and here.

Learning new words: if you find the pace of learning slow from just shows, are getting eager to learn more words FASTER so you can understand more? There's a few options.

There's SRS apps like Anki (or Pleco app's flashcard area), and if you enjoy flashcards or can focus on flashcards better than me, then if you do SRS apps 15-30 minutes a day the studying WILL add up. I cannot focus on such apps though, and once my focus burns out it takes me 1 hour to study 5 words... when for most people, they take 5 minutes to study 20 words or more in these apps.

If you're like me and can't focus long term on doing something like flashcards. Option 1: you can still use an SRS app like anki. Just cram 'new words/sentences' ONLY for a few days or weeks (so when you can get through as many words as other people you try to get through as many words as you can in 30 minutes to 2 hours), and when you start to feel the focus fade then switch to only review cards (and only New review cards until you've reviewed everything once). Quit reviewing when the focus is totally gone. You may finish reviewing everything, or you may not. Doesn't really matter. The initial 'new words/sentence' cards were to get an initial exposure of this means X, just like watching shows gives you that initial exposure the first time you look up an unknown word. You will 'review' these words more by seeing them in cdramas and other things, especially when you're still a beginner who needs to learn a few thousand common words. Option 2: same activity, but use a word list (or word list with sentence examples) online or printed on paper. Read through the list once over a matter of days until focus fades, then try to read through the list a second time (review) until focus is lost.

Option 3: Audio flashcards my beloved. If you REALLY do not want to look at flashcards for 15-30 minutes a day, or like me you REALLY can't focus at all on flashcards sometimes (because if 5 minutes take an hour to study like for me it's not very time effective ToT), audio lessons and audio flashcards will be your friend as a beginner. If efficiency is not your highest priority, I suggest you go to the Hoopla or Libby library apps, and looking up 'chinese lessons' or 'learn chinese' and try out some of the audiobooks and audio courses. Also go on Spotify and look up 'learn chinese' and try out some of the podcasts (I used to listen to Coffee Break Chinese), look up lessons on youtube (and things like "chinese sentences english translation"). ANY lesson that speaks chinese sentences, then speaks the english translation? Perfect, you can use it. Anything that tells you the chinese, then the english translation, is making sure you understand the chinese being used enough to start learning it. If you want to be particularly efficient with your time, you'll want to prioritize listening to audio that has MANY new chinese words per lesson. I listened to the chinese spoonfed anki audio files, chinese/english sentence audio, with new words or grammar in every sentence, but also a lot of words re-used in new sentences so i'd get some 'review' of words I'd heard before even if I only listened to new audio files until I finished. Those audio files have ~7000 sentences and probably a bit less words but still thousands. Immersive Languages (library audio lessons you can use) and Chinesepod101 would probably also have fairly information dense lessons.

Why are audio lessons and audio flashcards lazy? Well, particularly when it's just english/chinese sentence audio, you can listen to it while doing your regular daily schedule. Fit 30 minutes or even hours of listening a day, into when you're driving, commuting, walking, cleaning, cooking, grinding in video games, exercising, doing busy work you can listen to something in the background during. I tested this by doing it myself, and even if you are not paying full attention and just in-out of listening in the background, you will learn new words. So listening in the background while you play video games you would anyway? Easier, versus trying to focus on flashcards (very hard for me lol)? As far as 'intentional study' of educational materials, listening to audio lessons and audio flashcards is the easiest to do while continuing your regular daily schedule (aka not needing to carve out extra study time). The main drawback is it is very listening focused, so if you aren't working on reading skills with cdrama subtitles, graded readers, or webnovels eventually, then your reading skills will fall behind.

As an extension to the 'listening is easy to add to a daily schedule' idea: if you are an upper beginner, you can listen to learner podcasts entirely in chinese or graded reader audiobooks. If you're an intermediate learner, you can listen to audiobooks of webnovels you've read, or listen to audio dramas of stuff you've read subtitles for before, or if it's comprehensible enough for you then just listen to new audiobooks and audio dramas. You can listen to cdramas you've watched before playing in the background, or condensed audio (audio of shows with the silence cut out). Not only that, but when it comes to stuff like this, where you know SOME words but not all words? Or where you can read the words, but can't understand them when listening? Re-listen to the audio a LOT. I'm talking 10-20 times, or at least 5 times. Play chapter 1 of an audiobook on loop in the background while you clean your room, or while you level grind in a video game, or while you mull through doing a spreadsheet or lifting boxes at work (if you can work fine while listening to audio), or while you commute. You will, genuinely, notice your comprehension improving the more you re-listen even if you only paid half attention and didn't follow the plot the first few times. It is one of the easiest study activities to do, once you're at the point you can listen to audio materials. Just keep re-listening until you're bored and want to pick another, or until you feel you've understood as much as you can in that audio file (although I bet you if you've listened 5 times and think 'that's all I'll understand,' if you let yourself listen 10 times you'll be surprised how much MORE you end up understanding by then).

If you're getting ansty (as a beginner) about not understanding the grammar of the sentences you see in cdrama. Use that as motivation to spend 5 minutes to 30 minutes a day (or if you enjoy reading just read for 4 hours one day and be done) to read through some chinese grammar guides. You can either look up "basic chinese grammar" and read a few articles, or find a chinese grammar guide and just work your way through reading it. I personally suggest that, if you're bored by it or unable to focus: either JUST read the grammar point TITLES and then read more into the topics you've been seeing in cdramas that you want to learn more about. Or you just read HSK 1-4 grammar points, since they're the basics. Or you skip to the 'grammar point example' and read the examples to get a visual of what's going on. Or only look up specific grammar points as you watch cdramas, if something seems confusing.

I personally felt... it was easier in the long run, for me, to just read a whole grammar guide as a beginner. Did I understand everything? NOPE. I didn't understand like 2/3 at all. But skimming through an entire grammar guide made me aware of all the ways to expect past tense: 去 过 过了 了 以前 etc, ways to expect the future and ability and desire 会 要, how to ask yes/no questions 吗 and suggestions 吧, 有 没有 i have/dont have and how have can be used to express past tense things, 不 don't/not, how 的 地 can make descriptive phrases (地 is like english -ly) (and how in chinese a sentence clause-的 usually goes in FRONT instead of in the middle like in english), how 得 is both 'must' and also has several grammatical functions to look out for (that I didn't get used to until I read a lot to be honest), and 着 has grammatical uses too (the first of which was it seemed similar to the english verb ending -ing to me). These were basic things, and a lot of their more particular aspects went over my head.

But knowing roughly how to pick out 'that's a verb' and 'that's probably a descriptive' and 'that's a clause' and 'that's negative' and 'that's past tense' or 'that's present or future tense' helped me start guessing the overall main idea of sentences and paragraphs WAY sooner than it otherwise would have took me. If I'd only looked up 1 grammar point occassionally... it could've taken years to recognize these basics. Instead it took a month of reading a grammar guide, then several months of seeing that grammar in cdramas and webnovels just to fully recognize what I saw. I did still look up a particular grammar point when confused, but usually I already was vaguely familiar with the grammar point to look it up (like seeing 把 in the sentence and knowing THAT is what i should look up because it's confusing me). So yeah: feel free to do it the way you prefer, as we all will have different preferences and things that work better for us. But for me, it was worth just reading 4 hours of a grammar guide in 15ish minute chunks over the course of a month.

Unfortunately the grammar guide summary i read (chinese-grammar.org) no longer exists. So I will link some options I've found, but if you find more concise and simpler grammar guides please share them! Introduction to Basic Chinese Grammar. AllSetLearning Chinese Grammar Wiki (way too long to read easily in my opinion but I used this to look up specific grammar points later in learning a Lot), Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student's Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors (this one is a print book but the only modern book I bought for grammar), and Wikipedia's Chinese Grammar Page (which is the grammar guide I'm currently reading through to consider as a resource - i think as far as summarized it may be one of the shorter options).

Whenever you feel ready to learn hanzi? Honestly the sky is the limit on options. If you like SRS apps like anki, Skritter is an app I've seen recommended for hanzi, I used some "chinese hanzi with mnemonics" anki decks (while I could focus lol). I personally found the easiest way for me to start was to just read through this book (which is for free as an ebook in many libraries/library apps, and can be found in free download book sites):Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters; Includes All Characters for the AP & HSK 1-3 Exams. I liked this book because it made up a story to help me remember meaning, pronunciation, and tone. Along with providing example words. It's only 800 hanzi, and all I did to study it was read a few pages every couple days until I finished it - it took me around 3 months to finish the book. I didn't review (though you can re-read and review if you enjoy that).

But the mnemonics really helped form that 'initial recognition' memory and so when I started reading graded readers (once I'd studied 300 hanzi in the book), the graded readers helped 'review' those new hanzi and I learned them fast. For the 1000 hanzi I learned on my own after this book, I utilized the mnemonic story strategy that this book taught, and it was fairly doable to just keep picking up hanzi by looking them up when reading, coming up with a mnemonic story in my head, then moving on. As I kept seeing hanzi again, I'd eventually remember them. (And they say it takes 12-20 times of seeing a word to remember it, so at worst that's how much I was looking up new words... sometimes only 1-2 times though).

I would suggest that if you don't use SRS apps like anki or Skritter for hanzi, use some tool with mnemonics like a hanzi book with mnemonic stories (like the one I linked or a few others that exist). And when you look up new words in cdramas, and later graded readers and webnovels, please listen to the word's pronunciation a few times. So you're getting a bit of initial recognition of the hanzi's components/visual AND the word's pronunciation. If it takes 20 times or less to learn new words, then you'll want to get that much reading AND listening exposure.

When you have some basic grammar knowledge (or if you're really tolerant of ambiguity), keep watching cdramas as you have been. But try to pause the show every 3-5 minutes and read a chinese subtitle sentence. You can use the english subtitles to try and parse the chinese word meanings, or look up keywords using your translation app, whatever you want. Since a LOT of cdramas have chinese subs, and you watch with english subs, you can utilize these dual subtitles to start practicing reading skills and practicing guessing new words from context (in this case the context is the scene, the chinese words you already know, and the english translation). Later in your studies, when you stop using english subtitles sometimes, this will have been good practice of getting used to trying to read chinese. This pausing every 3-5 minutes to try and understand a chinese sentence should not take much time, maybe adding 5-10 minutes of watch time to a cdrama episode (depending on how long you pause). So it should be fairly easy to work into your schedule.

So yeah. The big summary of all this is:

If you want to make progress at a pace most people are going to find not too slow, I suggest 1-2 hours on average of doing stuff with chinese a day. (Or more hours a day on average if you want to get through the beginner phase faster). It'll take thousands of hours to learn chinese. Your pace will be extremely slow if you do less than 1 hour with chinese a day on average.

If you already watch cdramas, then keep doing that and just start looking up words (and eventually trying to figure out some sentences) once every 3-5 minutes as curious.

Spend 5 minutes a day reading articles on chinese writing system, and pinyin, and basic grammar, for a few months. You don't need to memorize or review, just get a basic initial exposure.

Approach other educational materials that way: if and when you start more 'intensively' studying, you can just get an initial exposure to the ideas (like a hanzi book, a grammar guide, reading word or sentence lists if you like to do that). You don't need to memorize or review, you don't need to understand everything. Just get an initial impression. (If you enjoy memorizing or studying though, go wild lol)

Audio lessons and audio flashcard study materials will require no time to fit into your schedule, you can do those while you do daily activities that you can listen to audio while doing. As an intermediate learner, these can also be used the way extensive reading is used - to pick up more vocabulary, improve grammar understanding, improve comprehension speed.

New words take (lets rough estimate) 20 times of seeing to remember. So you'll be looking up new words up to that many times when watching cdramas, or later when reading, and that's okay. It'll take a while to fully solidify this new information and you can just keep watching cdramas and doing things in chinese, and the information will eventually be learned. Especially as a beginner: you'll run into the few thousand most common words CONSTANTLY, you will eventually learn them as you keep looking words up and doing stuff in chinese. You do not need to do any special scheduled review (like SRS anki cards, skritter, pleco flashcards) unless you personally enjoy doing it, or want to speed up your progress and are okay with carving 15-30 minutes of time specifically for doing that.

The process of transitioning to graded readers, cdramas with no english subs, and webnovels is it's own beast - which I can cover if you want (and will in the bigger post's step 3). But the short of it is: if you keep doing activities until you've learned around 1000 words, you should be able to start reading easy graded readers and gradually increasing their unique word count until you're reading graded readers with 1000+ unique words. (And you can start graded readers knowing only 200 words if you want! Mandarin Companion has books for beginners if like me you'd like to practice reading ASAP). At that point, you should be able to transition to easy webnovels (using Pleco Reader/Clipobard Reader, Mandarinspot.com annotation, Readibu app, or highlighting and right clicking and using google translate in a webpage) and to watching cdramas you've seen before or with simple plots in chinese only. How many words you look up, or if you look up zero, is all fine: as long as you grasp the main idea of the plot. If you look words up, and can grasp at least the main idea? Then you can watch/read as long as you look words up (and you'll learn the other detail words from context) If you can grasp the main idea without looking any words up? Then you can watch/read without looking words up (and learn new words from context). The first few months (or even year) of transitioning to webnovels and cdramas with no english subs will feel hard, even if you know all/most of the words. It's just part of adjusting to actually comprehending all the things you've studied. I suggest following Heavenly Path's Reading Guide as soon as you're ready to start trying to read - first graded reading material, then webnovels once you've learned around 1000 words.